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The Evansville track scene is the deepest in a long time. Brodie and Thomas, as well as Eli McDurmon, are all medals contenders at the state finals and lead the way. But two other football guys like Dasmon Johnson (EM) and Drew Martin (MD) advanced to regional as well. Johnson was 7th in the 100 and Martin was 7th in the 200. So top 7 in the city was good enough for top 16 in the regional. That is amazing.

I wanna say Carroll (Fort Wayne). This opinion is pretty bold considering the Chargers haven't even made it past regionals in 12 years under Dinan. His record is 90-45, but many of those victories came against schools with much smaller enrollments. That being said, he's had a few teams that were pretty good. Last year was his best, but he unfortunately ran into Westfield's best. He tutored under Russ Isaacs for ten years, so he knows what it takes to build and maintain a program. And Carroll just continues to grow in student population. I wouldn't be surprised if they surpass the 3000 mark in five years. They have outstanding facilities. I think the Chargers could be a player at the 6A level for years to come. But they need to prove that last year's defense wasn't just a one year fluke.

No, I really don't know how Kelly got the nickname "Spike" and really don't remember how long it took for us to travel the 234 miles to South Bend from Linton but I do remember the difficulty we had getting home. Our bus carrying the band members broke down in Plymouth, Indiana, not far from SB. We had to spend the day in Plymouth while the bus was being repaired. We finally got home late that evening. As a band member. I recall we spent a few Saturdays during the summer selling "Band Tags" for 50 cents each downtown in Linton to raise enough money for us to make the trip and stay overnight in a South Bend hotel. That trip and the 1946 football game was a memorable highlight of my time at LHS.

Track Sectional with PAC teams last night. Gibson Southern won the sectional 31 team title. Michael Herren from Gibson Southern won the 100 (11.24), 200 (22.64) and was on the winning 4x100 team (3 of 4 and (maybe/hopefully all 4) are GS football players this fall). (44.68) Left to right Daniel Thomas, Sean DeLong, Michael Herren, Mason Scheller (all sophomores). Final Team Standings - Top 3 1. Gibson Southern 166 2. Princeton 153 3. South Knox 84 GS athletes who advance to Regional are listed!! Congrats to all athletes & coaches on a great night!!

Here you go http://tribtown.com/2021/05/14/three_local_conferences_to_have_different_look_in_fall/

There has been complaints about the offense because its not "flashy" or mainstream (i.e. spread), but you know what it did? It WON. 21-3 the last two seasons and 2 outright NE8 conference championships as well as appearances in back to back sectional finals (last 3 years actually according to Harrells). Averaged over 40 pts/game last season and set school record for rushing yards and scoring in a season. The full-house backfield offense has worked for them. The games I've seen them play the offense has been fast, deceptive and physically dominant. The defense was also very good which, to me, go hand in hand with that style of offense. When you can control the pace of the game with your offense, you keep the opponents offense off the field and your defense fresh. Those with short term memory also forget that when Leo last won back to back sectional and regional titles, they ran the same full house backfield offense. Yes they also ran some spread too but they had a stud QB and a stable of receivers then. Yeah they made an incredible drive during the East Noble sectional game this year (game of the year in my opinion) but some of that drives success had to come from catching the Knights off guard. How much does anyone think Coach Amstutz prepared for any form of passing attack?? Great job by the kids AND the coaching staff for keeping that in their back pocket but some of that successful drive had to come from the element of suprise. People wanting "change" be weary, the same success in the win/loss columns can change with offensive philosophy. I, personally, think they made the BEST choice with Coach Doerffler! Things will obviously be/look different next year, but to hear so much bashing of Coach Sauder's staff and offensive philosophy is absolutely ridiculous and uncalled for! 139-42 career record, only losing season was his 1st on the job. Looks to me he made pretty darn good decisions for the Leo program IMHO. Last 10 seasons the ONLY program with a better winning percentage in the Ft Wayne area is Snider (.810 Snider, .793 Leo) per Harrell's site. That's pretty good company.

From what I understand, they ran a version of the Full T? (Double TEs, 3 Backs) You only have to look a little bit to the north to find some schools that are really, really good in it. Zeeland West's HC Jon Schilito has won 4 state titles and 300+ games in it. Hudsonville Unity Christian just set the state scoring record with it (803 in a 14 game schedule). 1 formation, ball in the air 4-6 times a game. It doesn't look like what people watch on Saturdays and Sundays and so they don't like. Pioneer runs the Delaware Wing-T, and you see some other Indiana Teams dabble with Wing T concepts. Plymouth ran some T in the last 00s, last I've seen Full House T in Indiana was Dave Sharpe at Laporte. Is he running it at Noblesville? Michigan has more T and Wing-T.....Indiana seems to have more Option. It's been interesting to compare HS football in the 2 states during my time in each.

https://mises.org/wire/nato-plans-rip-americans-even-more-sweden-and-finland-set-join Although neither statement mentions Russia, it is clear that both statements were aimed at Moscow in terms of communicating that—regardless of what the formal membership process may be—both Finland and Sweden will immediately become de facto members of NATO. Joe Biden's move expands the number of counties for which Americans could be expected to die and the number of countries that American taxpayers will be expected to subsidize with their tax dollars. Also within the Biden statement was the often-repeated—and false—claim that the expansion of NATO benefits Americans overall: But there are numerous problems with this claim. NATO membership has nothing to do with enhancing the defense of ordinary Americans. The American elites love NATO, of course, because it expands regime spending and influence in Europe. But when it comes down to actual military defense, expanding NATO only increases the odds that Americans will be pulled into a major conflict while offering Americans nothing in return. Moreover, the Russian regime's inability to overrun Ukraine has demonstrated that Moscow presents no threat to Europe that the Europeans cannot quite thoroughly counter themselves. But there's one way to make the addition of Sweden and Finland to NATO a good deal: NATO can add whatever countries it wants so long as the United States leaves as part of the bargain. Two More Countries for Americans to Subsidize Back in March, we examined the extent to which the US taxpayer overwhelmingly covers the costs of NATO. For example, the total military spending of all NATO members combined is more than $1 trillion. So how much of this total is provided by US taxpayers? In the first graph, we see that the US's share of this is 70.5 percent, and that the top ten contributors constitute 95.0 percent of all military spending. That is, the US contributes 70 percent of all NATO defense dollars while the next nine states contribute an additional 25 percent. The other twenty NATO member states contribute a meagre and forgettable 5 percent of all spending. With the addition of Finland and Sweden, those countries that contribute negligible amounts to NATO's defense spending will increase to twenty-two. But the situation will remain essentially the same. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Sweden's total military spending in 2020 was $6.2 billion, which places it between Romania and Norway. Finland's total spending of $3.9 billion places it between Portugal and Denmark. These tiny numbers aren't surprising. Finland has a gross domestic product about the size of Missouri's, while Sweden's GDP is about the size of Massachusetts's. It's possible that adding Finland and Sweden into the mix could drop the US share of total NATO defense spending to 70.0 percent or 69.0 percent. In any case, Europeans can continue to milk the US taxpayer dry for security guarantees. After all, as non-NATO members, Sweden and Finland spend approximately 1.2 percent and 1.5 percent of GDP on military spending, respectively. (It's 3.7 percent for the US.) As NATO members, there is no real incentive for Finland and Sweden to spend any more. Given that NATO doesn't really enforce its "rule" that all members must spend 2.0 percent of GDP, we can expect more business as usual should Sweden and Finland join the alliance. What do Sweden and Finland contribute to US security? Biden claims both countries will "benefit the entire Transatlantic Alliance." Of course, they will do no such thing. Finland, especially, is a net liability due to its long land border with Russia and its maritime border in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. Here's the problem with that. NATO started out as an arguably reasonable alliance of Western European states with multiple buffer states between NATO and the Soviet Union. The only land border shared between Russia and a NATO state at that time was in the distant north of Norway. Yet, after years of expansion, NATO has expanded right up to Russia itself throughout the Baltic and around Kaliningrad. Since NATO demands an "attack" on one member be treated as an attack on all members, this can turn small regional disputes into a global war. Now, NATO wants to add to the potential for such a situation by adding the Finland-Russia border into the mix. Should Finland or the Baltic states get into a regional conflict with Russia, how many Americans will be asked to die to defend the distant reaches of eastern Europe? The Ukraine War Shows Europe Doesn't Need the US for Defense If anything illustrates now is a good time for the US to leave the alliance, it's the lackluster performance of the Russian military. The US should never have pledged itself to Europe's defense on legal, moral, and practical grounds. But, there always remained the consequentialist argument that without the US in NATO, the Soviets would roll through Paris and Rome and Madrid, imposing Soviet despotism everywhere. Once the enormous Soviet military disappeared from the globe, this same argument was then recycled with "Russia" replacing "Red Army." The threat of the Soviets to Europe was always exaggerated, but the claim that Russia presents an existential threat to Europe is not even plausible. The situation in Ukraine has made this abundantly clear. The international Western media, after all, has itself told us that Russian military personnel are incompetent and woefully inept when it comes to carrying out the assumed occupation of Ukraine. Western reports routinely assert that Russian troops are retreating, failing, and sustaining heavy losses. Meanwhile, Ukraine is a country with a GDP per capita that's less than half of Russia's. Ukraine is thoroughly undeveloped industrially, and relies heavily on weapons gifted by outsiders. If the Russians can't even make short order of Ukraine—a country right on Russia's border—how will that same military roll through Prague? Yet, even while the media labels the invasion a complete debacle, we're also being told by pundits and "experts" that without defense guarantees from the Americans, Helsinki will soon be Russian territory. It's extremely doubtful that both claims can be true. In any case, whatever the Western propaganda narrative currently claims, the fact is Russia has a second-rate economy coupled with demographic decline at least as bad as that seen in the rest of Europe. Russia's GDP—and thus its access to military resources—is a small fraction of that of the European Union. In other words, Russia simply lacks what is needed to present any real threat to Europe. The lack of quick progress in Ukraine is only the latest evidence of this. The Europeans are welcome to keep NATO going if they like. They're more than capable of doing so. But the time has come for the United States to exit. Agreed. The USA need to exit NATO and let Europe fend for itself against the laughable Russian "threat". It's perfectly clear here in the USA that the MSM (main stream media), controlled by the military-industrial complex and the CIA, are making Russia then next global threat to democracy and Mr. Putin the devil himself.

https://mises.org/wire/medical-revolt-coming This, of course is what the cartel has worked so hard to change. Without question, hospitals and their industry pals have bribed legislators and bureaucrats to avoid the same competitive market discipline that made the economic miracle of this country the envy of the world. For this reason, we must always focus on the consumer's interests and completely discount any poor-mouthing claims of the sellers, claims which give cover to the dysfunctional arrangement we now endure. Let's go back even further, to the nineteenth century, when French economic Frédéric Bastiat penned his famous satirical essay "The Candlemakers' Petition" in 1845. Here's what he had to say about giving the seller the advantage over the buyer: Mises and Bastiat knew full well what would happen if the buyer was placed at a disadvantage, whatever excuse the sellers or producers used. Before I continue, we should distinguish between mutually beneficial exchange and a zero-sum, or leveraged, exchange. Always remember that the buyer and seller never voluntarily come together to exchange unless it is to the advantage of both. The seller of the milk values three dollars more than his milk, and the buyer values the milk more than his three dollars. Both parties emerge from the transaction improved from their prior position. A zero-sum exchange, in contrast, is where one party wins at the other's expense. In this type of exchange, the buyer or the seller is victimized by the other party. This is the business model of government, and this is the business model of the medical cronies government enables. Think predator and prey. Think of yourself as clean sheets and the cronies as Amber Heard. While there are two methods of exchange, there are two types of buyers: legitimate and illegitimate. A legitimate buyer respects mutually beneficial exchange and is represented by individual patients and any others who work as a good-faith proxy on an individual's behalf, whether a self-funded plan or a cost-sharing ministry. Government and traditional insurance companies are illegitimate, zero-sum buyers, whose hit-and-run model is based on leveraged exchange and whose interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of patients. Patient and consumer misery are consistent with their goals. Government buyers in countries with universal care plans take this to the extreme with coerced euthanasia plans, as a citizen death helps their balance sheet. Doctors in Great Britain are actually paid a bounty for any sick or elderly patients they can lead to the euthanasia slaughterhouse. There are also two types of sellers: those who seek to maximize revenue and those who seek to maximize delivery of value. The resulting combinations of these buyer and seller types can result in one or even both parties, buyer and seller, acting in bad faith. Think pure bad faith when a hospital owns an insurance company. Think pure bad faith with an accountable care organization model, where a hospital basically owns an HMO. The patient is completely disenfranchised, vulnerable, without an advocate, as both the buyer and the seller are illegitimate. Things are a little better for the patient when only one of the parties to the exchange is illegitimate—say, when a legitimate cost-sharing ministry or self-funded employer buys from a price-gouging hospital. The patient experience is maximized when both parties are legitimate and seek mutual benefit. In this instance of symbiotic legitimacy, the provision of a substandard service invites the merciless market forces that will put one out of business. The quality question is therefore solved when both buyer and seller are legitimate. Quality is "baked in," as FMMA cofounder Jay Kempton says. When government places consumers at a disadvantage, prices soar and quality plummets. This is clear in any market where hospital consolidation has taken place. It became crystal clear when the number of insurance companies was intentionally downsized by the Unaffordable Care Act's medical loss ratio. The before- and after-Obamacare stock price of UnitedHealthcare makes the point that when consumer choice is limited, prices soar. When government places sellers like hospitals or physicians at a disadvantage, with price controls or a heavy regulatory burden, shortages materialize and quality plummets. Burdensome regulations are crafted by industry participants large enough to survive—and as smaller sellers surrender, the ensuing consolidation that leads to higher prices results. The result of all this: government can more easily sell disadvantaged consumers than disadvantaged sellers, because the sellers are more willing to spend big money for advantages that can make them rich. The one thing the cronies fear is an equal playing field, the real competition of the free market. This is the core goal of the crony cartel, escaping real competition and ensuring that the seller always has the advantage. Don't be fooled when a big insurance company and a big hospital system provide a theatrical display where one agrees to play the victim to the other, hoping people will pick sides. This is an important part of ensuring the scam stays alive, as this theatrical distraction provides an important decoy for the real play, one where the hospital and the carrier work side by side. It hasn't always been this way. I was fortunate during my premed years to shadow two great and extremely busy surgeons, Dr. Don Garrett and Dr. Richard Allgood. There were two hospitals in town, neither one of which could survive without these two. Drs. Garrett and Allgood never hesitated to move patients from one hospital to the other if one hospital failed to provide what the patients needed. These hospitals had to compete with each other for their referrals, and failure to do so meant disaster for them. The hospitals were accountable to all the referring physicians, essentially the proxy buyers for their patients. I should point out that the better the physician's reputation, the busier they were, and therefore the hospital that couldn't cater to the great doctors was punished even more severely, a quality control measure largely absent today. This was the case all over the country. As late as 1990, when I started my practice in Oklahoma City, physicians and surgeons, some of whom—like Norman Imes, who is in this room—moved their patients or threatened to move their patients to other facilities if the hospital didn't provide what their patients needed. In Oklahoma City, Deaconess Hospital, right across the street from the huge Baptist Hospital, provided a quality check and ensured that both hospitals had to provide a quality experience for the patients and for the referring physicians. It was not uncommon for a physician to move all of his patients from one hospital to another until conditions improved. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma was successful early on due to the failure of area hospitals to provide orthopedic surgeons what they needed to care for their patients. The role of the federal government in this power shift, away from patient and physician choice, is painfully clear and, once again, the obvious result of the auctioning of our consumer choices to the medical sellers. Medical sellers have been purchasing the choices of consumers and patients for a long time, and they are good at it. In Nashville a few weeks ago, a Washington insider told me the following story about the passage of Obamacare. Industry representatives and lobbyists had locked arms in opposition to Obamacare, assuming they would almost certainly be victimized by it. One by one, opponents were picked off. Those remaining and opposed wondered what was going on. The administration simply followed the money. Where were the biggest lobbies? The American Hospital Association, initially opposed to Obamacare, was told that their biggest fear, it seemed, was competition, primarily from physician-owned facilities. Therefore, if the AHA would support this law, Barry Soetoro (Obama's real name), would see to it that new physician-owned facilities were banned and those in existence would be prohibited from expanding. The hospitals abandoned the opposition. The insurance carriers, initially opposed, were promised a medical loss ratio, which would put all but four or five of them out of business. They, too, left the opposition. Last but not least, Big Pharma was told that it seemed their future profitability would come from biologic drugs, as the growth in generic drugs would eat into their margins. They were promised a twenty-year ban on competition from biologics produced in foreign countries. They, too, left the opposition, and the next week, the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] declared foreign biologics unsafe. As outrageous as this is, it is a broken record. Government intervenes on behalf of the few who can afford to buy their intervention, and the vast majority, the rest of us, pay the price. One incredibly disruptive intervention was when the federal government through its bankrupt arm Medicare decided to pay double for physician services delivered by hospital-employed physicians. It should come as no surprise that the percentage of independently practicing physicians has been on the decline ever since. This cynical move was meant to protect hospitals from the competition and demands for quality that physicians like Drs. Garrett, Allgood, Imes, and many others had made. Currently, hospitals are no longer accountable to their medical staff, having purchased a large part of their staff, essentially making geldings of them all. Patients are now largely denied the advocacy they had in the past, when independent physicians went to bat for them, voting with their feet. If a hospital was no good, physicians walked away. Now, if a hospital is no good, the hospital continues to see the flow of referrals from their kept referral sources, who are financially penalized for doing anything else. "Whose bread I eat, his song I must sing." When someone asks me how I know free market facilities and physicians can provide quality, I tell them that referrals in a free market are not guaranteed, buyers can walk away. I would argue that the quality of care delivered by a medical facility is directly related to the extent to which that facility is accountable to its medical staff. "What percentage of your medical staff is employed?" should be a question those attempting to measure quality should ask. To be clear, hospitals with an employed staff do not have to be any good to retain business, a result of the corporate rather than physician control of patient care. Clearly, the root cause has been a shift in the balance of power, where the medical seller, the hospital, has gained the upper hand over the patient and their advocate. This shift in power to the seller, in most cases the hospital, has become the new normal, and so ingrained in the industry that those who provide more efficient, cheaper, and better services are paradoxically criticized rather than applauded, as these fragile hospital systems might not survive a challenge to the fortress they've built. Not only has the balance of power been shifted, but any challenge to this balance also meets a swift and brutal response, usually on "fairness" and "social" grounds. When the late Tom Coburn, one of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma's greatest defenders, was told by a hospital executive that it wasn't fair to compare his hospital to the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, Coburn said, "You are right. They pay tax." Tax advantages are one thing. Certificates of need, blacklisting by insurance carriers, banning of physician-owned facilities by the Unaffordable Care Act: these are just a few examples of power granted to the sellers by the legislative concubines, always at the expense of the buyer. This power shift has been with us so long that even those who claim to be free marketeers can get sucked in. Here is a comment at the website mises.org in response to a very positive article about a patient experience at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. This comment is a tribute to the success of the hospital poor-mouthing propaganda campaign: Ah. The poor hospital, suffering with so much uncertainty. The author of this comment is not unique, having succumbed to the supposed plight of the seller, discounting the buyer's role. "In what other industry are the problems of the seller the buyer's problem?" asks Jay Kempton. How is it that craftsmen and others in the market provide quotes with the uncertainty they face? Many years ago, I solicited a bid from a carpenter to build a deck in my backyard. He made some measurements, asked what type of wood I had in mind, and gave me a bid. He encountered some difficulty setting his posts due to a rock formation not far under the surface, but this wasn't his first rodeo, and he had made an allowance for this. Difficulties that he had encountered in the past were baked into his margin. If these difficulties didn't materialize, he was more profitable. If they did, he had made an allowance. A margin based on the idea of a bell curve is not that difficult and is exactly how our prices are constructed at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. Why are hospitals exempt from this discipline? Why is the uncertainty every other industry must endure intolerable in the medical industry? Or to the point of our message today, why are the difficulties of the seller of any interest whatsoever to the buyer or the public at large? How can this ever change? This will change when the medical buyer, like every other consumer, lays true claim to his proper place and votes with his feet when treated with contempt. Hospital executives don't worry about buyers with choices. They cannot fathom the idea that there is any such thing as a choice in an industry devoted to limiting choice. With their heads in the sand, drunk with arrogance, the time is now for buyers, particularly the self-funded buyers, to act. They can begin by understanding and embracing their rightful place and therefore the power they wield and then acting with confidence. As Matt Ohrt has said, "Quit feeding the beast," and demand that sellers accommodate your preferences. As the awareness of our free market movement spreads, the shift in power to the consumer is inevitable, a shift that is already increasingly visible. The eternal challenge of government has been the subjugation of the many by the few, for if the few awaken to government's countless scams, the mass of people will become unmanageable and ungovernable. They will revolt. The challenge of the medical industry complex has also been the subjugation of the many by the few. The healthcare system in this country is not a disaster for everyone, after all. It is an orgy of robbery of the many by the few. Governments and this medical cartel use the same methods to maintain control, using fear, primarily. Fear, along with the purposeful placement of the seller at an advantage, and therefore placing the consumer and patient at a disadvantage, has kept the masses from rising up. Until now. The revolution has begun, and the traditional mold is crumbling. The alternative healthcare nation is within view. The time for the confident medical consumer has arrived, and the time has also arrived for price gougers and the rest of the bandits to fear a discriminating buyer and in enterprise recognize the customer as captain, as Mises did. Agreed. We need a medical revolution in the country, one where the consumer is the captain of the ship.