Down the hall from the coaches’ office at Butler football stadium, pads and helmets hang from thick hooks and sit stacked on tall metal shelves inside a cramped equipment room.

Much of the gear, left untouched in past seasons, is finally returning to action.

“There was a year I ran out of helmets,” Butler equipment manager Dylan Sebock said. “I would say in other years we did not run out of equipment. It was shoulder pads collecting dust.”

Butler’s roster numbers — and wins — have soared since the district left WPIAL football six years ago in search of competitive opponents and renewed confidence. The once-proud program went 7-3 last fall playing an independent schedule, its first winning season since 1997. Butler, the WPIAL’s third-largest school, has grown from 24 players in 2019 to more than 50 this season.

“The program would have been dissolved if we hadn’t left (the WPIAL),” said coach Eric Christy, in his 10th season at his alma mater. “It would have crumbled.”

Butler is not alone.

Despite a recent statewide surge in high school football participation — the highest since the 1980s — some WPIAL programs, big and small, have taken drastic steps to address low numbers and a lack of competitiveness.

Whether it means forfeiting games, pleading for mercy from opponents, or even leaving the WPIAL for easier, hand-picked schedules, these programs are trying to survive in a proud region with deep high school football roots.

The league needs to keep evolving too, Fox Chapel athletic director Mike O’Brien told NewsWorks Lab. Officials should continue exploring other options for increased competitiveness, he said.

“I graduated from a WPIAL school in the 1990s, and we’re still doing things the way we were 20-30 years ago,” O’Brien said. “I don’t know that that’s for the betterment, especially with how the times have changed.

“Today’s kids are different than they were 30 years ago. There’s no more, ‘Hey, just go get better. Go lift more weights.’ That’s not a reality. Kids want to find success in today’s world as quickly as possible.”

WPIAL executive director Vince Sortino said schools need to do what’s best for them.

The WPIAL creates its football conferences according to enrollment-based parameters provided by the PIAA, the state’s governing body. The enrollments establish a school’s classification, from Class 1A to Class 6A, and ensure schools compete against similarly sized programs.

“Whatever is best for the schools, they will make that choice,” Sortino said. “They are doing what’s best for them and their school. The league supports whatever choices they make.”

While Butler is beginning to turn things around, another big-school WPIAL program, Baldwin, has seen enough for now. The Class 5A school announced in February it was leaving WPIAL football for at least the next two seasons to play an independent schedule.

To “leave,” a school must inform the WPIAL it no longer wants to be included on the league schedule for a particular sport because, for instance, it plans to disband the program or create its own schedule. Requests must be made before each odd-year realignment, and teams that leave must stay out at least two years. They are not placed in a conference and cannot qualify for postseason play.

Baldwin has lost 29 games in a row and was outscored 558-74 last season, finishing with roughly 30 players. That’s a number of players more suited for a small Class 2A program rather than the WPIAL’s second-largest classification.

“Nobody wants to play on a losing team, but you have a losing team because nobody plays,” Baldwin junior lineman Dylan Kluczkowski said. “It’s just a constant circle.”

Baldwin school officials said safety concerns and the need to develop and build confidence prompted the move.

The Highlanders (1-5) opened their nine-game 2026 schedule Aug. 28 against Plum. They play at Butler (3-3) on Friday, Oct. 9.

“We’re glad we’re independent because we will actually have a chance against most teams,” Kluczkowski said. “Butler is a great example that we look at, seeing it happen. That really gives us hope.”

Other WPIAL programs are also reeling despite the popularity of high school football in Pennsylvania reaching its highest levels in nearly four decades.

Class A Rochester, an eight-time WPIAL champion, forfeited a game last season due to a lack of players. So did Springdale, which is 1-26 in the past three seasons, and Shady Side Academy, which has forfeited a game in four of the past 10 seasons.

Big schools aren’t immune. Fox Chapel and Baldwin faced criticism when administrators reached out to opponents before their games last season, seeking leniency. Fox Chapel asked Pine-Richland for a pregame mercy rule, using shorter quarters and a running game clock.

“I think it was handled poorly,” said Fox Chapel parent Gary Givens, whose son, Brady, is a senior running back/defensive back. “The kids are practicing all week, and you are putting them down and saying they have no hope. They have no faith in you. I don’t agree with it… That’s how you learn. It teaches you.”

O’Brien, the Fox Chapel athletic director, said he wanted to bring attention to the disparity among programs in western Pennsylvania.

“The No. 1 goal for us was to keep kids safe, and that’s still the goal,” O’Brien said, “and No. 2, to create a better product and a better experience for the kids, the coaches, the fans, the band, and everybody that’s involved with a high school football program. That’s the goal here.”

O’Brien shared a proposal he sent to the league last year asking for a seven-division alignment that places teams based on roster numbers and wins and losses rather than enrollment. The idea, which Butler’s Christy fully supports, was considered by the WPIAL football committee but was not implemented.

“You can’t do it for just a few schools when you are dealing with 120 football schools,” said Sortino, the WPIAL executive director since 2025, who previously served as Baldwin’s longtime athletic director. “You have to look at the whole picture.”

O’Brien said he wasn’t surprised the WPIAL stayed with the status quo but added his proposal was not just about Fox Chapel or any one school.

“I do think the league made a good collective effort to try to help fix some of the imbalance,” he said. “I don’t care if they use our proposal or not. I just want to see some type of meaningful competitiveness on a week-in and week-out basis — not just for us, but for every school.”

The struggles for competitiveness in Western Pennsylvania, once the cradle of American football, are more pronounced because small schools traditionally battle to maintain roster numbers — and WPIAL has many small schools.

Every odd-numbered year, the PIAA realigns its statewide classifications based on enrollment figures. For the 2026-27 two-year cycle, the PIAA divided 553 football schools into six classes, with between 88 and 98 schools in each.

The WPIAL is District 7, one of 12 geographic-based districts within the PIAA that it creates to support state championship tournaments. The WPIAL predates the PIAA but is now a part of the statewide association.

Based on the latest numbers, the WPIAL has 30 schools in Class 1A football. District 1 in suburban Philadelphia and District 3 in and around Harrisburg each have just three such schools.

Of the 11 smallest schools in the state, with fewer than 75 boys, six are in the WPIAL.

But small enrollments don’t always translate to tiny win totals.

Avella, the smallest school in WPIAL football with 61 boys in grades 9-11, went 6-5 and made the playoffs last season despite having only 22 players.

Greensburg Central Catholic, the second-smallest school with 64 boys, won five games and reached the WPIAL playoffs with 20 players.

“It’s up to the schools,” the WPIAL’s Sortino said. “Numbers don’t always equate to success, as we know. Your coaching staff and the support of your district have a lot to do with it.”

Four schools returned to the WPIAL this fall after playing independent schedules in recent seasons to varying degrees of success.

A school that leaves for two years can ask the WPIAL to provide them with a league-generated schedule, signaling their return — or they can say they don’t want a schedule and remain independent.

Albert Gallatin, a former WPIAL football laughingstock that went independent in 2019 after going 9-82 in the previous decade, was 10-0 last season. Meanwhile, Brownsville, Connellsville and Uniontown went a combined 4-24.

Carrick, which plays in Pittsburgh’s separate City League, also played an independent schedule in past seasons but has returned to City League play this fall.

Brownsville second-year coach Cody Castor said numbers in the younger grades are encouraging, and people feel an excitement about returning to the WPIAL. Brownsville is 1-52 in its past 53 games and finished last season with 17 players.

“I think playing non-local schools had the kids disinterested,” Castor said. “Being back in the WPIAL has increased the participation as well as the level of competitiveness in our program.”

With those four programs back in the fold, Baldwin and Butler are the only WPIAL schools playing independent schedules this fall. Their seasons will end in late October regardless of wins and losses.

Christy said Butler expects to return to the WPIAL for the 2028-29 alignment.

“If we can consistently win, we’re ready,” Christy said. “The WPIAL has been very clear to us: ‘You come back, you are playing 6A teams.’ The goal is to get back and play where we are supposed to be. But we can’t be hurt and have no players and just get annihilated every game, because I know where that goes.”

One argument against any WPIAL or PIAA intervention into competitive balance is high school athletics can provide lifelong benefits despite what happens on Friday nights.

Ray Ventrone played at Chartiers Valley from 1997-2000. His teams went 4-25 his final three years, including 0-9 and 1-9 seasons.

Ventrone went on to play eight seasons in the NFL, won a Super Bowl as an assistant with the 2017 New England Patriots and is now special teams coach for this year’s championship favorite Los Angeles Rams.

“Obviously, you are playing sports to compete and to win,” Ventrone said. “But I think there is more than just winning when it comes to high school football… There is going to be adversity. It’s how you bounce back and respond, and how you get better from it. That holds true in the real world as well.”

NewsWorks Lab is a public-benefit company owned by Trib Total Media to produce high-impact, accountability journalism as a free, open-source resource. You may find more information at NewsWorksLab.com.

John Grupp and Sophia Lucente are contributors to NewsWorks Lab.