New London forced to forfeit

NEW LONDON — The New London football team will be have to forfeit this week’s football game against No. 5 Central City.

The Tigers released a statement on Tuesday, saying a lack of numbers due to injuries suffered against Iowa Valley last week have forced New London out of competition.

The New London School District released the following statement.

“We regretfully want to inform you that we will forfeit this week’s home high school football game. At the conclusion of last week’s game versus Iowa Valley, we were down to twelve healthy players after suffering three more injuries. Weekly we must evaluate our team’s ability to compete, but also stay healthy.

Most of the injuries that have occurred this year have not been related to any malicious acts, but rather the physicalness of the sport. In some cases, they have been freak injuries that rarely happen, but we have unfortunately been plagued with this season.

Our intent is to resume competition next week as we travel to HLV. Our reasoning behind why we would play next week is that we are confident that three injured players would be able to return to competition. However, this year the IHSAA requires any team/school that forfeits a game to have a meeting with their staff and show how and why they should be allowed to play the following week after a forfeit. We will hold this meeting with the IHSAA on Monday at 10 a.m.

Following the meeting we will release a statement in regards to the decisions that come from that meeting. Again, we will advocate to finish the season knowing we will have three players returning to the active roster next week.”

Although the Tigers are scheduled to go back on the road to play HLV, New London does have two more home games scheduled, as they are set to host WACO on Sept. 29, and Tri-County on Oct. 6.