Holy Cross announced Monday evening that it is forfeiting its Week 1 opener against Lakeland, a high school football forfeit that landed differently than a box score will ever show. The Crusaders, a Class 1A program in Dunmore, Lackawanna County, are heading into the season with 19 players on the roster, and injuries in the two weeks before the opener had cut the number available to roughly 13. The program graduated 12 players from its 2025 roster, leaving a team that is young, thin, and focused on building something for the long run rather than chasing results that aren't yet within reach. Principal Ben Tolerico put it plainly: "With those low numbers and with the safety of our players as our main priority, we are unable to compete on Friday night against Lakeland."
That's the news. You already knew the shape of it the moment you saw the headline.
What you're here for is the feeling.
The Forfeit No One Talks About
There is a version of this story that writes itself in cold statistics: roster size, graduation losses, winless projections. Sports media does that version efficiently and without sentimentality. You can find it anywhere.
But for anyone who ever put on pads, who ever taped their wrists in a locker room that smelled like rubber and dried grass and someone's forgotten pregame meal — this story lands differently. It lands somewhere below the throat.
Because a team forfeiting Week 1 isn't really a story about losing. It's a story about showing up anyway — and about why Friday night football carries a weight that never fully leaves you.
Holy Cross didn't disband. They didn't cancel the season. Nineteen kids are still going to practice. They are still going to line up across from opponents who have deeper rosters, more experience, and the psychological advantage of having done this before. They are going to take the field in games that don't count in the standings, and they are going to play them anyway.
Every former player knows exactly what that decision costs. And exactly what it means to make it.
Nineteen Names on a Roster Sheet
Here is what 19 players actually looks like.
It means your offensive line might be a linebacker moonlighting. It means the kid who was a wide receiver in JV last year is now your starting safety, learning on the fly in front of actual crowds. It means the coaching staff is running two-a-days not to peak for October but to teach teenagers how to get in a three-point stance without falling over.
In my experience as a former player, the rosters that graduate a double-digit senior class in a single year face a particular kind of rebuild that goes beyond X's and O's. It's a confidence rebuild. A culture rebuild. A "we don't have anyone who remembers what winning feels like" rebuild.
Twelve seniors gone means twelve different players who knew the playbook, knew the calls, knew where to line up when things went sideways in the third quarter. Muscle memory doesn't transfer with a diploma.
And Holy Cross isn't an outlier: the participation crisis already forcing schools to cancel seasons outright is a reminder that the numbers problem reaches far beyond one locker room.
The statement after announcing the forfeit didn't talk about wins. Principal Ben Tolerico said there is no indication the situation will cost the program its season, and he expressed confidence that the injured players would return. This is a program that has been down this road before — Holy Cross cancelled its 2019 season with only 12 players and forfeited a Week 3 game against Mid Valley in 2022 — and it survived to build again. That's a leader who has done the math, looked his 19 kids in the eyes, and made a decision that prioritizes their development over a box score that would have been brutal regardless.
That's not giving up. That's the opposite of giving up.
Remember When Your Team Was That Team?
Every former player — and we mean every one — has a version of this memory somewhere, which is a large part of why high school sports still hit so hard years later.
Maybe it wasn't a forfeit. Maybe it was a blowout so bad at halftime that nobody spoke in the locker room. Maybe it was a season where you were 1-8 going into the last game and you still practiced Tuesday through Friday like the playoffs were on the line. Maybe it was a program that hadn't posted a winning record in years and somehow, inexplicably, you loved it anyway.
Because here's the thing about being on the short side of a depth chart: you find out who you are faster than anyone on a stacked roster ever does.
When there are only 19 of you, there's no hiding. There's no dressing room full of guys who will pick up the slack while you coast through a Tuesday practice. Every rep matters because every rep is yours. Every missed assignment gets noticed because there aren't enough people to blur responsibility.
Marcus T., 31, played three years for a small Catholic school in the Midwest that regularly suited up fewer than 25 players. "We lost by thirty most weeks," he said. "I played both ways every game. By senior year I could have listed six different positions on a college application. I wouldn't trade it for anything — I learned more football in three seasons than most guys learn in five on a big program."
That's the Holy Cross story, even if nobody is writing it that way yet.
What a Forfeit Week 1 Actually Teaches You
There is a school of thought in competitive athletics — popular in boardrooms and coaching clinics alike — that says you learn more from adversity than from success. That's usually said by someone comfortable enough that they don't have to test the theory personally.
The 19 kids at Holy Cross are testing it personally, right now, in real time.
Here is what this season is actually going to teach them:
- How to compete when the math is against you
- How to build a culture from the ground floor, not inherit one
- How to define success in terms that aren't printed in the standings
- How to show up on a Tuesday in October when you're 0-5 and nobody outside your program is watching
That fourth one is the rarest and most valuable lesson in sports. Anyone can show up when there's something to gain. The character-revealing moment is the Tuesday practice nobody sees.
Former players reading this are nodding. Not because they read it somewhere. Because they lived it — and because the grief that comes with games that never get played is a feeling most people only understand from the inside.
The Lakeland Side of This
It's worth spending a moment on Lakeland, because the forfeit affects them too — and not in the way you might assume.
Lakeland didn't simply take the forfeit as a win in the standings. The program secured a replacement Week 1 game against Wellsboro, a District 4 Class 3A school, for Saturday, August 29 — the day after the originally scheduled Friday, August 28 opener. Because that game came together, Lakeland does not carry the forfeit on its overall season record or its District 2 power rating. The two schools made it a two-year commitment; next year's Week 1 meeting moves to Wellsboro.
Holy Cross, meanwhile, is still assessed a loss on its District 2 ledger — a defeat it never got the chance to contest on the field. The Crusaders moved on to Week 2 against Riverside and Week 3 against Dunmore, doing what teams like this one always do: showing up the next week anyway.
But even for the team that found a replacement, something is quietly lost. Any player who has ever suited up for a game that didn't happen knows the feeling: you prepared for one opponent, one Friday night, one set of reads — and then you're handed a different game than the one you'd been staring at all week. There is no substitute for playing the game you actually lined up for.
Lakeland's coaching staff and players would almost certainly have preferred to line up across from the Crusaders and earn the result. That's the honest preference of competitors who prepare to compete. The replacement goes in the column, but the memory of the opener you were promised doesn't.
One of the quiet truths about high school sports is that what a forfeit feels like to the players who lived it never quite leaves the room, even for the team that moves on.
Building a Program vs. Running a Program
Holy Cross's situation highlights a distinction that matters in every sport at every level, and one that former players understand intuitively even if they never articulated it.
There is a difference between running a program and building one.
Running a program means managing what you have. Building a program means investing in what isn't there yet. The coach who chooses to forfeit Week 1 rather than throw 19 underprepared kids into a mismatch that could result in injuries or a psychologically damaging shellacking — that coach is building, not just running.
Rebuilding years are measured differently. The metric isn't wins. It's development rate. It's how many of those 19 kids are still in the program next fall. It's whether the sophomore who had to learn three positions this year becomes the team's most versatile asset by his senior season.
Anyone who played on a thin roster knows what happens when programs skip the rebuild and chase short-term respectability: the injuries pile up, the culture fractures because losing never gets easier without a framework for processing it, and the following year the roster is even thinner because the kids who experienced the worst of it quietly don't come back.
The Holy Cross staff is protecting against that outcome. And if you've watched enough high school football, you recognize the decision for what it is. Design your own custom football jerseys.
Your Jersey Is Still Out There Waiting
For every former player reading this — whether your team was the one with 19 kids or the one with 55 — the feeling this story triggers is the same.
You remember what it meant to wear that jersey. Not just the game-day version, but the identity of it. The way it told the world something about you that didn't need words. That feeling lives in the Saturday-morning memories former players carry and in the homecoming games that never quite leave you.
That feeling doesn't have an expiration date.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Holy Cross forfeit Week 1 instead of just playing the game?
Holy Cross forfeited its Week 1 game against Lakeland due to roster limitations: the Crusaders entered the season with only 19 players, many of whom had no varsity playing experience, and injuries had cut the number available to roughly 13. The decision reflects a program-building approach prioritizing player development and safety over absorbing a potentially damaging early loss with an underprepared group.
What happens to a high school football team when it forfeits a game?
A forfeited game is recorded as a loss in the standings for the forfeiting team and a win for the opposing team, unless the opposing team finds a replacement game, which is what happened here. Lakeland secured a Week 1 game against Wellsboro, so it does not carry the forfeit on its season record or District 2 power rating, while Holy Cross still takes the loss on its District 2 ledger. No game was played between the two original schools. The impact goes beyond the box score. Forfeits can affect playoff eligibility depending on state athletic association rules, and they carry a psychological weight for the program that must be managed by coaching staff. For programs in a rebuild year, a strategic forfeit is sometimes the most honest acknowledgment of where the team actually is.
How does a team rebuild after losing most of its senior class?
Rebuilding after a large senior class graduates typically involves a multi-year development cycle. Coaching staffs prioritize installing system fundamentals with younger players, building physical and tactical literacy at the JV and freshman levels, and developing a culture that can sustain competitive motivation even during losing stretches. Programs that rebuild successfully tend to be those that define success internally (development metrics, practice quality, retention rates) rather than purely by win-loss record during the transition years.
Is a 19-player varsity roster viable for a full high school football season?
Nineteen players is below the threshold most programs consider sustainable for a full varsity schedule, particularly in contact-heavy positions. Most state associations require a minimum number of eligible players to participate safely in a game, and with 19, a few injuries can push a roster to non-viable territory quickly. This is one of the practical reasons Holy Cross made the decision it did: the calculus isn't just competitive, it's also a player safety and program continuity question.
What does a forfeit season mean for the players who suit up anyway?
For the players who remain in the program through a forfeit or near-forfeit season, the experience tends to be formative in ways that don't show up in highlights. They play multiple positions, develop a broader technical understanding of the game, and build the psychological resilience that comes from competing without the cushion of a deep roster. College programs have long recognized the value of multi-position high school players, and those players almost always come from programs where depth forced versatility.