SLO County high school is skipping Friday night football games this fall. Here’s why

The scarcity of sufficient staff to fill workplace positions continues to be a profoundly challenging issue.

But San Luis Obispo County hotels, restaurants and retail shops aren’t alone in experiencing a dearth of employees. High school football officials are also in extremely short supply.

For that reason, traditional Friday night football games in Cambria’s Coast Union High School appear to be a thing of the past.

“There will not be enough officials to facilitate Friday night games for us” in the fall, Coast Union head football coach and athletic director Andrew Crosby explained in an email interview.

“We will have to play on Thursdays and Saturdays again.”

The switch of game days “doesn’t necessarily make my job more difficult,” Crosby said, “(but) it disappoints me that our school will not have Friday night football or homecoming on a Friday night.”

“I am still working on that,” he added.

It’s not the first time the San Luis Obispo County high school has been forced to change its football game schedule.

Coast Union High School’s eight-man football schedule for 2021 originally had all four home games played on Friday nights.

However, because of staffing shortages for high school football officials, the California Interscholastic Federation moved four Bronco home games from Friday nights to Saturday nights.

But only eight-man football teams’ schedules were switched that season. Eleven-man football teams’ schedules remained on Friday nights.

Coast Union’s 2022 football season begins with a home game against Laguna Blanca the first week in September.

This story was originally published May 20, 2022 at 1:30 PM.