RUSSELLVILLE, Mo. - Starting in 2018, Russellville's school district will have a football team.
It will start with junior high. The plan is to steadily add a junior varsity and a varsity team for the high school in the next couple of years.
Superintendent Perry Gorrell said the idea for the team came about when a group of parents from the community pitched the idea to the school board almost three years ago.
"There was a group of individuals who approached the school board about possibly starting football," Gorrell said. "The board decided that the district could not financially support the start up cost for that. So the district gave the group a goal to meet and once they met that goal, then we would proceed with starting football."
After meeting the second timeline that pushed the start of the program back a year, the individuals were able to meet the initial goal of around $30,000 and it was agreed that next year, the district would start with junior high football.
The idea of football gained a lot of support from both the students and their parents and there was no real push back to the idea of starting the sport.
"(The students) are excited," Gorrell said. "I know our upper classmen are jealous, because they are not going to have those opportunities that the younger classmen are going to get."
The school showed off an example of what the jersey and helmet for the program would look like and Gorrell said that the kids were excited about seeing it in person.
The school will use the field inside the track, so they will not have to build a new field for the team. This will lower the cost of getting ready for the upcoming sport.
"When it comes to starting a program like football the most expensive piece of that is building the field," Gorrell said. "That field was built, then they built the track."
Despite already having a field, Gorrell said that there is some renovations and managing to it, so that it is ready for use in football, as the field is seven years old.
While there may be some people who are skeptical about adding a football team to the school, Gorrell said that it will be a big positive to the the community.
"Having come from a school district that had started football, as I was there, as well, I've seen first-hand the tremendous positives that it has for the community," Gorrell said. "It becomes, on Friday nights, the hub of the community and it brings the community together.
"That is one thing that Russellville needs is those types of activities that bring us together as a group. There is no other activity like a Friday night football game that you can have almost every one of your students being a part of."