Nine senior athletes at a Southern Tier school won't have the opportunity to play their final season on their school's football team because the varsity team has been pulled.

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An email sent on Wednesday, August 3, states that the Sayre Area School District has made the decision to pull the plug on varsity football this school year. While varsity football is being nixed at Sayre, junior varsity and junior high football will still be played.

Parents and members of the Sayre community took to social media on Wednesday night and were not shy about expressing their feeling about their student athletes having the experience of closing out high school with varsity football taken from them.

However, as of Monday morning, August 1, there were only 26 students who signed up to play either junior varsity or varsity football and Sayre head coach Kevin Gorman along with several parents addressed safety concerns to the Sayre School Board that evening.

During the Sayre School Board meeting, Gorman and the parents explained that it simply wouldn't be safe to allow students to play at the varsity level because a good majority of the athletes who signed up had virtually no experience playing at the varsity level.

In the email sent to the parents of Sayre football players, Sayre Athletic Director Barry Claypool expressed mutual sadness by saying, “Seniors and parents, we understand and sympathize with the pain that this decision will cause as you may lose out on your final season."

Claypool then explained that all options are being explored in order to give the nine seniors the opportunity to play football during their senior year. Coach Gorman and the parents asked the school board to look into a possible co-op with the Athens School District in order to give the seniors the chance to play.

A source tells Townsquare Media that there will be an emergency school board meeting Thursday, August 4 at 7:00 p.m. in the Sayre High School library to discuss a co-op with the Athens Central School District.

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