By 
Jennifer Moffat has set an offseason project for herself.
Actually, the Derby athletic director is not even waiting for the offseason. Go-time is now.
The mission: Find a co-op high school football partner for the Derby Red Raiders. Or else: After 110 years of Derby football, there might not be any more Derby football.
Derby's 2026 roster has grown so small that, even at full health, the Red Raiders number but 20. With only 13 healthy players available on Oct. 10, Derby had to postpone its Week 5 game with Kennedy, a team with just 32 players itself – 24 if you take away the freshmen.
Across town, Waterbury Career Academy suits up just 23. Northwest Catholic fields 26. Brien McMahon of Norwalk, with only with only 12 of its 24 seniors and juniors healthy enough to play, postponed last week's game with Trumbull to Nov. 18.
So, when Jennifer Moffat says, "I'm looking for potentially a co-op for next year just to make sure we can keep the program alive," her school is potentially not alone.
"No, absolutely not," Moffat said. "Across the state, it seems like there are a lot of teams with low numbers for every sport."
As participation numbers continue to decline in CIAC football, co-ops are increasingly being seen as a solution. Nine have sprung up in the last two years:
•2026: Avon-St. Paul, Windham-Coventry-Parish Hill, Cheney Tech-Windham Tech, Wilbur Cross-Career and Montville-St. Bernard.
•2025: Nonnewaug-Lakeview-Shepaug Valley, Lewis Mills-Wolcott Tech, Weaver-Hartford Public-Classical and the Valley Panthers (Plainfield-Quinebaug Valley).
That gives Connecticut 26 co-ops, doubling the 13 that existed in 2013.
Once viewed as a springboard to football independence, co-ops have become more a means of football survival. It's not a complete guarantee. Some co-ops are struggling mightily with numbers this year. Valley Regional/Lyme-Old Lyme had just 22 healthy players for its Week 2 game.
But virtually every CIAC school that is in a football co-op, even ones with robust rosters, would lack sufficient numbers to field a team safely, if at all, on their own. Certainly they would be less competitive, with little to no sub-varsity structure to sustain the program.
Not everyone is sold. Some schools with rosters around the 30-player mark are resistant to co-ops. Administrators prefer having everything under one roof, from academic and medical monitoring to everyday relationships with coaches, players and parents. Management is neater, communication lines straighter. Co-ops require multi-school coordination with scheduling and transportation, arrangements for finances and equipment.
Co-ops also require coaches and players, oftentimes recent rivals, to integrate. Positions and playing time can get lost in that shuffle. A new culture must be forged. Even the best transitions don't happen overnight.
And certainly some schools do not wish to relinquish tradition and independence.
"By our standards, it's small," Ledyard athletic director Jim Buonocore said of his school's current 30-man roster, grades 10-12. "But I also think we are tradition-rich. It'll take a lot -a lot -for me to ever go to that route."
That said, Buonocore recognizes some schools must take that road. He acknowledges co-ops are likely the wave of the future and commends administrators already making present ones work.
"Because there's a lot pulling into it; you have to bridge a lot," the Ledyard AD said. "You actually lose a little bit of control of who you are as a program. You lose an identity. When you talk about Ledyard and football, we are an identity, and that's why I think we would have to be on our last toe – not last leg, not last foot – but last toe to ever think about going to a cooperative football program. We're far from it. Unfortunately, other parts of the state, and our league, aren't."
True: Ledyard's own Eastern Connecticut Conference has five co-ops among its 14 teams, second only to the 11 of the Pequot League and matching the five of the Connecticut Technical Conference. (The Central Connecticut Conference and Naugatuck Valley League have two apiece, the Southern Connecticut Conference one.)
The majority were formed in the last 10 years, a decade that's seen far more passengers get on the co-op train than off. The last squad to leave one and remain independent was Ellington, which bid adieu to Somers after 2014.
Co-op coaches acknowledge their arrangements aren't problem-free. There is an inherent challenge in merely getting kids to practice every day, especially in the summer, when the busses aren't running.
"Like it says on our T-shirts, 'We're 12 towns, 1 team.' We cover roughly 250-some-odd square miles," remarked Scott Salius, head coach of the GNH co-op, which expanded to three teams in 2021 when Housatonic-Falls Village joined the Winsted tandem of Gilbert-Northwestern that dates back to 2002. "Housatonic, it's almost an hour for them to get to practice. Even to get to Housatonic (for school), it takes some of these kids a half hour."
But, big picture, Salius and co-op coaches say, the pros of combining programs with low numbers outweigh the cons. Co-ops allow teams to have better practices, allow them to better compete at the varsity level, and compete – period – at sub-varsity.
Coach Erik Shortell's Granby-Canton squad has 39 players this season, 26 from Granby and 13 from Canton. Without the co-op, Canton wouldn't have enough players. Granby would, but not enough for a JV team.
"If you want to build a program and you want kids to stick around and practice, they need to have a JV game," said Shortell, whose program has nine JV games on its schedule this year. "They need to have a reward at the end of the day for being on scout team.
"Nowadays you have to (combine) because the identity of the sport is sort of dying, with contact and injuries and a lot of parents not letting kids play," Shortell added. "Having a co-op with a town that's almost like yours, the kids are trying to do the same thing, playing together, I think it's a great thing."
Granby-Canton formed in 2019. The two former Thanksgiving rivals have grown into a united front, with active booster clubs at both schools and, starting this year, a shared youth league. Other co-op coaches report a successful mesh among their schools.
"It's not easy in the beginning. We went from pretty hot Thanksgiving rivals to being teammates," said Shortell, the head coach at Granby at the time of the merger. "The first year was a little rocky. We had to absorb the Canton head coach, too, and that wasn't easy. It was 'my guys, your guys.' I said, 'No, we're all the same now.' So that took a little bit. Now I don't know what kids are from where."
On this particular day, Granby-Canton is facing Cromwell-Portland. The two are nearly identical: Pequot League co-ops that combine neighboring towns of similar demographics.
Sal Morello established Cromwell in 2001, coached it through the 2008 state championship, then left for Middletown before returning in 2024. In 2015, Cromwell began taking players from Portland, which never had a team. Had Morello been in Cromwell at the time, the merger might not have happened. However, he's glad it did.
"I never really wanted (a co-op), to be honest with you. We had numbers, 35 around the average. I come back, we have Portland kids, our numbers are up, and that's a good thing," said Morello, whose team this year numbers 46, including 16 freshmen.
"I think the biggest thing is we're giving kids an opportunity, giving them an option," Morello continued. "It's never easy from a coach's point of view when you've got students in different buildings. But for the most part, these kids are showing up, and as teachers and coaches we're giving kids an opportunity they never would have had."
Football co-op rules for Connecticut
Co-ops must be reviewed and renewed every year. It's a pure numbers game. The CIAC has limits to keep programs from combining for competitive advantage or financial savings. In football, no team participating in a co-op can have more than 25 players in grades 10-12 or 32 in grades 9-12.
This will be hovering over Jennifer Moffat as she seeks a partner for Derby. O'Brien Tech in Ansonia seems a ready fit. The two schools already combine in girls soccer and were football partners from 2007-2010. O'Brien now has a roster of 40, five above the limit.
Tony Mazzarella Sr., head coach at St. Paul before that team combined this year with Avon, said the CIAC should raise the 25/32 ceiling. By the end of last year, he had 20 players, 14 of which were varsity level. He's brought 25 players, grades 9-12, to the Avon-St. Paul table as an assistant coach. That's under the 32-player limit, but still not adequate, he said.
"If you have 15 kids on a basketball team, you have a lot. If you have 20, 25, 30 kids on a football team, you don't have a lot because there are so many more different positions," Mazzarella said. "I could have five kids who are linemen and none who are skill kids … You have bodies, but not necessarily ones that could play a position or be successful playing that position.
"So to have a blanket number like that, that is so low, they're putting schools in dangerous and precarious situations, and they need to know that."
CIAC executive director Glenn Lungarini said his organization has not received any proposals to raise the numbers.
"The co-ops have been around for a long time and the rules are very easy for our schools to understand and apply because the numbers are very straight-forward," Lungarini said. "There's no subjectivity to it. Either you meet the numbers or you don't meet the numbers. It also helps preserve that schools are not entering into co-ops as a cost-saving measure and limiting opportunities."
Co-ops can opt to stick together even if they grow too large. They just aren't playoff eligible. This is the path taken by Wilcox/Kaynor Tech, partners since 2021.
Usually, excessive numbers end co-ops. This happened to Northwest United after the 2024 season. Nonnewaug, Lakeview and Shepaug Valley remained together, while Wolcott Tech, the odd man out, combined with Lewis Mills, a team that had been co-op partners with St. Paul and Goodwin Tech from 2005-2009 before going solo in 2010.
This was previously the prevailing purpose of co-ops. They were a nest for fledglings until they could take flight or established teams that had fallen on lean times and needed to regroup. East Catholic brought on Cheney Tech for a dozen years before its tech school neighbor went its own way in 2007. Enfield re-emerged in the mid-90s after three years with Ellington and East Windsor.
The nest has become necessity. Of the nine co-ops that sprung up in 2025 and 2026, all but one – Nonnewaug – involves at least one previously independent team. In the case of Avon-St. Paul and the Hartford co-op (Weaver and Hartford Public), it was two.
Some co-ops, such as Windham-Coventry-Parish Hill, give kids from schools with no team a place to play while crucially boosting the host school's numbers. Windham has 24 players. The 11 newcomers from Coventry and the three from Parish Hill push the number to 37.
Other co-ops present a stronger joint force. The Valley Panthers are a 50-man front with 27 players from host Plainfield and 23 from the old Quinebaug Valley co-op of Ellis Tech, Putnam and Tourtelotte. Both arms of the new grouping have enough bodies to field individual teams, but how good would they be?
Plainfield is a program that dates back to 1921 when the team played on Saturday mornings in a cow pasture. A Class S playoff team in 2018 and 2019, Plainfield came out of the pandemic with just 14 returning players. Coach Pat Smith got the number above 30, but pulled out of the ECC and played an independent schedule in 2022 and 2023 to regroup.
He rebuilt, but only to a degree. So when Quinebaug Valley was about to undergo a coaching change after the 2024 season, he pitched a co-op.
"I went to my AD and said, 'We need to do this,'" said Smith, now in his 32nd year and 27th as head coach. "Numbers-wise, we probably would have a team, but we wouldn't have any lower-level team. Your practice structure struggles. You're not developing your younger players. Our young kids are now getting 11 games. They're developing practice skills; they're getting 1-on-1 instruction. It's back to where we were were when I started my career, when we had 50-55 kids."
Hill and Valley
When Smith started his career, Plainfield High School had an enrollment of around 800. It's down to 515, and that's had a ripple effect in football.
A different demographic tide flows in Rocky Hill. Enrollment has remained stable, but ethnic makeup has shifted. The percentage of foreign-born residents, particularly from Asian nations, where football is not a cultural staple, has risen to 22 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
This has had ripple effects in football. Where there were typically 45 players a year there are now 35.
There is a chance that number continues to decline. Rocky Hill disbanded its youth football program and, last year, only one freshman came out for the high school team. To avoid a repeat, Rocky Hill coach Richard Dance scoured the middle school and recruited 14 freshman this year.
When it comes to co-ops, Dance is of the same mind as Ledyard's Buonocore. "Personally, I would do everything I can to prevent that. I want everything under one roof – one house, one staff," the Rocky Hill coach said.
"Logistically, in the summer it's hard enough, especially with some of the younger guys to get them here," Dance continued. "We go 4-5 days a week in the summer, lifting and practicing. It's a logistical nightmare. Co-ops would be even more so."
Who would Rocky Hill even partner with? Neighboring Wethersfield, Newington and Berlin all have rosters that number in the 50s. There's Cromwell-Portland. Coach Morello would welcome the infusion of talent, but the flip side is Rocky Hill would bump the team into a higher playoff class.
Is Vinal/Goodwin Tech, with its roster of 28, a possibility? Would Rocky Hill even be the host?
"I would hope so, but you never know," Dance replied. "You're opening up a whole can of worms. So that's why I tamp down on any type of conversation about that. But I'm staying positive because we do have 14 freshmen. For Class SS, I can't argue with 14."
Others aren't so sure. Mazzarella held his breath last year as St. Paul wrapped up a 2-8 season with his 14 serviceable players.
"I fretted every game because you have these kids playing both ways, every game, every play, and they're just beat up," he said. "It's a different time. If you want to keep football in the schools, I think (co-ops) are the only way to do it."
This article originally published at Connecticut high school football is shrinking. 26 co-ops now help keep programs alive.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/connecticut-high-school-football-shrinking-101500882.html
