BUTLER TWP — Seventh-grade football is coming to Butler — and the Butler Area Midget Football League championship game is leaving.

A meeting of BAMFL officials Saturday finalized the league’s transformation for 2013. The BAMFL will enter three travel league teams into the Allegheny Valley League and will use 12 as the eldest age eligible to play.

That means Saturday’s BAMFL championship game between Meridian and Center Township at Art Bernardi Stadium will be the last in the league’s 64-year history.

“This will be the last time we’ll be able to put that show on,” BAMFL president Bob Greaves said.

Numbers forced the league to make this move. The BAMFL had 600 players in 2005. This year, including flag football, it has 300 players.

“It’s a very difficult decision, but the numbers dictated this move,” Greaves said. “A lot of people are excited about it, a lot of people aren’t.”

The Butler Athletic Committee — chaired by school board president Don Pringle — had a meeting with BAMFL and Lil’ Tornado officials, Butler athletic director Bill Mylan and high school head coach Clyde Conti in February.

“We were brainstorming ways to make the Butler football program better and the idea of adding a second junior high team was discussed,” Pringle said.

“This is the biggest move for Butler football in 25 years. It’s an opportunity for kids to enter the Butler football program and actively play two years at the junior high level.”

The school board recently voted 9-0 to fund the formation of a seventh-grade team “for the increased influx of student athletes to the program,” Pringle said.

Conti said where a football player is playing isn’t as important as the fact he is playing somewhere.

“Kids develop at different stages,” Conti said. “I’ve coached quality football players who never played midget ball.

“You have to keep kids playing to keep them interested. That’s the main thing.”

There are 60 sixth-graders playing in the BAMFL this year. All but 12 of them will be young enough to stay in the league’s junior varsity program as seventh-graders next fall.

“Those kids will have their choice where they want to play, for the seventh-grade team or with our league,” Greaves said. “We just don’t want to see any kid who wants to play not have a place to play.”

In a released statement, Pringle described the BAMFL as “a mainstay for parents, grandparents and children for over 60 years. They have fed the varsity program with athletes and it has been successful.

“I laud them for their most recent vote to bolster the Butler High school Football program by merging their seventh and eighth grade players into the BHS program for the fall of 2013,” he added.

Greaves said the timing of the move is good because of the progress the high school varsity program has made this year.

“My nephew played for Clyde Conti,” Greaves said. “I know what kind of coach he is. It’s important to maintain consistency in leadership up there. I hope he sticks around.

“I’d like to see two ninth-grade teams up there. That would have a tremendous impact.”

The seventh-grade team will prevent many Butler Junior High football players from sitting the bench.

“I like the idea of kids playing,” Conti said. “Run the same plays, use the same schemes, follow the same weight program and teach fundamentals.

“Stay consistent all the way through and you build a program.”