Important !

Over the past few weeks seven or eight homeschool football teams have backed out of their commitments to play in the National Homeschool Football Championship Series (NHFCS). These teams have changed their minds for a variety of reasons. Some teams that wanted to come felt like they would not be invited because they had dropped out of the top four or five ranked homeschool teams and made other plans. Some of the top five teams were not originally planning on coming and tried to make plans late but ran into different issues (financial for some, scheduling for others) that prevented them from coming.Some teams have dropped out because they don't think they are ready for the level of competition the NOAH Jaguars and the NHFCS represent.

As a result, the National Homeschool Football Championship Series tournament committee has been forced to cancel the 2010 tournament. The tournament committee is redirecting our efforts towards further planning with broader input in building this tournament experience. To that end we have reset a launch date of November, 2011 to hold this National Championship Tournament. A Steering Committee is convening this winter to work out some very essential details that participating teams have asked to develop. The tournament committee is soliciting other homeschool varsity head football coaches to be a part of the steering committee via off-season conference calls and email discussion groups to ensure the 2011 Championship Series becomes an extraordinary event.

After multiple teams that we had thought and hoped were coming to participate in this year's tournament had backed out we were down to NOAH and Dallas HSAA as the only remaining teams committed to the NHFCS. When Dallas was informed that they would be coming up to play NOAH again they met with their coaches and players and decided not to come back for another game against NOAH. That is disappointing but understandable considering we played them just a couple of weeks ago and the outcome was pretty decisive in favor of NOAH.

As the head coach of NOAH and a participant in the tournament committee, I recognize that our attempts at securing teams for the championship series were flawed. We asked teams to commit to possible post season games and trips without any assurances that they would be invited. Some teams that wanted to come felt like they would not be invited because they had dropped out of the top four or five ranked homeschool teams and made other plans. Some of the top five teams were not originally planning on coming and tried to make plans late but ran into different issues (financial for some, scheduling for others) that prevented them from coming. Teams from Ohio, Maryland, Carolina, California, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and Oklahoma have expressed a real interest in being a part of the NHFCS in the future.

The committee believes they have come up with a solution for going forward that is exciting. Getting the input from other homeschool varsity coaches months ahead of time should provide a great basis for a stable and great championship series going forward. I hate it for this year's team and particularly our seniors. I wanted them to have the opportunity to win another championship on the field and not just in the polls. I wish I had been smarter on the front end and thought about the things we now have learned through this process but I wasn't. I love this team and don't like the idea of having our season cut short.

The National Homeschool Football Championship Series Committee is attempting to do something that has never been done before. There is no true football national championship format. Panama City, Florida and Tennessee offer a weekend family vacation and football package where teams go and play each other in games that last a quarter of a game each and have no game planning or practice preparation and play 1/4 games several times over the course of three or four days concluding with a half game quasi-championship. In our opinion that is not true football and certainly not championship football. The teams that have won that tournament over the past few years are teams that we have soundly defeated - which makes that tournaments assertion of having a national champion pretty bogus. The NHFCS wants to see the best teams have an opportunity to compete in a real championship format like state championship teams do all across the country. What the NHFCS is attempting has a lot of challenges but we are hopeful as we seek the Lord's help through prayer, the support of the ever widening homeschool community and the NOAH family that the NHFCS might be a God-honoring special event in the years to come for homeschool football teams across our nation.

The canceling of this year's chamionship series games means a couple of things for our NOAH team. 1) It means that we will not have the potential income from the last three games we had hoped for (two semi-final games and a championship game) - so if you can help with the NOAH Football costs in any way it will be a blessing. NOAH is a 501c organization and gifts are tax-deductible. AND 2) It means that Thursday night's game against Panama is the last game for this year's NOAH Jaguar football team. We would hope that as many fans as possible would make the trip down to Panama for the Thursday night game to cheer on the Jaguars and I hope that this will be the finest game played by these players all year. May the Lord help us to finish well!

Coach Joe

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