Bloomfield Hills Andover forfeits football season

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. (WXYZ) - Andover High School's football team is supposed to play Ferndale Friday night, but players won't be showing up on the field.

Bloomfield Hills Andover has forfeited the rest of its season because of safety concerns, according to the district's spokesperson.

Andover High School is set to merge with Bloomfield Hills Lahser after this school year, so the program will be ending anyway.

Andover has lost all three games this season, with the worst game ending with a 70-7 score against Lahser.

“I’ve been meeting with the team about twice a week since the start of the season,” said Mike Cowdrey, Director of Athletics. “We talked about how athletics should be fun and that when it stops being fun, we need to change something. I told them that if they got to a point where it was no longer fun, all they had to do was let us know verbally or stop showing up.”

Andover's administration decided to forfeit the rest of the season after only about a dozen kids showed up to practice this week. There are 24 players on the roster.

“It’s not a safe situation to pad-up and play 15-20 on game day with only 11 showing up for practice,” Cowdrey said.

The district says students would be at a greater risk of injury with so few players.

Sophomores and juniors who played on the varsity team will be allowed to sign up on the combined JV team if they still want to play this season.

Some students and parents from other schools are upset that Andover will be out of the mix, because it means one less game for those schools and less experience on the field for those players.