NUMBER DROP ERASES WCS VARSITY FOOTBALL SEASON, FOCUS IS ON BEING BACK IN 2026; MIDDLE SCHOOL TEAM WILLl STILL PLAY IN 2025
Wesleyan Christian School, shown here during last year’s season, won’t be fielding a team this year to lack of players.
BECKY BURCH/Bartlesville Area Sports
By Mike Tupa
Aug. 27, 2025
BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT
For the first time in 21 years Wesleyan Christian School won’t be fielding a varsity football team.
The Mustangs — who compete in eight-man football — have been teetering with the possibility for the past few weeks as their number of interested student-athletes plummeted.
Current head football coach Fabian Quiroz and school administrator Curt Cloud — who is the former head football coach and currently helps with the athletic department — expressed hope in recent telephone interviews about rescuing the season.
But with only between five-to-eight players possibly committing to play, the numbers weren’t just enough by the start of practice to put together a team.
Only five student-athletes made a solid commitment prior to the scheduled opening of August practice to play.
Even so, WCS Athletic Director Steven Cooks said the administration held out hope that when school started they might persuade other boys to join the team. They received a few verbal commitments, initially, but those fell through and the school had no option but to shelve the varsity season.
However, WCS will still play a middle school schedule. Between the players on that team that matriculate next year plus hopefully bigger numbers of boys at the high school, WCS plans to be back in varsity competition in 2026.
“We’re hoping to return these same guys plus getting other guys to buy into the new coach and the new program,” Cooks said, adding during the next year Quiroz — the team’s first-year head coach and third head coach in three seasons — will have more time to win over some of the student-athletes that were reluctant to play this year.
This year’s slide in numbers began when some key seniors either transferred or became injured, Cooks explained.
“I think it was the waterfall effect after that,” he said. “Other guys decided they didn’t want to play and we just had a handful of players.”
This isn’t the first time WCS has lacked sufficient numbers going into a season. Back in 2018 the short-handed Mustangs had to co-op with Copan — which also didn’t have enough players — to create a joint team.
But this year’s drop in numbers was unexpected and sudden, which removed other options — plus all other area eight-man schools have enough players for their teams.
The disruption in the school’s football tradition is somewhat amazing, considering that just three seasons ago (2022), the Mustangs romped to a 10-2 record and a playoff win against Graham-Dustin, 51-28.
In 2023, the Mustangs followed up with a 7-4 mark and another playoff appearance that ended in a seven-point loss.
From 2021-2023 — with Cloud as the head coach — the Mustangs amassed a 25-10 record, including two playoff victories.
But following the 2023 campaign, WCS graduated an extremely talented class plus Cloud stepped away as head coach.
During the debut last year of new head coach Blaine Landers, the rebuilding Mustang team finished 2-8.
Landers left as head coach during the offseason and Quiroz assumed the reins.
During an interview in late spring with the Bartlesville Area Sports Report, Quiroz expressed optimism about the team’s potential to be built around a senior class of seven veterans. The commitment by well more than dozen athletes spilled over into the offseason workouts.
But those numbers apparently began to be whittled down the closer that the opening of August preseason drew near.
WCS began its varsity football program around the mid-2000s with Cloud as its first head coach. For several years the Mustangs played in a Christian association but then by the early 2010s had segued into OSSAA competition. In 2012, with Nathan England as head coach, the Mustangs burst to an 8-4 record — including a stunning playoff win against Southwest Christian.
But WCS wouldn’t record another winning season until 2017, after Cloud had returned as head coach. He stayed in that position for seven seasons, racking up 42 wins, four straight playoff seasons (2020-23) and five playoff seasons in all.
Unfortunately, Mustang football varsity style will have to take a breather this season.
Quiroz is determined to rev up football again — more importantly to rev up the desire of the eligible student-athletes to want to put in the work and the grit it takes to represent their school on Friday nights.
“I think for me, the best thing is we have a pretty exciting middle school team,” Quiroz said. “I think they will be showing the older guys that football is fun. … If you put in the work and effort you can have a lot of success
“Usually, it’s the older guys who encourage the younger guys. … We just want to make football fun again.”
Quiroz also is grateful for the five student-athletes — one of them a senior — that have stuck it out through the process.
“They’re still around wanting to do stuff,” he said. “They’re getting ready as if we will have a football season but we won’t.”
He feels worse for the lone dedicated senior who won’t be able to play his final season.
But chances are WCS will be back and hungry next season for the gridiron wars and for many to come after that.