The Mohawk Trail varsity boys basketball season won’t continue.

Following a pair of injuries, the already shorthanded Warriors — which had been playing this season with just six players — don’t have a roster large enough to field a team, leading the school to cancel the remainder of their season.

After an injury last week, Mohawk Trail was down to five players on its roster. The team held a meeting with parents and athletic director Greg Lilly to discuss whether it was going to carry on. At that point, the remaining five players decided to try to keep the season going. 

That hope ended the next day at practice, when one player suffered a hand injury, leaving the Warriors with just four healthy bodies. It was at that point that Lilly and the program made the decision to forfeit the final 12 games on the Warriors’ schedule.

“It’s disappointing,” Mohawk Trail coach Greg Thompson said. “It wasn’t unexpected on my end. It would have been nice to see us tough it out for the season and keep the program together. At the end we were down to five kids. There was a lot of trepidation about if the remaining five — which is made up of three freshmen, a sophomore and a junior — could continue the pace required for a varsity squad. Ultimately it folded after a team meeting with parents and [athletic director Greg Lilly]. We asked the kids to go off and talk about it among themselves and see if everyone was 100 percent on board and they came back saying they were. The very next day one player sustained an injury to his hand that put him out. We were left in a tough spot.”

The Warriors played four games before canceling the season, falling to Drury (91-37), Turners Falls (62-35), Smith Academy (79-51) and Mahar (77-29). Mohawk Trail did not field a varsity program in the 2021-22 season, but announced last month that it was going to reinstate the squad for this winter.

What the future of the program holds is unknown, though Thompson said he is hoping they can find a way to keep his team playing basketball in an effort to continue their development on the court.

“I’m hoping we can salvage something,” Thompson said. “Hopefully we can do a club program at the school for the remainder of the year and continue to develop kids. They all love basketball and want to play. This may be an opportunity to develop those kids in a way we might not have been able to do if we pursued the season.”

Thompson applauded his young team for battling through the opening part of the season.

“I have to give credit to the kids for doing it as long as they did,” Thompson said. “These young kids were playing rosters that went 15 deep with seniors, yet they went out and played hard. They should be commended for that.” 

Each team remaining on Mohawk Trail’s schedule will receive a win via forfeiture.

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