The Windham Bombers’ football team will look a little different over the next two years, as Windham has agreed to a two-year contract to have its football team compete in the Northern 8 Conference, an 8-on-8 football league spanning from Ohio to Pennsylvania.
“Sometimes change is necessary, and we felt like the time was now and it is adapt and survive,” Coach Jake Eye told The Weekly Villager on Jan. 9. “You just have to do what is best for your kids and your players and ultimately in the end we felt like that this was a good move for us. With our declining numbers, we felt that it was a change that was necessary for the short term.”
Beginning in the 2026 season, the Bombers will compete in a 10-team league comprised of other small-school programs including Chalker, Cardinal Stritch, Danbury, Holgate, Sebring McKinley, St. Joseph Central Catholic, St. Mary Central Catholic, Stryker and Kennedy Catholic which hails from Hermitage, PA.
The Bombers will still play a 10-week schedule but will only face teams in the Northern 8 Conference. With only nine other teams in the Conference, Eye said that the Bombers will have either a bye week, play an 11-on-11 game, or face one of their new conference rivals twice. In 8-on-8 football, there will only be four offensive linemen, no tight end and one less wide receiver on the field.
The Northern 8 Conference will also have a postseason with the top four teams in the Conference to automatically advance to a four-team playoff bracket, so the Bombers will have plenty to play for.
“It gives you something to play for and ultimately that is something that you want,” the six-year coach said. “You want something to play for and want the games to have meaning. Just because we are playing eight-man football does not mean there is no meaning in this. It is not a D-league, it has its own sanctions, it has its own set of rules, and we are hoping that down the road that OHSAA will recognize it and sanction it as an OHSAA event.”
According to Eye, conversations about moving the Bombers to the Northern 8 Conference occurred before the beginning of the 2024 season, which saw Windham post a 10-2 record and advance to the second round of the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division VII Region 25 postseason.
Even after that historic season, Eye said that talks still began between himself, Superintendent Michael Dobran, Athletic Director Dougle Hankins and Principal Zack Burns about the football team joining a smaller conference.
He added that although the football roster size had been consistent and still projected to have the same numbers for the next few years, Windham’s expected roster size equaled half of the number of boys attending Windham High School.
“When you look at our male enrollment, we have 60-some boys and 30 of them are playing football,” he noted. “That is 50% of your high school population and that is unheard of at most schools so that weighed heavily in our decision and ultimately we just felt like it was in our best interest for the kids.”
Although the Bombers are entering a new league that features a faster pace of football, Eye emphasized that the Northern 8 Conference still included similar concepts to those in the 11-on-11 football games played in every other conference across the State of Ohio.
In addition to that, Eye said that from a safety perspective, playing 8-on-8 allowed the Bombers to not have to rely on two-way football players as heavily as they have had to in the past several years.
“Three or four years ago we were finishing games with 12 or 13 kids, sometimes with 11,” he added. “From a safety standpoint, you are going to allow kids to develop more before you throw them out there.”
By playing 8-on-8, Eye said that players not only get more time to develop before being thrust into action, but it also prevents underclassmen from being sent onto the gridiron earlier than they should.
As far as the Bombers are concerned, Eye said that the players are embracing this new chapter of Windham football.
“When we talked to them, they were excited about it,” he said. “We played an eight-man game about five or six years ago with Matthews and I remember that night very vividly. It was a lot of fun. It was different but the same concepts obviously, it is not much different than 11-man, but it was a much faster game.”
