As high school football participant drops in California, CIF plans a summit

Plans are in the preliminary stages to hold a CIF football summit in February to address declining participation in high school football in California, executive director Ron Nocetti said Tuesday.

The issue was brought up during a monthly conference call with the 10 section commissioners of the California Interscholastic Federation. The summit idea is to bring together all 10 sections, along with coaches, to address the issue that football participation has declined by more than 12,000 students over the last four years.

Nocetti said he wanted to see how the issues differed from school to school and section to section and seek ideas to reverse participation numbers back into the positive. A survey to seek information from students no longer playing football to determine why they stopped also could be possible.

“We want to start having conversations with our sections and representatives what we can do to help with the issue of declining numbers,” he said.