U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell at the Fancy Farm Picnic on Saturday, Aug 2, 2025. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)
Republican Kentucky U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is going to bat for high school football during the federal government shutdown.
Adding a handwritten “URGENT!!” to the bottom of his letter, McConnell wrote to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urging him to allow extracurriculars such as high school football to recommence during the shutdown.
McConnell’s office attached the letter to a news release Friday.
Activities such as high school football at Fort Knox and Fort Campbell have “ground to a halt in the middle of the fall season,” McConnell wrote. That’s, because extracurriculars at schools on military bases were not among the “exempted” activities allowed to incur costs during the shutdown, McConnell wrote.
McConnell added some emphasis in signing his letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (Screenshot)
“As a result, student dependents of American servicemembers have been left in the lurch and cannot participate in interscholastic athletics,” McConnell wrote. “Not only does this threaten the standing of high school teams relative to their non-DoD peers, it also risks disrupting individual student-athletes’ aspirations of competing at the college level, as the fall season is a major athletic recruiting opportunity for institutions of higher education.”
McConnell also wrote he was concerned that the “disruptions” of the shutdown extend to activities beyond football and that relevant staff have been furloughed. Army installations Fort Knox and Fort Campbell have football teams through the Department of Defense Education Activity federal school system that play other high schools in the state.
YourSportsEdge.com reported a high school football game planned Friday evening between Trigg County High School and Fort Campbell was rescheduled for the end of October. WEHT reported a football game scheduled Friday evening between Fort Knox and McLean County High School has also been postponed.
McConnell in his letter wrote “we should not force the children of our servicemembers to pay the price for Washington’s failure to appropriate funds on time.”
An email requesting comment on McConnell’s letter sent Friday afternoon to the Department of Defense’s press office was not immediately returned.