ALPHARETTA, Ga. — A youth football league is at risk of shutting down after the City of Alpharetta said it was looking into not renewing the league’s contract.
The city and the North Atlanta Football League, or NAFL, met for the first time Wednesday morning to talk about potential solutions.
“The city of Alpharetta has noticed us that we’re not going to have access to the North Park football facilities going forward, and it’s really kind of a death nail for the league,” said Rich Dennis who sits on NAFL’s board and is a NAFL parent.
The non-profit league is an outlet for football players and cheerleaders in grades K-5.
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“This program teaches discipline, and teamwork, and friendships,” Dennis said.
NAFL supports around 700 athletes, but the city says not enough of them live in Alpharetta.
“Over several years now, we’ve had some participation requirements that just haven’t been met by the current provider, and that forced us to look into other options,” Alpharetta City Manager Chris Lagerbloom told Channel 2′s Eryn Rogers.
Lagerbloom said the contract with the league states participation numbers are supposed to be 50/50; however, currently, just under 30 percent of students live in Alpharetta.
“Getting more Alpharetta taxpayers and their kids into the program is the goal of everyone,” Dennis said.
Dennis said NAFL wants to try marketing the league differently and setting goals for participation, but he said there are difficulties.
“The demographics in Alpharetta are different,” Dennis said. “You have a lot more kids that play different sports. Football is a contact sport and getting kids involved in it at a younger age is sometimes a challenge, but I think we can do it if we just work together with the city.”
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He also said there’s a shortage of fields in the area.
“The kids need places to play, and we’re so limited, and we have such limited times for practice that if you take away just these facilities we have here, NAFL won’t have a place for these kids to practice and play our games at,” Dennis said.
He said that could end the league and be detrimental to the future of football in the area, especially with high school teams like Milton that just won the state championship.
“The last thing you want to do is cut out the pipeline of the players,” Dennis said.
The city says they’re open to working with NAFL, but they are keeping their options open.
“We may go through this process and find out we just need to form a different relationship with the current provider, or we may find out we need to do it a different way,” Lagerbloom said.
The city is set to meet with league representatives again on Tuesday.
The city said they would like to make their decision quickly.
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