FOXBURG — A-C Valley football is alive and well — for now.

Despite losing their 17-year co-op with Cranberry High School — which will send its football players to Oil City this fall — the Falcons will field a varsity team in 2012.

“We should be good for the next two years, just using our own kids,” A-C Valley head coach Chris McNany said. “After that, we may have to reassess the situation and look for another co-op.

“Our student population is dwindling in this district. As soon as three or four years down the road, the number of available football players could be an issue. In our elementary school, there are very few boys in a lot of those classes.”

McNany said there are only 19 total kids in his son's kindergarten class.

A-C Valley athletic director Anita Orton said the school will not seek a co-op for at least two years.

“After that, we may look around,” she said. “Our numbers are OK for now. Two or three years from now, I imagine there will be a few other schools interested in a co-op situation.”

A-C Valley had 24 players on its high school football roster in 2011. The school does not have a junior varsity or freshman team. There were approximately 22 players on the junior high team, which is comprised of eighth and ninth-graders.

McNany has coached at A-C Valley for three years. He had four players from Cranberry in 2009 and 2010 and only two last year.

“We're only graduating three seniors from last year's team,” he said. “Losing the two Cranberry players, and the fact we have 10 freshmen moving up, should give us 28 or 29 varsity players next year.”

A-C Valley has not had a winning football season since going 7-4 in 1999. The Falcons snapped a 46-game losing streak late in the 2010 season and finished 2-7 last year.

The school board considered the possibility of playing strictly a junior varsity schedule this year, but McNany said such a move “would essentially kill the program.”

He also saw no need for it.

“We've got 19 of 22 starters coming back and for the first time since I've been here, we have our starting quarterback returning,” McNany said. “We're definitely becoming more competitive.

“A number of years ago, about 50 percent of A-C Valley's roster was comprised of Cranberry kids. We had winning teams through those years and there was a lot of interest.

“If you look at it now ... Those kids have a half-hour bus ride down here and another half-hour ride home every night. To invest all of that time to play for a losing team ... Those numbers dropped,” he pointed out.

Orton said the athletic director's position is not involved in any decision about whether to field only a junior varsity team.

“Whatever they (school board) would have told me, I'd run with it either way,” she said.

The Cranberry co-op began at A-C Valley with McNany's senior year with the Falcons in 1995. That team won the District 9 championship.

“We had five Cranberry kids on that team,” McNany said. “As the program kept winning, those numbers kept growing.

“We had a lot of coaching turnover after that. Now, finally, we're in recovery mode.”

McNany is A-C Valley's sixth head coach since 2000.