It’s decision-making time in Hot Springs for the fate of Savage Heat football for the rest of the season.

Down to only six players in last week’s game at Noxon, which the Red Devils won 38-6, coach Jim Lawson and his very gritty but severely undermanned Savage Heat could be down to only five players this week, which could lead to Hot Springs possibly being forced to forfeit the final regular season game at Power-Dutton-Brady October 24. This coming week is a bye for Hot Springs football.

One of the Heat players will be gone from the team this week and most of next week due to a prior commitment, leaving the football team on the brink of being forced to forfeit.

Lawson said that there is an outside chance of acquiring a few more players and getting them enough practices in before October 24 but, if not, a difficult decision will need to be made. “We’re going to sit down with Brady (Hot Springs athletic director Brady Ovitt) and talk it over this week, and see what our options are,” Lawson said. “It would be too bad for the kids we have who do want to still play, but sometimes things are out of our hands.”

In any event, Hot Springs ought to be proud of this 2025 Savage Heat football team. In spite of very low numbers all season which became even lower after a few injuries to key players, the Heat have represented themselves and their school quite well, building an admirable record of 4-3 along the way.

With the low numbers seemingly catching up with them at least a little last week, the Heat went to Noxon Friday and fell 38-6 to the Red Devils.

Fresh off a seven-touchdown performance the previous week against Alberton, Samson Jakablosky scored Hot Springs’ only TD on a 29-yard run in the fourth quarter of the Noxon game, but his reputation may have preceded him to Noxon.

“They knew what we were going to do and got after Samson pretty good,” Lawson said of the Devils’ game plan. "And we seemed to come out a little flat. We played hard but things just didn’t go our way.”

The hard-playing Savage Heat in Noxon were Jakabosky, Chase DePoe, Odin Max, Bill DeTienne, Brayden Collier and Andrew Waterbury. Both very key players until getting hurt, juniors Ben Aldridge and Daniel Slonaker were on the injured list last and sidelined last week as Aldridge injured an ankle and had surgery on it several weeks ago, and Slonaker underwent knee surgery just last week.

See other story for details on Noxon’s highlights from Friday’s game.