When a high school football program that went 4–5 last season and has won 22 games since 2020 announces it won’t field a varsity team for the upcoming year, something significant is happening. Exira-EHK High School made exactly that announcement in late March 2026 and while the specifics are particular to this small western Iowa community, the forces driving the decision are playing out at schools across the state.
This isn’t a story about a bad program quitting. It’s a story about small rural schools colliding with a demographic reality that no amount of coaching or community enthusiasm can fully overcome.
What Happened at Exira-EHK
On March 25–26, 2026, Exira-EHK officially announced it would suspend varsity football for the 2026 season. Rather than compete at the varsity level, the school plans to run only a junior varsity schedule, a step that keeps the program technically alive while acknowledging it isn’t ready to compete safely at full pace.
Activities director Tom Petersen was direct about the reasons. The decision came down to “low participation and the safety of our players.” That combination of not enough bodies and concern about the ones they have is a particularly difficult position for any football program to be in.
One number captures the situation starkly: there was reportedly only one incoming freshman expected to join the football program in 2026. One player. That’s not a roster problem that’s solvable by motivation or weight room improvements. It’s a structural problem rooted in how many kids simply attend the school.
Exira-EHK also explored a partnership with the Audubon Community School District, a cooperative arrangement that would have allowed the two schools to field a combined team. Those negotiations didn’t progress, leaving the program without a viable path to a full varsity season.
The Program’s History Matters
Context is important here. Exira-EHK isn’t a program with a history of struggles or a school that has been irrelevant in Iowa small-school football. The team went 4–5 in 2025, a perfectly respectable season. Since 2020, the program has won 22 games. And going back further, the 2013 squad finished 12–1 a genuinely impressive season by any standard.
The current roster crisis isn’t the result of years of bad football. It’s the result of graduation. Several key players Bryce Brabham, Josten Kilworth, Austin Rasmussen left the program before 2026, and there simply weren’t enough incoming players to replace them at the numbers needed to compete safely.
That’s the brutal arithmetic of small-school sports: when a few seniors leave and a thin incoming class arrives, the entire competitive equation changes overnight.
The Ripple Effect on Other Schools
When an Iowa high school cancels its football season at this level, it doesn’t happen in isolation. Exira-EHK had been assigned to an eight-player football district for 2026 that included Ar-We-Va, CAM, Coon Rapids-Bayard, Glidden-Ralston, Griswold, and Audubon. With Exira-EHK withdrawing, those schools now have gaps in their schedules byes they didn’t plan for and games they’ll need to replace.
Finding replacement opponents at the small-school level isn’t always straightforward when other programs are facing similar pressures. A school that needs to fill a schedule opening can’t necessarily count on a nearby program having availability.
Other Iowa Schools Facing the Same Pressure
Exira-EHK’s situation is the most visible example of a problem touching multiple Iowa high school football programs simultaneously.
Central Decatur has been considering suspending varsity football for 2026 after surveys among the school community showed support for pausing the season. The district has discussed running only an eight-player JV team, and the reasons mirror what’s happening elsewhere: injuries, safety concerns, and declining participation. Central Decatur actually forfeited a game during the 2025 season because injuries had left the roster too thin to safely compete.
Highland and Lone Tree took a different path. The two school districts approved a combined cooperative football program for 2026 essentially merging their programs into a single team rather than either school canceling outright. The need for that arrangement reflects the same underlying problem: Lone Tree didn’t field a team at all in 2025, and Highland canceled its season after just two games that same year.
These aren’t isolated anecdotes. They’re instances of a pattern that’s becoming more common as rural Iowa schools continue to navigate declining enrollment and its downstream effects on athletics.
Why This Is Happening: The Structural Reality
Iowa’s high school athletic association specifically designed eight-player football to accommodate small schools with limited enrollment. It’s a genuine accommodation for communities that want to play football but don’t have the numbers for eleven-man programs. The fact that even eight-player rosters are becoming difficult to maintain at some schools tells you something about the scale of the demographic challenge involved.
Rural Iowa has been losing population for decades. Smaller graduating classes mean fewer athletes in every sport. Football, with its specific demands, physical contact, injury risk, and the need for players on both sides of the ball, is particularly exposed to roster shortages compared to sports that require fewer participants.
When a school is running a thin roster, the safety math changes quickly. Players who would normally specialize on offense or defense find themselves playing both ways every game. Fatigue increases. Injury risk increases. And when someone does get hurt, there’s no depth to absorb the loss. Central Decatur’s forfeit in 2025 is a concrete example of that logic playing out in real time.
For the communities involved, these decisions aren’t made lightly. Football is deeply embedded in small-town Iowa culture. The Friday night game is a social event, a tradition, a point of community identity. Suspending or canceling a season isn’t just an athletic decision it affects the fabric of community life in ways that aren’t easily measured.
What the Schools Are Trying to Preserve
Exira-EHK’s framing of the 2026 decision is worth paying attention to. By moving to a JV-only schedule rather than canceling the program entirely, the school is explicitly trying to keep football alive for the future. The idea is that a JV program maintains the culture, develops younger players, and creates a foundation to return to varsity competition when or if roster numbers recover.
That’s a hopeful framing, and it may prove correct. But it depends on enrollment trends reversing or stabilizing in ways that aren’t guaranteed.
The cooperative approach taken by Highland and Lone Tree points toward another model: rather than each small school fighting to sustain its own program independently, combining resources to keep football viable for students across multiple communities. Cooperative programs require administrative agreement and logistical coordination, but they can be more sustainable than trying to field separate teams when neither school has enough players on its own.
Conclusion
When an Iowa high school cancels or suspends its football season, the specific circumstances vary but the underlying causes are consistent. Too few players, too much injury risk, and not enough incoming athletes to replace the ones who graduated.
Exira-EHK’s decision to suspend varsity football for 2026 is the most prominent example of a broader statewide reality facing small rural programs. Some schools will merge. Some will drop to JV-only schedules. Some may eventually have to step away from football entirely.
The communities involved didn’t fail football. They’re doing their best to navigate forced demographic decline, safety obligations, roster math that no amount of local effort can fully solve on its own. What happens next for these programs will depend on whether those trends can be reversed, and whether Iowa’s approach to small-school athletics adapts alongside them.
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