Odn the evening of Sept. 12, 2025, Dougherty Valley High School cancelled the remainder of their East Bay Athletic League games for the rest of the season, effectively eliminating two future games versus Livermore and Granada, as well the rivalry game against Dublin.
Before the season began, Dougherty was already at a disadvantage. In April of 2025, Gwangee Pittman was hired to fill the position of head coach at Dougherty Valley for the foreseeable future. Coach Pittman previously coached across the Bay Area after playing for Utah State University. This late coaching hire led to a lack of offseason preparation for the upcoming fall.
“We didn’t start until the end of April. We missed all that time,” Pittman expressed. “Without those three months, we missed training and conditioning for the development of their bodies, bodies physically prepared to make it through a football season.”
Along with the shortage of offseason practice, numerous players were injured across both levels of the DV football program, forcing team leadership to consolidate the JV and varsity teams. In comparison to other teams in EBAL, Dougherty’s teams had a severe drought of players, which makes engaging dangerous for the players who remain on the field, according to Assistant Principal Bob Spain.
“In our first two games [of the season], we only had 19 players on JV and 24 on varsity, not even 45 students in the entire program,” Spain explained. “With all the injuries that occurred, we have about 28 healthy players in the entire program. If I were to compare it to schools such as Foothill, Dublin, they have triple our numbers.”
As explained by Spain, the school has been unable to maximize overall engagement in the football program, even with the rise in athletic participation at DVHS. Some solutions presented were to partner with the community to make football more accessible and improve marketing throughout the Dougherty Valley area.
“American tackle football is not as culturally embraced in our community as it is in others nearby, and that’s fine,” Spain said. “But we have not done a great job of marketing it to our community.”
Pittman recounted that the team as a whole was given input on whether to finish off the last three non-league games, regardless of the decision to pull out of the EBAL events.
“We informed the team of the decision and gave them an opportunity to meet as a team to [decide whether to] continue or just call [the season off],” Pittman remarked. “As a player-driven decision, we decided to go forward against Kennedy, Fremont and Oakland.”
However, the impact of the cancellation of the EBAL games was widely felt at DV, particularly due to the funding impact of hosting two fewer home games this year. Opportunities for fundraising by other sports and local businesses vanished with the cancellation of home games. This tradeoff, as expressed by Spain, was necessary to protect student safety.
“[Having two less games] of course is going to impact us. That’s two less games that we make at the gate,” Spain remarked. “But we’re not going to sacrifice student safety for dollars. We would never look that way.”
While Spain discussed building the football program culturally, Pittman emphasized how to utilize resources already available, such as recruiting from younger divisions called “pop warner teams” and converting athletes from other sports.
“To build the football community here, we’re going to visit the middle schools. We’re also going to visit the pop warner teams to see involvement,” Pittman noted. “I also plan on recruiting guys around campus, other sporting athletes, to join the football program.”
In response to the cancellation of football games, “pep band”, the student band that performs during home football games as a tradition throughout Dougherty Valley history, has held inquiries to perform instead with other sports, such as water polo. Similarly, cheer has recently performed at school flag football home games to promote school spirit and camaraderie, especially since they would otherwise lose many opportunities to perform.
“Cancelling a football game isn’t just cancelling for the team,” Spain said. “It’s cancelling opportunities for cheerleaders, sports medicine students and band.”
Overall, Dougherty administration retain their commitment to football at the school, but Pittman expressed that the program needs to adapt to the times.
“The focus of our students is to go to school and get an education, which is what they’re supposed to be doing,” Pittman said. “Football is an extracurricular activity, but we need to connect it with being a student.”
