The absence of football at Denton Calvary Academy will be short-lived.

New athletic director Jay Houser has plans in place to restore the private school’s six-man program in time for the 2009 season.

Houser, who has been at the school as an assistant coach in various capacities since 2003, will take over as head coach. He became the AD after Michael King left the school earlier this year to move back to his native Philadelphia.

After a breakthrough football season in 2007, Calvary administrators dropped football and other boys team sports for the 2008-09 school year because a sudden lack of high school-age male students at the school made it difficult to fill varsity rosters.

Houser said that a surge in athletes moving from middle school to high school at Calvary made the return of the football program feasible.

“We’ve very excited to be bringing football back,” Houser said. “I’m living a dream. It’s really the answer to a lot of prayers.”

It will be the first head coaching job for Houser, 46, who started as a volunteer assistant at Calvary in 2003 and was an assistant coach for the 2007 team that reached the TAPPS six-man state title game.

The Lions will need to play an independent schedule in 2009 before becoming eligible to rejoin TAPPS during the next realignment prior to the 2010 season, Houser said.

That means the school will be allowed to use players from outside the school, such as home-schooled athletes, to fill out the roster. Houser has scheduled an open tryout for June 12 at the team’s new practice field in Aubrey.

He estimates that 21 middle school students already at Calvary are planning to join the football team in the fall, and several other potential players not yet enrolled at the school have inquired about playing.

Houser knows that the upcoming season will be a rebuilding one for the Lions. But he said one key will be developing stability both among players and coaches. Houser will become Calvary’s fifth football coach in its last six seasons.

“That was just a series of bad circumstances that fell into place,” Houser said of the program’s discontinuation. “It just seems like everything is in place for the school to explode with growth.”

The school, which started in 1998 and joined TAPPS in 2002, has about 250 students in grades 1-12, according to its Web site.

Calvary fielded a junior high football team last season, as well as varsity programs in volleyball, girls basketball, softball, girls track and tennis.

Besides restarting football, Houser is busy reorganizing the entire athletic department, hiring new coaches for almost every sport at the school. He also would like to bring back boys basketball, baseball and boys track during the next school year.

Houser’s wife, Amy, was the volleyball coach at Calvary for several seasons before leaving recently to become a physical education teacher at a local elementary school.

The school is now targeting coaches who, like Houser, want to remain at Calvary for a longer tenure, not just as an internship of sorts or a stepping stone to a larger school.

“We’ve had some great coaches, but I want some stability,” Houser said. “Everything is in place for things to restart not only where they were, but better.”

Despite the turnover, Houser is confident that the school’s athletic programs can be successful, and he hopes football will lead the way.

“I want to be at Calvary. I don’t want to be anywhere else,” he said. “It’s a fun challenge.”

TODD JORGENSON can be reached at 940-566-6871. His e-mail address is tjorgenson@dentonrc.com .