White Pigeon cancels 2026 football season after 3 games
· Yahoo Sports
WHITE PIGEON — White Pigeon Community Schools has made the decision to pull the plug on its football season.
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In a statement released Tuesday, Sept. 15 by the district, both athletic director Brooke Baechler and superintendent Shelly McBride announced last Friday's game for the Chiefs would be the final one of the 2026 season.
Both Baechler and McBride spoke with The Journal on Tuesday night confirming the end of the season. Both agreed that although it is a tough situation at the time, the community support has been a positive one.
"I have been incredibly proud of our community for the support they've shown this year," McBride said. "Incredibly proud of that."
White Pigeon had lost its opening three games of the season. Hartford and Cassopolis won over the Chiefs by identical 60-0 scores, while Gobles then beat White Pigeon 36-0 last Friday.
The numbers play a role here. Baechler said the program started with some decent numbers during the summer, but that began to dwindle a bit in June. Those numbers took a hit too as the season came closer. Then, those participation numbers lessened again right before the season was set to begin.
The Chiefs decided to give it a go, but ultimately it became a hill too large to climb.
White Pigeon only suited up 18 players this past week
"Safety reasons was our No. 1 goal with this decision. We also wanted to be able to make sure we could compete," Baechler said. "We want our student-athletes to always compete to their best and gain confidence as they are playing and we want to make goals for ourselves. It's just a tough situation right now."
Baechler said the decision was not made because of a lack of effort from everyone involved.
"Everyone in our program has been working very hard; this was not for lack of working hard," she said. "Our kids are always work hard. Our coaches are working hard; the community support and the parents were working hard. Ultimately, we wanted to make sure we put our kids in a position to be safe, where we could be competitive and grow our program."
There has been some talk around St. Joseph County about White Pigeon potentially moving to 8-player football. Baechler said that was considered but never materialized. McBride said obviously there is a lot that goes into 8-player football and it's not something that can just happen immediately.
So for the time being, White Pigeon underclassmen will be playing a junior varsity schedule, Baechler said. She's already been working the phones in an attempt to schedule some contests. White Pigeon was scheduled to play Centreville this week.
Currently, the three White Pigeon seniors will not be allowed to play in sub-varsity games. However, that becomes the decision of the opposing school.
Both McBride and Baechler said they met with football parents on Tuesday. They plan to meet privately with members of the team on Wednesday to discuss future plans.
McBride said the goal for next year is to have a full varsity season. The school plans to assess the situation after the completion of fall sports.
"We're going to get through this, assess everything after that," McBride said. "Our goal has always been to have a varsity football team. We'll look to that goal again."
Contact Sports Editor Brandon Watson at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @BwatsonSJ.
This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: White Pigeon cancels 2026 football season after 3 games