Four local school systems are considering consolidating their football teams. In Columbia County, Hudson schools are talking about merging with Chatham High's football program, and in Greene County Andrea Macko reports in Porcupine Soup that Greenville is considering a football merger with Coxsackie-Athens schools. At a Board of Education meeting earlier in January Greenville Athletic Director Denise Wickham said, “As you may recall, I was up here talking about this before COVID and we were talking about getting into a three-way merger with Catskill, Cairo, and Greenville.” For the last two years, Hudson’s varsity football team has prematurely ended its seasons because it could not sustain the minimum number of players required. Hudson's Athletic Director Shawn Briscoe said at a school board meeting that “Chatham is more than just considering it as an option.... They are really considering it.” Schools could split the annual average cost of $49,000 for fielding a modified and varsity team. But Greenville's Wickham said, “The merger deadline for this is February 1.... So, if this is something that Greenville is considering then we need to make a decision soon.” Locally, the Catskill and Cairo-Durham schools have already merged their football programs.