If you navigate through Christian Heritage School's website and click on the "History of CHS" link, you will be taken to a mostly empty page that reads, "Coming soon."

How fitting. The 16-year-old parochial school, indeed, will soon be history.

Administrators in Riverdale announced last month it will close at the end of the year due to a budget shortfall, and a reported 98 students will be forced to find other education opportunities.

Many of them are athletes for the Class 1A Crusaders.

In high school sports, it's an easy and common trap to focus on big schools, the ones who churn out college athletes and make Utah look good by sneaking into national rankings. What can be overlooked is the "beauty and wonderfulness," said one of the school's two athletic directors, Kelly Volk, of the small school, public or private.

At Christian Heritage this spring, some students compete on the track, soccer and golf teams, Volk said.

Christian Heritage's teams, the mighty Crusaders, have won just one team championship — boys' golf in 2004. But the people who tell you high school sports is about championships are the same ones focusing on the big schools.

Next year, barring an act of God or unimaginable fundraising from the task force trying to save the school, it will close.

Christian Heritage's girls' basketball team made headlines this winter when it was so good — or thoughtless, depending whom you asked — that it beat West Ridge 108-3.

But that's not the story today. Today, everyone should feel a pit in their stomach, thinking of the pain those students — especially the student athletes — are feeling.

"It's a devastating thing when you build a team and you establish it as a family, and just to see the family have to break up," said girls' basketball coach Rob McGill.

McGill was in the process, maybe, of building something special at Christian Heritage. Ignore 108-3 for a moment. Christian Heritage was 17-0 before losing consecutive games in the state tournament.

"It was springboarding," he said, "into next year where girls were already committing to me, saying, 'We can do this coach.' "

The tendency is to find someone to blame when kids get hurt, but there doesn't seem to be a bad guy here. It's no secret that private schools are subordinate to economic whimsy, and when fewer students enrolled for next year, well, it wasn't going to work.

The kids will scatter to other schools, some to 2A Layton Christian, others to public schools.

There they may find a rude reality, that not everywhere can you play four sports. Bigger schools cut players, something that doesn't happen at Christian Heritage. These kids didn't ask to go to new schools. They don't want to transfer.

Volk, whose sophomore daughter Emily was one of the Crusaders' top basketball players in the winter, began to cry when explaining the emotion that comes with the closure of a school. Emily Volk has attended Christian Heritage since kindergarten. Her brother graduated from the school.

"From a parent's perspective," Kelly Volk said, "just what I know, my daughter's very sad."

For certain, less than half a season of athletics remains at Christian Heritage.

The soccer team is 2-5-1 and probably won't win state championship.

But nonexistent playoff berths aren't the point. It's more than games.

These kids aren't just losing a home-field advantage, or really, even just a home field. They're losing a home.