Allen football team is definitely playing on Friday night

FROM KEITH GROLLER

There are a lot of rumors going around this Valley about the Allen football team not playing on Friday night.

The Canaries are scheduled to play at Nazareth.

So I stopped out at J. Birney Crum Stadium today during practice and talked with head coach James Brown and several assistants and learned that, indeed, the Canaries are preparing to play Nazareth on Friday night as scheduled.

Yes, several kids have left the program this week, but Allen still has its "main players" and will compete against Nazareth. There were only about 30 kids participating.

No one exactly knows where the rumors began in regard to Allen not playing on Friday night.

Perhaps it has to do with a meeting of the Allentown School District athletic council on Wednesday.

It is possible a decision will be made about the future of the Allentown School District football program at the meeting, but whatever is decided would not affect the current 2011 season.

In talking with the coaches, it's clear that something needs to be done about the future.

And again, it comes down to the three choices that have been discussed on this blog -- 1. consolidate the Allen and Dieruff programs and play as Allentown High School; 2. leave the Lehigh Valley Conference and try to schedule independent opponents; 3. eliminate the program and save what is believed to be about $100,000.

The coaches who are trying their best to work with the kids don't want the program to end. They say they have some good kids who are working as hard as they can. They advocate playing an independent schedule, realizing that there is vastly uneven playing field in the Lehigh Valley Conference the way things stand now.

There is some support for consolidating programs, although many believe that they would not create a more competitive situation within the Lehigh Valley Conference.

Few people want the final option of elimininating the football program entirely because it at least gives kids an organized activity where can be o something constructive and learn some lessons like teamwork, camaraderie and discipline. If they weren't practicing football, many of these kids would have nothing else to do and would be likely to get involved in negative activities.

So, we'll see what happens, if anything, at the meeting.

But the Allen football team is playing at Nazareth on Friday and plans to finish out the 2011 season as scheduled.

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/