Can Mount St. Joseph Survive Without Division 1?
The idea that Mount St. Joseph should play football in Division 2 — or Division 3, as some suggest, based on the school’s enrollment — is simply ludicrous to Ben Benedict, a senior at the school. Benedict was zoned to attend a medium-sized public high school that played in Division 2. He opted to enroll at Mount St. Joseph instead specifically because of its Division 1 status. “I decided I would rather come to a Division 1 school and play football,” Benedict says. “When they said they were going to drop them, my heart sank.” He added: “This is the reason I was at the school. So if there’s no program, there’s no school,” Benedict says. Suggesting that Mount St. Joseph can’t survive without Division 1 football may seem like an overstatement. But most of the players and Coach Forte echoed the sentiment. “If the football program takes a turn south, man, things won’t look too healthy for the school, seriously. That’s just a known fact,” Forte says. Like many Catholic schools, Mount St. Jose
