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PREACH! IMO, all private schools should be moved up one class from their enrollment size. I know this upsets all private school supporters and such, but you know it needs to happen. No private schools should exist in 1A, no matter the enrollment.

Carmel's youth programs, especially at the Junior High level, is in shambles I've been told. Participation numbers are significantly down and the most affluent of the Junior High's had some of the lowest numbers they've ever seen. There seems to be some real disconnect between the high school program and the junior high feeder schools. How much of that lies solely on the varsity coaching staff can be debated but it's definitely factoring in to their recent lack of success.

At the minimum, they should be one of the Top 5 teams in the state every year. But if their coach is one of those guys who is required to teach all day, coach for pennies on the dollar, then go home and tend to his family, then we could have an issue. Some good coaches actually do do that, but I wouldn't blame a guy for putting family before football based on their pay scale. In simple terms, if you took one coach and cloned him to coach every team in the state, Carmel should come out on top 50% of the time and hit Top 5 status 100% of the time.

This is why I picked Merrillville with their 80 D1 players to beat Valpo

Move all private schools up and it makes this version 1A a lot more competitive. IMO no private should be 1A. Yep, I said it.

Central Catholic has a very good offense passing attack. Field conditions of what I just watched in LaVille this past weekend, limits a passing efficiency of team like LCC, just slows everything down when you cannot stop on a dime on all that fun stuff. Weather and Field Conditions play roles in playoffs.

And the injury excuse doesn’t apply. Before the injury his stats are really bad

Well….truth be told from around 1996-2017, Chatard won 11 Championships and if they threw more than 4 passes a game it was considered an excessive aerial display - unless 45 pitch tosses per game to the RB running between tackles can be considered passing. With that, I’ll admit it’s a lot more entertaining to watch these days.

The East Saint Louis Athletic program in NO WAY can even be compared to that of Tech. ESL McKinley and ESL Lincoln closed within that district years ago and THAT gave them a multitude of athletic ability that was able to be tapped into. It was a self-sustaining situation. Add that to the legacy of the Women's (and Men's) Track and Field programs, the Basketball programs (including ESL Lincoln); How is a HS withing a a LARGER ISP District (Tech) even on par, or could even be compared? Clearly (the) ESL Flyers have taken pride in their athletic programs, so much so, that kids OUTSIDE of their district (and Illinois) transfer there to participate in their activities. Big time difference!

This is a school district that looks very similar to Carmel. Singular high school that grew organically to its size. Sitting north of a major metropolitan area. Close enough for all the benefit and far enough north to mitigate the problems. Small, singular community feel with lots of resources at its disposal. Old stomping grounds before moving up this way ... less than 5 minutes from the high school ... takes about 10 minutes now with all the traffic. Incidentally, FRL is roughly around 12% there.

I suspect there are about 63-64 other folks that hold a different opinion about LCC re-visiting 1A. You got that right!!!! LOTS of people rooting hard for LCC this Friday- 2A a great fit for them 😁

I suspect there are about 63-64 other folks that hold a different opinion about LCC re-visiting 1A.

Earlier in the week, @Bobref started a thread titled "Sectional Draw 2023" and the thread kind of went a couple directions away from the intended purpose. One of those directions pertained to the notion that 6A and 1A should be the classifications with 32 teams rather than 6A and 5A. This topic interested me, and I decided to take a deep dive researching it. It took me about ten hours total over the course of several days to compile. I'm not saying this to get a pat on the back, but to help you understand I didn't just breeze through it without any deep thought or research. Nevertheless, for this particular scenario, I compiled lists for 1A through 5A using the most recent enrollment numbers the IHSAA released (which was two years ago). I excluded 6A since it obviously wouldn't be affected by the change. In compiling the classification lists, the goal was to base it off this specific year's tournament in regard to the Fort Wayne Dwenger situation and the teams playing up due to the success factor. The 1A through 5A breakdown for this year's tournament is the following: 5A - 31 teams 4A - 64 teams 3A - 64 teams 2A - 62 teams 1A - 58 teams Total - 279 teams I wanted to keep these numbers as similar as possible. This meant that 5A would have 63 teams rather than 64 as a result of the IHSAA moving FW Dwenger down in the middle of the classification period. Therefore, these were the classification numbers I came up with: 5A - 63 teams 4A - 64 teams 3A - 64 teams 2A - 56 teams 1A - 32 teams Total - 279 teams After compiling lists for the classifications, I wanted to look at the ranges for each classification from the largest school to the smallest school. See below. 5A (63 teams) Largest School: Harrison (WL) - 2,079 students Smallest School: New Haven - 1,064 students 4A (64 teams) Largest School: Kankakee Valley - 1,062 students Smallest School (aside from the success factor team): Bellmont - 641 students Success Factor Team: Evansville Memorial - 556 students 3A (64 teams) Largest School: John Glenn - 638 students Smallest Schools: North Putnam and Tell City - 444 students 2A (56 teams) Largest School: Indianapolis Scecina - 439 students Smallest School: Covington - 294 students Success Factor Team: Lafayette Central Catholic - 296 students 1A (32 teams) Largest School: Fremont - 291 students Smallest School: Attica - 170 students Here are the ranges from the scenario above compared to the current numbers (excluding success factor teams): 5A: 1,064 - 2,079 (currently 1,513 - 2,079) 4A: 641 - 1,062 (currently 795 - 1,510) 3A: 444 - 638 (currently 511 - 790) 2A: 294 - 439 (currently 379 - 510) 1A: 170 - 291 (currently 170 - 378) Instead of just compiling a list of classifications given the scenario, I wanted to get the full scope of what this could look like as it pertains to sectional assignments. As a result, I put together classification maps and spent a ton of time trying to come up with sectional assignments that limit travel time as best as possible while also ensuring schools from the same school district aren't split up. I cannot stress enough how hard I tried to keep travel times down. I flirted with many different scenarios by looking at the travel times on Google Maps but some long trips just couldn't be helped. It's important to note I'm only including these sectional assignments to give you an idea of how 1A through 5A could look given the hypothetical 32 team 1A scenario. I'm not necessarily saying this is how they should look. See the link below to view the classification/sectional assignment maps. https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1SqvN_8IxXWiJQxvs4E0RSxadUGh_f9k&usp=sharing Here are the sectional assignments I came up with. 5A (63) Sectional 9 (8): East Chicago Central, Gary West, Hammond Central, Hammond Morton, Harrison (WL), Lowell, McCutcheon, Munster Sectional 10 (8): Chesterton, Hobart, LaPorte, Merrillville, Michigan City, Mishawaka, South Bend Adams, Valparaiso Sectional 11 (8): Columbia City, Concord, Goshen, Huntington North, Kokomo, Logansport, Northridge, Plymouth Sectional 12 (7): DeKalb, Fort Wayne North, Fort Wayne Snider, Fort Wayne South, Fort Wayne Wayne, Muncie Central, New Haven Sectional 13 (8): Anderson, Greenfield-Central, Indianapolis Attucks, Indianapolis Roncalli, Mt. Vernon (Fortville), New Palestine, Pendleton Heights, Richmond Sectional 14 (8): Columbus East, East Central, Franklin, Greenwood, Jennings County, Seymour, Shelbyville, Whiteland Sectional 15 (8): Bloomington North, Bloomington South, Decatur Central, Martinsville, Mooresville, Plainfield, Terre Haute North, Terre Haute South Sectional 16 (8): Bedford North Lawrence, Castle, Evansville Central, Evansville Harrison, Evansville North, Evansville Reitz, Floyd Central, New Albany 4A (64) Sectional 17 (8): Hanover Central, Highland, Kankakee Valley, New Prairie, South Bend Clay, South Bend Riley, South Bend St. Joseph, South Bend Washington Sectional 18 (8): Angola, Culver Academy, East Noble, Leo, Mishawaka Marian, NorthWood, Wawasee, West Noble Sectional 19 (8): Bellmont, Delta, Fort Wayne Dwenger, Jay County, Marion, Mississinewa, Norwell, Yorktown Sectional 20 (8): Frankfort, Guerin Catholic, Hamilton Heights, Lebanon, Peru, Twin Lakes, Western, West Lafayette Sectional 21 (8): Brebeuf Jesuit, Crawfordsville, Danville, Edgewood, Indianapolis Shortridge, Indianapolis Washington, Northview, Owen Valley Sectional 22 (8): Batesville, Beech Grove, Connersville, Franklin County, Greensburg, Indianapolis Chatard, New Castle, Rushville Sectional 23 (8): Charlestown, Corydon Central, Lawrenceburg, Madison, North Harrison, Scottsburg, Silver Creek, South Dearborn Sectional 24 (8): Boonville, Evansville Bosse, Evansville Memorial, Gibson Southern, Jasper, Mt. Vernon (Posey), Vincennes Lincoln, Washington 3A (64) Sectional 25 (8): Benton Central, Boone Grove, Calumet, Griffith, Hammond Noll, Rensselaer Central, River Forest, Whiting Sectional 26 (8): Bremen, Fairfield, Jimtown, John Glenn, Knox, Lakeland, Rochester, Tippecanoe Valley Sectional 27 (8): Bluffton, Fort Wayne Concordia, Fort Wayne Luers, Garrett, Heritage, Manchester, Wabash, Woodlan Sectional 28 (8): Alexandria-Monroe, Blackford, Eastbrook, Eastern (Greentown), Maconaquah, Northwestern, Oak Hill, Tipton Sectional 29 (8): Greencastle, North Montgomery, North Putnam, Southmont, South Vermillion, Tri-West, Western Boone, West Vigo Sectional 30 (8): Centerville, Christel House Manual, Frankton, Heritage Christian, Indianapolis Ritter, Lapel, Purdue Polytechnic, Speedway Sectional 31 (8): Brown County, Brownstown Central, Cascade, Indian Creek, Mitchell, Monrovia, Salem, Triton Central Sectional 32 (8): Evansville Mater Dei, Heritage Hills, North Posey, Pike Central, Princeton, Southridge, Sullivan, Tell City 2A (56) Sectional 33 (8): Andrean, Lake Station, LaVille, North Judson, North Newton, South Central (Union Mills), Wheeler, Winamac Sectional 34 (7): Adams Central, Central Noble, Churubusco, Eastside, Prairie Heights, South Adams, Whitko Sectional 35 (8): Carroll (Flora), Clinton Prairie, Covington, Delphi, Lafayette Central Catholic, Lewis Cass, Pioneer, Seeger Sectional 36 (6): Elwood, Madison-Grant, Monroe Central, Sheridan, Taylor, Winchester Sectional 37 (6): Covenant Christian, Eastern Hancock, Indianapolis Scecina, Knightstown, Park Tudor, Shenandoah Sectional 38 (6): Hagerstown, Milan, North Decatur, Northeastern, Switzerland County, Union County Sectional 39 (7): Cloverdale, Eastern Greene, Linton-Stockton, North Knox, Parke Heritage, Riverton Parke, South Putnam Sectional 40 (8): Clarksville, Crawford County, Eastern (Pekin), Forest Park, Paoli, Perry Central, Providence, South Spencer 1A (32) Sectional 41 (4): Bowman Academy, Frontier, South Newton, Tri-County Sectional 42 (4): Culver, North White, Triton, West Central Sectional 43 (4): Caston, Clinton Central, North Miami, Tri-Central Sectional 44 (4): Fremont, Northfield, Southern Wells, Southwood Sectional 45 (4): Cambridge City Lincoln, Tri, Union City, Wes-Del Sectional 46 (4): Edinburgh, Indianapolis Lutheran, Indianapolis Tindley, South Decatur Sectional 47 (4): Attica, Fountain Central, North Central (Farmersburg), North Vermillion Sectional 48 (4): North Daviess, Springs Valley, Tecumseh, West Washington I hope you all find this information as interesting as I did. Does this information change your original opinion? Should 5A remain at 32 teams or should 1A have 32 teams instead? Feel free to provide your thoughts and share any ideas you have.

Diluting the pool of actual competitive teams in 1a even more than it currently is, what a good idea...

So your telling me Rochester playing Caston and Culver would have made them better and more prepared for LCC? All the more reason Rochester needs to get the win, and send them back down to 1A 😉

@Staxawax I am happy for you guys. Good luck this week and well hopefully next week as well

I haven’t seen this much pride since that big parade 🏳️‍🌈 I gotta go

The only thing that pride did was get you bounced first round of the sectional. And my mama said visors are the devil!

North Vermillion over Clinton Prairie - if the game were at CP I might think differently. Might be the best game of all of the HHC sectional games. Eastern over Tipton - Blue Devils only win was over a winless team. Don't see the Comets slipping up in this one. Tri Central over West Central - Trojans vs. Trojans. I'll take the boys from Sharpsville over the boys from Francesville, especially at home. Carroll over Caston - Hoosier North fans will say Caston has a shot. I think the Comets get shot down by the Cougars by a bunch. Sheridan over Tindley - Tindley will bring some athletes, but the Hawks should prevail rather easily. Park Tudor over Clinton Central - u-g-l-y, you ain't got no alibi, this is ugly. I think three teams easily move on, with TC & CP in toss ups.

You're a fan, so you should feel this way about your team. I'm sure they appreciate the support. For the record, Seeger is a borderline 1A-2A school with a little under 400 students. SV is the largest 2A school with over 500 students, so not truly an apples to apples comparison. You should at least dip your toes a little deeper in 2A & 3A in the out of conference just to give you some idea of what you're up against. Beating up on weak or mediocre 1A opponents only gives you a false sense of confidence. As for this week's games, I see only NV as a slight favorite over the Gophers. If the game were at CP I might lean a different way. If Seeger were home I might take them, but the trip to Walton tips the scales to the Kings. CC has to be heavily favored over RP. It doesn't matter if they play on grass, turf or a cornfield, CC has athletes and they may slow down a bit, but not enough.

Looking at the predictions for the NP @ MD game, it is interesting how Massey & CalPreps have nearly identical scores but predict different winners. Algos gone wild! Massey gives nod to MD, CalPreps picks the Vikings and John Harrel picks the Vikings by a TD 28 - 21. No idea how this one turns out just hoping for a good game and that MD finds a way to keep "The Streak" alive for one more year! All my NP friends are wearing me out with their; "This is the year!" comments...could be, should be but... https://tenor.com/view/winning-streak-gif-25377091 <div class="tenor-gif-embed" data-postid="25377091" data-share-method="host" data-aspect-ratio="1.33333" data-width="100%"><a href="https://tenor.com/view/winning-streak-gif-25377091">Winning Streak GIF</a>from <a href="https://tenor.com/search/winning-gifs">Winning GIFs</a></div> <script type="text/javascript" async src="https://tenor.com/embed.js"></script>

Changing football kickoff for a kickball game? What is this world coming to?

Columbus North Seymour Floyd Central Castle Greenwood Evansville Reitz

The parity in the Mid-State is amazing. Not a knock on them. They're the lightweight version of the Hoosier Crossroads Conference. A few very good teams with average records due to strength of Conference.

This seems to make sense, because the word is that Penn's best don't play football anymore. Rather than playing multiple sports, more students are specializing and that is taking away from the talent pool that Penn had the benefit of picking from. Also, a lot of parents up in our area just think football is going to lead to long term health issues, and prevent their children from participating in the sport. My child attends a local catholic middle school up here, and I was helping with the schools middle school football team, from what I was told just in the last five years they went from a team of two deep to no longer being a team. We were so low on numbers we were absorbed by another school. Soccer participation is up in these schools and Lax participation is up as well. Football is declining. I am not shocked that Carmel may be suffering from parents who think they are doing what is best for their child and even specialization.

I think it’s becoming a bit of a culture at Carmel. This’ll piss @Footballking16 off but I’ve long been a believer that socioeconomic status determines, in large part, how successful a school’s athletic program is… Carmel has the opposite problem of Tech. Their disadvantaged population (just under 10 percent at last check) is a detriment in football because those kids simply don’t have the same “grit” as districts in the sweet spot of 20-35%. Football (safety issues) has become the devil to “soccer moms” in many areas and Carmel likely has more than its fair share of those compared to other areas. Once again another theory…that I’ll get skull dragged for. Tee off.

Most people were happy with one class basketball. They should get rid of the success factor. Nobody seems to be in the right class. One class football might stop some of the whining.

I don’t disagree with diminishing returns but I greatly disagree with calling it a detriment.

Proud of our sons and their accomplishments does not mean we "think we're badass." We are, however, very proud...Proud of Coach Barrett and his staff and the program they have built. Proud of the character development/community service aspect that is built into the program. Proud of our "12th man" for packing the stands at both home and away games. Proud that they have turned around a program that was struggling. Proud of the 2 youth football super bowl wins this season and proud of the Banks of the Wabash tournament win for our middle school program. Proud of Coach Barrett's 100th career win as a head coach. And yes, we are proud of winning the WRC conference championship. It's a shame that some of you take that pride as arrogance. I wish you all could see what I (we) see. Week after week, we read on here that we are "1A dominant" like it is a negative thing. We read that we should be winning those games and because we were 2A...and that we should be in a different conference. I never once read the same thing about Seeger, which is also 2A. And I don't ever remember reading that we should be in a different conference several years ago when we were getting beat by your 1A teams...then it was OK that we were in the conference when your teams were beating us handily and running up the score on the big, evil 2A Wildcats. This season is over and next season started Saturday morning, Wildcats. Visor up, baby!

You can keep doing this all night. It won’t ever change the fact that the root of the problem is the same common denominator; lack of commitment/structure at the lower levels.

What are you even talking about? This has nothing to do with CG. It is about Carmel and your incorrect take on having more students. No big deal. It's hardly the first time you've been wrong.

Rochester/LCC/LaVille and Bluffton are all having a solid season, for sure. LCC hasn't lost its three games to just anyone - Guerin Catholic, Hamilton Heights, and West Lafayette. All 3 are having a good run this season and are a class above at 3A. Rochester, with just 2 losses, is also having quite the season, dropping games to a very good TValley and Peru. In looking at the schedules of those listed above, I would say that LaVille has the weaker schedule. The biggest factor for all of these teams is - Mr. Obvious here - the injury factor. Do we know if all of these teams are healthy heading into the Friday semifinals? Yeah, all the coaches say, next man up when that happens. But when you have one guy go down that holds down 2-3-4 positions on the team and many times is one of the better athletes on the teams, it can be a tall task. Would like to see some of these teams play in the regional, semi-state, state finals with a healthy roster! as always, the game is better from_the_sidelines007

I know Rochester gets greif for their schedule but other than the 3 early season games, LCCs isn't anything to brag about. It doesn't help them not being tested for so long...

It's not on the decline. As a '71 graduate, going to state in BBL was electric. The whole town was buzzing. Now, they've taken on the Ricky Bobby approach....... "If you ain't 1st you're last". There's no decline. Just a few leaner years on the talent side (and maybe coaching too?) It's happened before and it will happen again.

Interesting... Does Massey give a lot of weight to SOS? Sagarin has MD at 35th and NP at 212th. You know, the "gauntlet" and all... LOL

The Doggz survive FBTL’s stunt. Pretty wet for 1.6 inches the entire month. Maybe the field they wanted to destroy. For turf is the surface everyone seems to enjoy. Finally the rematch we’ve been waiting for. My stool at Tubas reserved for a pre-game pour. My wife is still mad from the party after the sectional game in 18. Hopefully my clown friends get me home early after watching these two great teams. BL’s are on ice in Triple C’s cooler he stole from work. K9 said “it’s just one of the perks.” I’ll take the Bulldogz by 7, this is the year they won’t flop. Don’t think the return of the big QB is enough to get the Tigers over the top. I think the big boys up front will hit the Tigers in the mouth. Whoever wins I hope they make it to Indy to represent the south. On Friday Coach U will release the hounds. Only 4 more days till Casketnation is flooded with clowns.

I can be found at Lysander’s Secret Polar Fortress of Ineptitude (vague reference No. 1) where I will have intermittent contact with the GID via my hamster wheel-powered HAM radio channeled through two Cracker Jack box rings (vague, if somewhat uninteresting, reference No. 2) allowing me to maintain periodic interweb contact via ionosphere bouncing (vague and somewhat more interesting reference No. 3 - see “Kelly’s Heroes”) to the last vestiges of the Free World as can only be found here on the GID. Keep on rockin’ in the Free World, ladies, (kind of fun vague reference No. 4).

I’m ready for some more Cathedrals comments. I swear to God I am

If your private island retreat doesn't have internet, I've heard you can use those rings in series to corral the interweb signal.

I’m not comparing districts smartass. But you knew that. I made the comparison between East St Louis High School and Arsenal Tech, two inner-city schools with identical demographics and socio-economic status. If you’ve followed any of Temp’s diatribes on this subject over the years, a school like ESL should never be able to succeed (low enrollment/high f/r/l program) given those two factors. No need to announce your presence as the smartest guy in the room, just hit submit reply.

East St Louis is the only school district in America to ever consolidate? I guess I do learn something new every day.

It's not a ridiculous comparison. It's an impoverished area with similar demographics to that of the Tech High School makeup who excels in many sports despite that fact. Temp has told us for years that if you have an 80-90% f/r lunch rate and aren't in the top half of your classification enrollment, you have no chance of succeeding athletically. ESL is a singular example that completely contradicts this narrative on top of the many examples I have provided in the past.

Is that not what IPS has done over the years? Shutdown multiple high schools to consolidate down towards one bigger high school? And IPS is 6x larger than ESLD, not sure you know what you're talking about.