CRAIG, Mo. — Sixteen football players on one knee listened as coach Josh Petersen chided them for a lackluster practice Wednesday afternoon.

After soaking in the words, all sixteen — nine from Craig, seven from Fairfax — put a hand in the middle of a huddle. “One, two, three — TEAM,” they shouted in unison.

Two days before the cooperating programs’ first game, there was still work left to do. But they broke huddle as the Craig Hornets.

“It’s just one team right now; we’re all one team,” Craig junior Jordan Showalter said.

The road to tonight’s game at North Nodaway is a complicated one.

While cooperative agreements enter their third year in Missouri, Craig and Fairfax — separated by 11.5 miles of U.S. Highway 59 — are the first two schools with separate football programs to cooperate. Last winter, the two school boards agreed to co-op in all sports starting with the 2008-2009 season.

But the preeminent need seemed to be in football.

Both squads competed last year with about 11 players, give or take. Just five years ago, Fairfax was unable to field a team, while Craig failed to win a single game between 2000 and September 2004. The numbers didn’t drastically increase with the 16 kids currently on the practice field, but without the co-op agreement, both teams would have been in danger.

Fall practice started Aug. 11 across the state, and only 13 players showed up at Craig. Participation eventually increased to as high as 24 before settling back at 16.

“As long as these guys are committed, I’m happy with them,” Showalter said. “I don’t want guys out here that don’t want to play. We can field eight guys, and that’s all you need to play. I’m happy with the number.”

Numbers aside, optimism permeates the small squad.

“I expect to compete in every game,” Showalter said. “Whatever that means, we’ll find out, but definitely compete, and I feel we have a chance to win each one.”

While the first few practices contained awkward moments for players and coaches, eventually names were learned, and the players settled into their new routine. Each day the Fairfax contingent takes a bus ride down the road to Craig for practice, but once off the bus, the players aren’t students at separate schools but teammates.

The only way to distinguish the difference between players on Wednesday were a few stray Fairfax green belts hanging below blue, gold or white Craig practice jerseys.

“The Craig guys have been real welcoming,” Fairfax senior Michael Kerr said. “They haven’t treated us any different than one of their own teammates, so it’s been pretty easy.

“The bus ride is just like walking to practice, I guess.”

Getting to the practices isn’t the only change. The two-hour sessions run completely different.

Wednesday’s practice contained a mixture of dropped passes, mistimed cadences and lackadaisical scout-team defense reminiscent of past Fairfax or Craig squads. But in the negatives lies the biggest positive.

There is a scout team.

None of the current players ever had a full eight guys to scrimmage against prior to this season, and there’s competition for playing time. Showalter called the full-speed scrimmages a luxury, but to most teams, it serves as the norm.

“Not only do they know what they’re doing,” Petersen said, “they get to see what they’re doing and see how things line up and how they need to line up against different formations and different sets.”

The welded-together Hornets don’t debut in front of a home crowd until Sept. 5 against Norborne. And thanks to a special agreement, the Hornets’ final two regular-season games will be at Bulldog Field up the road in Fairfax — a special opportunity for the seven players from Fairfax.

“We want to win up there definitely, us Fairfax kids. We want to show them we can do it,” Kerr said.

But the season starts today on a bus ride from Craig to Hopkins, where the Hornets play North Nodaway in the season opener and when the Hornets take the field for the first time as one.

“We’ll get to see what we’re made up of as a team and what we’re capable of,” Petersen said.

Assistant sports editor Ross Martin can be reached at rossmartin@npgco.com