For the first time in more than 40 years, the Watertown Red and Black semipro football team is joining a new league for the upcoming season.
The Red and Black will not play in the Empire Football League this year due to uncertainty over the number of teams participating, as confirmed by coach George Ashcraft on Wednesday.
Watertown will instead compete in the World Football Federation, a league based on the east coast that features more than 20 regional teams and stretches as far as South Carolina.
The Syracuse, Glens Falls and Sussex franchises that have competed against Watertown in the EFL in recent years also made the jump to join the WFF this week after word spread that the Seaway Valley Venom was down to about 12 players, thus putting the Venom’s season in serious doubt and along with it, the EFL schedule in flux.
In addition to Seaway Valley and the four defecting teams, Plattsburgh was the only other team scheduled to compete in the EFL this summer. The league season was set to begin July 8.
“We moved forward because we can’t wait another two or three weeks,” Ashcraft said of his team’s decision. “We would have been left with three or even two teams, and I only did what was logical. We’re going to continue to play football.”
Ashcraft said that the Red and Black’s scheduled home and away games against Sussex, Glens Falls, and Syracuse would remain unchanged, including Watertown’s July 8 season opener at Glens Falls.
Watertown has already added an additional pair of games against the CNY Wildcats, a WFF franchise that formerly competed as the Mohawk Valley Titans in the EFL.
Ashcraft, entering his 27th season as a Red and Black coach, said he was expecting to hear from WFF officials by week’s end regarding the other two games to complete the team’s 10-game schedule.
“The distance is basically the same and it’s not going to be a big deal for us,” Ashcraft said. “We’re going to make it work where we have a 10-game schedule, and I’m telling you, this team, we have 50-plus football players and we’re practicing. We’re going to be OK and we look forward to playing a game.”
Ashcraft said the Red and Black organization explored the possibility of joining the Northeastern Football Alliance, which contains the Carthage Revolution and several other teams in and around the state, but ultimately balked because they wouldn’t be eligible for that league’s postseason.
“No matter where it takes you or what you got to do, that’s the one commitment you always have as a coach and that’s what the ultimate goal always is, to be in that championship and win it,” Ashcraft said.
The Red and Black has been a cornerstone of the EFL since 1975, joining the league six years after its inception. Watertown won the EFL title in 1980 and 2009, and has played in several other championship games, most recently losing to Syracuse in 2015.
The EFL fell into a similar position around this time in 2014 when the Syracuse Shock and Vermont Ice Storm ceased operations for the season in early June and the league’s other four teams were left playing a reduced six-game schedule against each other. Ashcraft said that management from each team agreed at that time that the league would take a year of absence if a similar situation were to play out.
Ashcraft said he was unsure of the EFL’s plan for the upcoming season and could not confirm whether the league plans to take a year off until he spoke with longtime commissioner Dave Burch.