Every Wednesday during the regular season we will highlight the 8-Player Football game with a spotlight article on boundwisconsin.com. We'll look back at the action and big stories from the previous week, look ahead at the coming week's big match-ups, and select a Star of the Week.
8-Player coaches, please enter player stats on Bound Wisconsin so that we can continue having the necessary information to produce this weekly spotlight of your game, and feel free to send any news or information to us as well.
Looking Ahead
There are plenty of changes for 8-player football this season, though it doesn’t revolve around new programs in the division. The WIAA approved an expanded playoff for 8-player football, which will now see 32 teams make the postseason, though the requirement of a three-year enrollment average below 200 remains. That means some teams are still ineligible for the playoffs.
Speaking of the playoffs, there’s a new qualification system this year based on the Wisconsin Football Playoff Matrix, which will hopefully avoid the situation we saw last year where the WIAA made an error in its initial qualifying field and had to fix it later on. The WIAA originally had Gilman in the field, but an error in administering tiebreaker procedures resulted in the WIAA removing the Pirates and inserting Clayton instead.
With expanded playoffs, the season start date has moved up one week and now coincides with the start of 11-player contests.
Thursday Games
Oakfield and Elkhart Lake-Glenbeulah both qualified for the 16-team playoff field a year ago and will meet up in an early-season non-conference game.
While they weren’t quite at that level last year, Newman Catholic and Florence have appeared in state title games in the last few seasons and will meet up in Florence on Thursday night.
Friday Games
We get a huge North Central-East 8 Conference game right out of the gates, as defending state champion Owen-Withee, ranked second in our preseason rankings, will take on Gilman, our third-ranked squad. Last year Owen-Withee squeaked out a 24-22 win over the Pirates in the regular season.
Shell Lake and Bruce each narrowly missed the playoffs last year, with Bruce finishing a game ahead of the Lakers in the Northwoods-West Conference. The team kick off the 2025 year with a conference showdown.
Almond-Bancroft was a tri-champion of the Central Wisconsin-8 a year ago and enters the new year ranked seventh in our Bound Wisconsin Preseason Rankings. They open with a tough game against Abundant Life/St. Ambrose, who is not eligible for the playoffs in 8-player but had an excellent 2024 season, though they have to replace the dynamic passing duo of the Koon twins.
Travis Wilson serves as the Bound Wisconsin Manager. Wilson was selected as part of the Sports 40 Under 40 list by Coach & AD Magazine and the National High School Athletic Coaches Association for 2019. The Wisconsin Football Coaches Association (WFCA) named Travis the 2015 recipient of the Dave McClain Distinguished Service Award. He currently serves on the WFCA Executive Board and is a member of the Executive Board of the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association. A graduate of Richland Center High School and Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Travis was a three-sport athlete in high school (football, baseball, basketball), inducted to the Richland Center High School Hall of Fame in 2023, and currently resides in Reedsburg. You can follow him on Twitter at @travisBound or reach him at [email protected].