Special Message from our Gates Football Director


Gates Family,

Over the past several months, I’ve been monitoring the Virginia High School League (VHSL) website and speaking with several members of their governing board. I was gathering information about our future Gates football season for 2020. When VHSL ruled in June to suspend all fall sports, to include football, I was heartbroken. Never in a million years did I ever thing something like a COVID pandemic could shut down an entire country. Everyone that knows me and hears me coach knows how passionate I am about football. With that being said, I have determined after considerable deliberation with other board member that Gates will not participate in any fall football. I have followed other states' football programs in NC, SC, GA, and FL to see how their football programs were dealing with COVID. Most, if not all have since suspended their football programs due to outbreaks. Our own governing body for Virginia, the Virginia High School League said no fall sports. I know this is not something you want to hear, but the facts and reports don’t lie. Kids are still catching this deadly virus and unfortunately still dying. If I have to get you to sign a liability waiver, about COVID I will not put your child on the field.  The risk  outweighs the reward. If you feel that it’s safe to participate in some sort of fall football program, I wish you good luck, but Gates will not support or make a recommendation on when or where you should participate.

***Due to Covid 19 Gates is not participating in any form of Football this fall!***

*Please read all information before signing up*
This information is for Fall Football.




Medical Form
Code of Conduct
These forms will be available to you to download and then upload them during the registration process. Failure to upload these forms will result in your child not being registered.


Gates Athletic Association participates with the Chesterfield Quarterback League!

What is the Chesterfield Quarterback League? CQL is a football league within Chesterfield County designed for the youth of the county. There are 4 different divisions within the league (Flag, Minor, Junior, and Senior) which are seperated by age groups.
To teach youngsters, through playing experience, the fundamentals of football teamwork, leadership and sportsmanship and to take into consideration the health, welfare and ability of each individual participant.


Payment must be received before uniforms are issued.


With the fee paid your child will get a Jersey, helmet, mouth piece and shoulder pads. Pants are no longer provided. We wear solid black pants. (Flag needs to have black game pants and are not required to be padded.) 

Jersey and equipment will need to be turned back in at the last game. .

If there is any questions please don't hesitate to reach out . My contact information is below.

Director - Mark Bowen 

Phone: (804) 366-0307
Email:  [email protected]

League Information: 
Chesterfield Quarterback League
http://www.cqlfootball.com/

 

 

Here at Gates we try our best to keep fees down. Fundraising is one way we are able to do it. Football is expensive to start as we have the latest up to date helmets. Every two years we get all of our helmets recondition for player safety which cost us about $22.00 a helmet. Every year we have to purchase new helmets based on the size we may not have enough of. Shoulder pads is another expense and we will need to purchase more this year.

Fundraising helped us with the purchase of the New Scoreboard at Ironbridge Park. We will also need to purchase new pads for the sleds and new dummies as we have gotten away without buying any for at least 6 years. We also started to lose space and were able to purchase the two storage containers one at Gates and the other at Ironbridge.

These costs are never put into the registration fees as it would be too high for us to even play. Fundraising helps to keep the cost down and is much easier to do as I know a lot of folks will support the kids.

We also have held three Golf Tournaments the last three years and we need to get more support as this is a big fundraiser for our Gates Athletes. The more support and teams we can get to play Golf will also help in not doing as much fundraisers per sport as the Golf Tournament could take on a lot of our expenses.

The Sheehy Ford is another Big One! We fell short last year in meeting our target. Which resulted in less fundraiser funds. 

So this year we will need to go back to the individual Fundraising per sport. We will still try the other Fundraisers in hopes to get a stronger turnout.