After a season that saw the football team battle dwindling numbers, Lyle-Pacelli is hoping it will still be playing football next fall – in some form, at least.

The program recently held a meeting with players and parents to discuss the future of football. As it stands, the football program has come up with a few options — move on with varsity football with the hopes of having enough players come out, switching to just a JV team until numbers increase, stopping the football program altogether, or finding another school to co-op with.

Lyle principal and athletic director Jamie Goebel said that he’s hoping numbers will increase and he felt the Athletics had good support this past fall, where LP went 0-8 overall in the regular season and it had to forfeit its playoff game.

“I’m fairly confident that we’ll have a JV team, we’ll have to see what the varsity numbers look like,” Goebel said. “We know there’s strong support from our community for all of our sports, we’ve just fallen on hard times with recruiting and a lot of turnover in coaches.”

LP will hold another program meeting in the near future and Goebel is hoping to have a decision on what the program will do in a timely matter to help LP’s opponents with their schedules. He said he was left optimistic after the recent meeting.

“We’re very proud with the group that showed up,” Goebel said. “We want to encourage kids to try football and be part of the legacy of the group to bring football back.”