PROSPECT — Prospect’s youth football program may be facing the end of an era.

If so, it ended with a bang.

Prospect won the ABC League’s Senior Division championship this year with a 20-2 victory over previously unbeaten Brookville in the title game recently.

The Chiefs’ roster had 18 players on it, with nearly half of them coming from Butler.

“This will be the last year we can pull in Butler kids because of ABC League rules,” Prospect coach Mike Adachi said. “That’s going to hurt our overall numbers.”

Players are not permitted to play for an ABC league team if their community has its own youth program at that age. The ABC League begins with the age 5-6 division. Butler had no such age group until the Lil’ Tornadoes formed four years ago.

If a player from Butler was already in the Prospect program at the time the Lil’ Tornadoes formed, he was permitted to stay there.

“That grandfather clause is about to run out on us,” Adachi admitted.

Adachi coached this edition of Prospect Senior Division players for the past four years. During that time, the team won 33 games, lost five, won the Junior Division title in 2010 and the Senior League crown this year.

The team scored 638 points and allowed only 40 over the past four years. This year, the Chiefs scored 252 points and allowed 18 during the regular season.

All 18 were scored by Brookville in an 18-0 loss — Prospect’s lone loss all season. The Chiefs avenged that defeat in the Senior Division’s Super Bowl.

“We probably blew Brookville up too much in telling our kids about them before that first game,” Prospect coach Rich Bowser said. “We told our kids they were big and bad — and they were. But our kids were a little apprehensive and timid in that game as a result.”

While Prospect only had 18 players, other squads in the 15-team circuit has 28 to 35 players each.

“Our kids had tremendous football I.Q.,” Bowser, himself a former Prospect quarterback, said. “They had a passion and commitment to win like no team I’ve ever seen at that age.”

Adachi agreed.

“Unbelievable heart,” he said. “That team couldn’t stand to lose. They hated losing more than they liked winning.”

Adachi had coached youth football in Seattle, Wash., before coming to the Butler area in 2005. Prospect’s organization had never won a league championship and was 0-13 in title games prior to his arrival.

Prospect has won five Super Bowls in as many appearances since.

“Through fundraising, concession stand, 50-50 drawings, etc., we raise $25,000 to $27,000 each year to pump into this program,” Adachi said. “We’re one of two teams in the league to have its own field, its own locker room.

“Losing the Butler kids will make it harder for us to deal with injuries, but we’ll work hard to keep this thing going.”

Bowser said dealing with low numbers is nothing new in Prospect.

“Back when I played in the 1980s, we had 12 to 14 players on the team and did OK,” he said. “We’ll just keep trying to get as many kids as we can in the Prospect area to play football.”