After just four seniors and four juniors showed up for the first day of practice, the writing was pretty much on the wall for Orchard View High Schools varsity football team.
Now nearly two weeks later, the inevitable became official.
There will be no varsity football season for the Cardinals this year as the school made the decision to pull the plug on Friday.
There are 17 combined freshman and sophomores on the JV team, but Cardinals head coach Fred Rademacher said pulling them up from JV wouldn't have been fair or safe.
"Trying to make 14-year-old boys play against 18-year-old men for 48 minutes of High School football is dangerous. There's a reason that there's freshman football, there's a reason why there's JV football, they're tough kids and some of them are big but end of the day they're 14 years old."
Orchard View was supposed to open up the year at home against Spring Lake on August 26.
Now the Lakers, just like everyone else on the Cardinals schedule, have an open week.
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