The high school football season in Tennessee has yet to begin but Mt. Juliet Christian Academy is already 0-1. The Saints had to forfeit their first game due to a lack of players.
This decision comes just two days after the TSSAA Board of Control denied the program a co-operative agreement.
If the co-op agreement was approved, Mt. Juliet Christian would’ve had enough high school football players to play. Instead, the program’s entire season is at risk due to injuries.
Mt. Juliet Christian Academy does not have enough high school football players.
Mt Juliet Christian Academy is affiliated with the First Baptist Church of Mount Juliet, Tennessee. It is a private PK-12 school with a total enrollment of approximately 750 students total. 118 students in the 2025-26 cycle are in high school.
The Saints compete as the smallest school in Division II, Class A of the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association within the East/Middle region. They have not finished with a winning record since 2018. Mt. Juliet Christian went 3-7 in 2019, 1-9 in 2020, 2-8 in 2021, 1-9 in 2022, 4-7 in 2023, 4-6 in 2024 and 1-9 in 2025. Not great.
If recent history was not a hard enough obstacle to overcome, the Saints will begin the 2026 season at 0-1 even though they have not yet played their first game. Their first game of the season against Jo Byrns is ruled as a forfeit loss.
Mt. Juliet Christian does not have enough healthy players on the roster to play. Only 12 players are available, which would mean there is only one substitute on both sides of the ball for the entire game. That is not feasible. The Saints were forced to forfeit.
TSAA recently denied a co-op agreement.
First-year head coach Brett Ridenour thought he was going to have enough players to go as of Tuesday afternoon. That was no longer the case on Wednesday. Injuries continued to pile up at practice. Players who were already injured were not cleared to play.
“I talked to Jo Byrns (on Tuesday) and we fully intended to play. We got into practice yesterday and a couple more injuries happened – a couple more kids did not get cleared to return. It’s a literal numbers situation. We want to play as much as we can, but with more injuries it’s pretty much impossible.”
Mt. Juliet Christian hopes to have enough players for Week 2 against Concord Christian. We’ll see.
The Saints began the 2026 calendar year with 24 players on the roster. Seven of them decided to transfer under the TSAA’s first-time transfer rule, which cut the roster to 17. Five injuries reduced the total number of players to 12.
However, Mt. Juliet Christian tried to add more players through a co-op agreement with Nashville-based charter school RePublic. The co-operative agreement — which included a proposed one-year postseason ban — would’ve allowed RePublic students to play high school football for Mt. Juliet Christian. The TSSAA Board of Control shut it down by a split vote of six-to-six. It voted not to make an exemption to Article II Section 7 of the bylaws, which denies private schools from hosting co-ops with public schools.
As a result, the ~45 students at RePublic who were interested in playing football at Mt. Juliet Christian were not allowed to do so. The Saints were then forced to forfeit after an additional slew of injuries during game week.
That wouldn’t have been necessary if TSSAA had allowed the co-op. There would’ve been enough players on the team to play.