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It does surprise me a little how some places only use one ball and chase it all over the field. Every team has multiple balls and finding the 14-year old son of a coach doesn't seem to be too big of a problem here. Some teams will also use an injured player or manager.
If you have historically only used one ball it wouldn't be too hard for the state to mandate schools provide at least 2 or 3 as well as a ball boy. They can definitely use this new rule as a reason. When we experimented they made it optional for us to have balls for both teams on both sides. With the exception of a couple weeks that's what we've done the past 3 years. Occasionally we'll have a visiting team request to place an extra ball boy on the home team side (all change of possession come in from the home side for efficiency) and we are fine with that if they are. It hasn't been a problem.
People keep saying this was a solution in search of a problem. If you consistently can't get the ball ready for play in 25 seconds because you are chasing down footballs, then it was more of a problem than I realized.
I don't know if any of the experimental states were ones where only one ball was used by each team. That should never have happened in the first place and can be easily fixed now.
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