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Kennedy changed the culture at Franklin County down in Southeastern Indiana and got the program on track despite what his 24-18 record shows. He probably would have won a sectional title or two if it wasn't for powerhouse East Central. Kennedy will be a great hire for KV if they take in his style and it doesn't turn out to be another Bloomington South experience. Good luck to Coach K!

My daughter is going to Hanover for basketball next year.

A typical KK anecdote. Lowell is on offense. They run off tackle. The RB bounces it outside, but just runs laterally. The defense strings out the play, and he is taken out of bounds right at the line of scrimmage, going down right at Kennedy’s feet on the Lowell sideline. Coach leans down over the kid and says, “Son, if you keep running in that direction, eventually you’ll hit that fence over there! Run north & south!”

While there has been discussion on GID about larger Hispanic populations causing issues with football, I'm not sure that I buy it in whole. Demographic shifts are coming in broader swaths now. The country's recent numbers, at least as of 2020, show that, by national average, Whites are no longer the majority for public schools. They clock in at a tad under 46%. Hispanics check in at around 28%, with Blacks at around 15%. Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and those that identify as two or more races complete the pie with a bit more than 11% combined. While Indiana is still below average with regard to URMs and way above the average in terms of Whites ... at just a bit under 66% ... there's still a shift in play. Going back to the idea that Hispanic students have a potential impact on the strength of football in an area because "obviously they play soccer and not American football," of note is that the states that have large Hispanic populations in their public schools, as a percentage, actually tend to be known for their football. Among the states with more Hispanics than the national average in their public schools are football power states California, Florida, and Texas with roughly 55%, 35%, and 53% Hispanic students respectively. At the same time, Nevada has around 43% Hispanic and New Mexico has roughly a whopping 63% and neither would likely be tagged as the strongest football schools in the sate. Someone could certainly pick New Mexico and say, "See the more Hispanics you have, the more irrelevant your program would be because no one talks about football and New Mexico in the same breath." On the other hand, the large numbers of Hispanics, as percentage, in powerhouse states says that we just can't flat-out assume a linear impact on football when there's larger presence of Hispanic students. While the idea of demographic shifts certainly provide challenges, I think there's plenty of data out there as well as trends that show that the trend toward increased Hispanic populations isn't specifically a death knell for football in an area/state. There's also a big issue that folks need to consider in that Hispanics are not as monolithic as they are often assumed to be ... folks who live in Florida can attest to this first-hand. There's also the issue of FRL that people toss in there as well, but there's also data that points to that being less than definitive in football success than the linear presumption than is sometimes assumed. Back in 2015/16, the national average for FRL was around 50%. California, Texas, and Florida clocked in around 59% on FRL. Note that in that year, Indiana's percentage was just a bit below the national average at around 48%. The interesting thing though is that Mississippi clocked in at right around 75% FRL. You might be asking, "Why would Mississippi matter?" Mississippi ranked 7th in 2015 in percentage of their players that went on to play FBS ball with scholarship. Incidentally, Florida was #1 in percentage and Texas and California ranked #12 and #11 respectively. Incidentally, last year, Mississippi also ranked #1 in D1 scholarships per million residents and also ranked #1. When the study broke down positions, that ranking was also #1 across QBs, line, DBs, and receivers. It was only a single study, but an interesting place to start. Caveat: With all that said, and given that various groups are not as monolithic and different specific areas/schools have very different cultures, coaching issues, communities, etc., this is very much high-level analysis. I'm not as directly versed with Hobart and/or Portage or many other Indiana schools, so my info above is more for thought as opposed to being directly applied to a specific school. Here are the various sources if folks want to delve into or churn the data a bit more: D1s per million ... https://thedatajocks.com/best-states-for-high-school-football/ FRL 2015/2016 ... https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_204.10.asp 2020 ethnicity public schools ... https://www.statista.com/statistics/236244/enrollment-in-public-schools-by-ethnicity-and-us-state/ 2020 blue chips by state ... https://www.bannersociety.com/2020/2/4/21111828/college-football-recruits-by-state 2015 state rankings by percentage pop FBS ... https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/sec-football/sec-states-produce-tons-of-fbs-talent/

So Pioneer and SR are the public school sacrificial lambs in this scenario?? And from what I'm reading, Chatard and LCC get a move down? Ya- this whole thing makes a ton of sense. Bravo IHSAA, bravo