July 25, 2026 • 10:40 PM ET
The forgotten era of NCHSAA 8-man football: Could history repeat?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- •North Carolina first experimented with eight-man high school football in the 1940s as smaller schools searched for an alternative to six-man and traditional 11-man football.
- •The NCHSAA sanctioned eight-man football in 1959, with Bath defeating Carthage 20-13 in the association’s first eight-man state championship game.
- •The NCHSAA crowned eight-man champions for only six seasons, ending the championship after 1964 as most participating schools transitioned to 11-man football.
- •As some schools again struggle with declining roster sizes, eight-man football could provide more students an opportunity to play—but the NCHSAA currently does not offer a championship.
With the first NCHSAA eight-man football championship tied late in the fourth quarter, no one seemed certain how a winner would be determined. One official reportedly suggested comparing total yardage. There was just one problem: no one knew whether anyone had been keeping it. Bath made the confusion irrelevant. Tommy Taylor scored on an eight-yard run with 1:32 remaining, giving Bath a 20–13 victory over Carthage in 1959 and making the Pirates North Carolina’s first sanctioned eight-man football champions. After declining for much of the previous decade, national participation in 11-player high school football has rebounded in recent years. But that recovery has not eliminated the roster problems facing some individual schools, especially smaller ones.
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