Facing a numbers fight
By GAYLE WEBER
HOXIE -- Injuries and illnesses have taken their toll on the Hoxie High School football team this season.
So much so that only 14 players suited up for Friday's game against St. Francis, a team that listed more than 40 players on its roster. There were just as many Hoxie players on the sidelines wearing jeans Friday night as there were players in pads.
"It's hard because we never can scrimmage," Hoxie coach Lance Baar said. "This week, it's been even harder. ... This week, we had 13 guys most of the time. That's hardly enough to make one team. We have to get real creative with practice."
Baar is in his first year of teaching and coaching, and players said the new coach has brought a new style to the football field.
"It's just a general change of attitude, and we're having more fun," junior lineman Dillon Salmans said.
Despite Friday's loss to St. Francis, 51-13, Hoxie still is trying to reach the goals it set as a team earlier this season.
"Just to get better every game. Never quit," Baar said.
Steady decline
Hoxie won the Class 3A girls' basketball title in 1993, a school year in which 511 students were enrolled in the only school district in Sheridan County. Since then, enrollment has been on a steady decline.
There hasn't been a concentrated reason for the decline -- no major employers have left town -- but this year's enrollment is 338 students. The school has fallen to 1A ranks.
High school principal Gary Johnson said the district really started noticing the decline in the 2002-03 school year and began to make reductions.
The district moved junior high students into the high school building and reduced its administrators by one. Hoxie also now has only one lunchroom in the district.
"I think some of those decisions, even though they were very hard at the time, are paying dividends now," Johnson said.
And Johnson said he is proud of the district's ability to maintain programs through the years of declining enrollment and state funding.
"Of course our numbers are down in those programs, but we still have all the athletics we've offered in the past, the music department, debate and forensics (and) scholars bowl," Johnson said.
High school business teacher Sueanne Hill said students have noticed the declining numbers, especially when it comes to school projects.
"I do junior magazine sales, and they used to have to do 17," Hill said. "Now they have to do 36. Last year, I think they had to sell 48."
This year's senior class, at 13 students, is the smallest in the history of Hoxie High School.
Even this year's junior class is only 16 students.
But Johnson said he thinks enrollments have leveled off, and he remains hopeful about the district's future with 31 students enrolled in kindergarten this year.
Numbers game
Low numbers -- coupled with the small junior and senior classes this year -- forced the Hoxie school district to opt to play eight-man football next year.
It's a change Johnson never imagined when he became principal at Hoxie 15 years ago, but it's something the community has come to grips with in the last few years.
"Even for Hoxie, at its height in football, when we were having a lot of success, our numbers weren't large," Johnson said. "We might start the season with 30."
This year, the season started with 20 players. And junior Dylan Bainter said there might not be any more than that next year.
"We only have three or four senior football players this year, and we'll lose them. But we only have three coming in next year as freshmen," Bainter said.
Baar, who played six-man football in high school in Colorado, said he thought the change would help his team.
"We'll be more competitive in practice and in games," Baar said. "There will be more competition for positions as well."
Hoxie's junior high team, which is 4-2 this year, already has played an eight-man game. Bainter said the junior varsity team played an eight-man game last year against Quinter, and although it's a different experience, he's excited about the switch.
"With small numbers, it's going to help us a lot," Bainter said.
Johnson said he didn't expect Hoxie to be able to compete at the 11-man or 2A level again, based on enrollment trends.
"Something would have to change within the community to bring people in to make it so that we could go back to 11-man," Johnson said.
Downtown
Fewer students in the schools and on the football field is the result of fewer young families staying in the community.
It's something downtown business owners see, and they consider it a sign of the times.
"I can remember when I was a kid, Saturday night was the biggest night in town," said Darel Gilliland. "The streets were full of people. That part's all gone."
Gilliland has operated Great Plains Auto and Hardware for 45 years in Hoxie. And he's not the only long-standing business owner downtown.
Jerome Heim opened Heim Appliance and Furniture in 1956.
"We evidently treated the people right because we're still here," Jerome Heim said.
Both Heim and Gilliland have brought their sons on board to eventually take over the businesses, and Gilliland even persuaded a grandson to return to Hoxie to work in the business.
Down the street, Dave Mahanna is a third-generation pharmacist in Hoxie.
"I'm just giving back to the community," Mahanna said. "I grew up knowing all these people."
Inside Mahanna Pharmacy is an old-fashioned soda fountain -- a popular stop for almost every age group.
"A little bit of everybody -- kids, coffee ladies," Mahanna said.
Ed Heim, salesman at Hoxie Implement, said his community has potential, but it gets harder with smaller classes and fewer people in town.
"You have to have people to keep businesses, but you have to have businesses to keep people," Ed Heim said. "It's a two-way street."
Change of pace
For T.J. Redmon, owner of The Hitchin' Post Bar and Grill, Hoxie offers a slower pace than what he was used to while living in Illinois.
"You don't know how claustrophobic you are until you move out here," Redmon said. "You go up to a stop sign, and if you wait on two cars, you're mad."
Northwest Kansas is a place in which Keith Caldwell never imagined settling down when he was younger. His wife originally was from Hoxie, but they tried out the big city life before coming back to raise their family in her hometown.
"I think about retiring and maybe moving closer to the children," Caldwell, senior vice president at First State Bank, said. "But when it gets right down to making that decision, I don't know if I could leave town."
Vickie Deines, a retired teacher, agrees after visiting one of her children in Washington recently.
"There's days that you think there'd be a better place to be, but I don't know where it would be," Deines said.
Wellness center
Open for a little more than a month, the Sheridan County Wellness Center already is exceeding the expectations of those who helped it become a reality over the last year.
The wellness center, including fitness equipment and space for exercise classes, opened Sept. 8 in the basement of Sheridan County Health Complex with more than 100 memberships. That number has continued to grow.
"There's just nowhere for anybody to work out unless they went to the weight room at the high school," said Cheryl Schwarz, one of the committee members who spearheaded the project. "We had a lot of older ladies who were walking on cement at our 4-H building."
The committee raised money and received grants totaling $60,000 to be able to create the wellness center. As a result, yearly membership at the center is $25 per family and $15 for individuals.
"We did it that way because we want it to be affordable and accessible to everyone," committee member Leanna Sloan said.
The center is open from 5:45 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, and Sloan said there's almost always someone there.
"I think the neatest thing about it is when I go in, there's anywhere from junior high kids up to 90-year-old people in there at any given time," Schwarz said.
The center, although in the hospital's basement, is handicap accessible and a new committee has taken over the oversight of the facility. More equipment could be added at patrons' requests. But for now, Sloan and Schwarz are happy with the way things are going.
"They just posted a sign that there's an aerobics class starting," Schwarz said.
Fair time
One week a year in Sheridan County is about coming together.
The Sheridan County Fair and its home-owned carnival are a sense of pride in the community.
"The whole community volunteers whether it's organizations, businesses or individuals," said Doug Heim with Heim Appliance and Furniture.
Heim's wife, Hayley, said the community-run carnival is one of those places she doesn't have to worry about her children. She can drop them off and know people are looking out for them.
"When they run out of tickets, they come back," Hayley Heim said with a laugh.
Raymie Mahanna, co-owner of Mahanna Pharmacy, said Hoxie tends to build on certain activities to enhance its image, and one of those is definitely the carnival.
"They just keep breaking records," Raymie Mahanna said. "It brings a lot of people in."
Fair week has become a popular time for class reunions and a good time to catch up with family.
"There's actually a lot of people -- that's when they do their vacations," Doug Heim said. "They come back to see family."
The holidays
When Karen Gilliland got tired of hauling Christmas merchandise back and forth from her husband's hardware store each year, she and Deines decided to open The Holiday Shop.
"We didn't have much to start with," Karen Gilliland said. "But it's kind of gone crazy."
In the past, the store has been focused on Christmas during the winter and garden decorations in the summer. This is the first year the retired teachers have put out Halloween and fall decorations.
The store is open most days, and if no one's there, Gilliland said, most people know to go across the street to her husband's hardware store to find somebody to open it up.
"We've talked about, 'We can't do this forever,' " Deines said. "But people have come to expect it."
Deines said the store is fun, especially when it comes to handling the Christmas merchandise long before the Christmas season actually arrives.
"The problem is second-guessing what really is going to sell," Deines said.
The future
Sixth-graders Jake and Colin Heim and Dayde Mader and fourth-grader Eric Thummel, all part of the Hoxie Cougars traveling football team, spent Friday afternoon slurping shakes at the fountain inside Mahanna Pharmacy before taking off on their bikes on a cruise through town.
The Cougars were set to take on Plainville on Saturday and were excited to see the high school team in action Friday.
"They're better than they were last year, and they're getting better," Colin Heim said.
When the district switches to eight-man football next year, Colin's cousin, Jake Heim, knows it will be different.
"We probably won't get to play that much next year because they're going eight-man," Jake Heim said.
But will Hoxie be a good team because of the switch, especially when the Cougars become high school Indians?
"Oh, yeah," Jake Heim said.