PDB26

No argument here. I meant to add something to that effect previously. A special group can and likely will come along and make a nice run. I think it's going to be that much more difficult for some of these programs where people expect lots of success to reach a level of sustainability given the realities of the competitive environment.

Nothing but respect for Snider and their success here, but the context is totally different. Teams like Penn and Snider could be successful because central Indiana wasn't a murderer's row of football programs 20-25 years ago. That was obviously changing around 2000-2005, and now central Indiana has so many good programs playing each other all the time. I think that's the difference right there in the big class football. HHF mentioned S&C and that's absolutely part of it, but the schedule is 1a or 1b. This would be beneficial and it's feasible. Freedom to get two out of conference would be huge.

It would be interesting to see when schools first--outside of BD, since their program is rather well known in that regard--started hiring S&C coaches. I think S&C is one of the vital differentiators--it may be the most significant--but the competitive environment is the most significant to me. Why else should schools hire S&C coaches except to gain an advantage in a highly competitive environment? There's a lot of truth here, especially in that better competition breeds better programs, and that Homestead and Carroll have benefited by playing in the SAC. Your overall point about competition is well taken. When you look into it more closely, surprisingly, there isn't a ton of crossover between the two leagues. Is it fair to say the MIC has toughened up the HCC, maybe. Avon, Brownsburg, Fishers, and HSE have the most crossover with MIC schools, somewhere between 10-20 games over the past 15-25 years, and Carmel has played Noblesville a lot, which doesn't seem to have toughened up the Millers too much. I think it's more likely the HCC schools are in a similarly ultra-competitive environment to the one that the MIC schools are in, and the schools in HCC, like those in the MIC, aren't--with the exception of Carmel--wildly different in their enrollments. I guess this should be a positive for northern Indiana's 6As; now they just have to find a way to play each other all the time.

Not local anymore, so I'm curious. How many families is a lot? Have they all gone at once or how consistent is the movement to Edwardsburg? Do all of the boys in those families play football? Are those boys so good that they have affected the Edwardsburg program to the degree that you might be suggesting. Has the Edwardsburg program improved on its own? Would the number of players that would have played at Penn affect the program materially? There have always been families or players that have looked for the "small school experience", and, with the exception of one player that comes to mind from years ago, it's difficult to make an argument that their departure significantly affected the program. If you can say, for example, six families with 12 boys between them moved to Edwardsburg between the years 2017-2021 and all of those boys definitely would have started or contributed at Penn, then perhaps relocation to Edwardsburg is draining the talent pool to a degree. And, it would be fair to say that an individual can have an outsized affect, but aren't families moving all the time from and to everywhere? How many families move into the district with football playing boys? What's so significant about the families that are leaving versus anyone moving in to the district?

Do we know how many guys played both ways for Marian? What about the quarterback, a sophomore, correct? How's Marian's depth in general? Marian's performance from last year against Penn was going to be impossible to replicate this year. I thought it would be hard for Elkhart--not quite as hard as it ended up being--to replicate their performance this year. This is an interesting question. I think most 6A teams can be had on any given night by plenty of 5A teams, but Penn getting its doors blown off by Valpo on opening night was surprising and disappointing. The loss to LaPorte was surprising--late collapse and all--and I agree that the result would likely be different now. The games with St. X and Cathedral were demoralizing for sure. Maybe Penn wins against alternative competition on those nights, maybe not. If Penn didn't have these two demoralizing losses on the schedule the LaPorte game probably gets looked at differently. The Valpo game is still the most disappointing.

I wouldn't say one hit wonder, and I think it's very early to make that type of assessment of the Elkhart program. There was at least a small but vocal voice in this forum that took Elkhart's success as a sign that it had emerged as this dominant force in Northern Indiana football. I think many of the same structural forces that hamstring Penn or any other of the larger schools outside of Indy affect Elkhart and will continue to affect that program. I was able to get back to town for the previous two games (St. X and Elkhart) and here are some takeaways. In the same way that St. X was from a different planet than Penn--100 man roster with just two Sophomores on it, a defense of mobile six-footers, dynamic game changers, etc.--Penn is and is likely to continue to be a lesser version of that when compared to Elkhart. I don't know anyone of great significance was out for Elkhart, but they had about a 65-75 man roster while Penn still keeps about 100 guys on the "varsity" roster. That makes a difference. Both teams struggled in special teams play--Elkhart was poor in a number of these aspects, but I've also never seen such poor long snapping for Penn--and neither side had reliable quarterback play in the passing game. The ingredients for sustained, consistent programmatic success are there for Elkhart, and it is unfair to expect that program to emerge fully formed after last season alone. However, I have also been critical of the NIC and the impact that the conference has on both of these programs especially when you look at competition at freshman and junior varsity levels. Objectively speaking, the size disparity between the members of the big school division effectively puts a cap on the development of non-varsity players at the larger schools.

Bowling Alone is a book published in 2000 about the decline of bowling leagues and what the author thinks that means for American society at large. I never read it, but I think the decline of bowling leagues, from what I remember and probably in response to this book, was a widely interpreted to mean that Americans were becoming more insular. Certainly, there would be other factors at play, but do a quick search on the book and you can find the publisher's page that describes what the author attempts to show. There is no reason to think that other community activities or school extracurriculars--even those for the most vibrant of us all--would be immune to some sort of larger and pervasive societal malady of indifference, the struggle with the demands of modern life or a disinterest or inability to seek connection with others...in person.

The school corporation does accept students from outside of the district. Thank you. This is an interesting topic. The youth league used to be called Granger Rocket Football, and, as I understood it, it was, if not exclusively, almost exclusively a Penn youth league. It is now called Rocket Football and Cheer and seems to service players from a wider geographic area--not a bad thing in the grand scheme--but that could lead to some disconnect. I seem to recall, during the early 2000s, an expansion in the number of teams within the rocket league, but after looking at their website it seems they're down to ten. Maybe there is just less participation within the traditional Penn boundaries at that level. One of the teams in the league is coached by former Mishawaka players, which isn't a problem and John Carlson was a DAMN good football player for the Cavemen. I'm sure those kids are well coached. Is it possible that could lead to some disconnect with the program? I can't say for sure, but I don't know what the general level of connection to the Penn program is for the average parent or coach in the rocket league anymore or if it's all that different. I have lots of thoughts on creeping apathy as well--and I'm happy to go on about that too--but I think its mostly structural and outside of the program's control.

Laporte and MC are an hour more or less. Valpo, Chesterton and Portage are all basically the same toll road exit and you get to avoid a lot of the headache. Yeah, the others are a little more of a challenge to get to. However, the various programs have been making trips to the region for decades, and not just one offs either. As a player, we made enough of those trips that I can say I didn't mind. If they're worried about gate, I'm not sure they're getting all that much to begin with.

I might be the only one willing to dive in here. I do have some thoughts. Consistent, strong competition has been absent for too long, while the biggest guns in the state have only gotten more competitive with each other, all the way through their programs. I'm not sure that Penn's offensive transition to a more modern style truly fits the program's demographics, and I think that affects their ability to play the complementary style of football that defined the program for so many years. Even Penn's best quarterbacks, did not, for the most part, light it up through the air except for playing off of the run game, and they were often a significant, effective, component of the run game, even if in a undesigned way. I agree that other schools have caught up, although I disagree somewhat with the characterization of the Penn teams of yore and their size relative to the peer competition. While I played on teams that had a couple of monsters - perhaps three division 1 big guys over my four years - Penn has been a program that has gotten by with more from less in terms of physical development and impressiveness. Penn did often have average to slightly above average sized backs, and that has seemed to change over the years. That said, the team is much less impressive off the hoof relative to the top competition than they already often were in years past. The high school has employed a strength and conditioning coach for at least four years now, if records are accurate, which I imagine is a significantly shorter term than many of the other large programs competing with each other in the Indy metro area. We all know Ben Davis had a dedicated strength coach for decades. Been setting in for many years I'm afraid, and is a logical outcome of much of the success and preordained outcomes of many contests against local competition for decades. Even when the program was humming along there was apathy with regard to much of the schedule. This has been my argument for years, and I maintain that it's especially important at the freshman and junior varsity levels. Penn's freshman and JVs almost never play against the best in their age group because of the size of the local teams requires those players to take varsity reps on Friday nights. Additionally, I think that level of competition in the MIC and HCC encourages innovation and has far reaching effects within those programs. The weekly grind of competition has been a huge de facto advantage for the MIC programs, and I think that became obvious relatively early in the 2000s. Now the HCC is in a similar position. No way around it, the administration blundered in 2002, and if the invitation is still standing - truly - they have continued to blunder to this day. Plenty of evidence exists out there that Penn is comfortable with teams traveling for much of their competition in all sports. I don't know if the source is too reliable or not, but public school review has data going back into the 90s that you could comb through to get an idea. It's not aggregated but it exists. These are just some thoughts, of course.

The same is true in the NIC with the exception that Tuesday night prior to the first sectional game has been the end of the frosh season. So, NIC teams lose each Thursday practice for the first eight games plus the Tuesday and Wednesday in the last week. In my mind each Thursday game, any weekday game, is a lost practice. A Thursday game probably means that you're not getting much of a Friday practice either, maybe film and some recovery running. To me, that means you get Monday-Wednesday each week plus however you want to count Friday. Playing on Saturday would give you at least four practices each week, but it probably turns into five because I don't know why you'd want to completely waste Friday. I'd be looking to maximize the number of reps for every player whether they're game reps or practice reps with in all levels of a program. It seems like a no-brainer if you can play Saturday and get eight to sixteen practices during a season. Maybe they're speed and training days or anything else to carve out some competitive advantage.

Playing games on Thursday nights has always seemed like a waste of nine additional practices to me.

In NIC country we play freshman games on Thursday nights. I think most JV games have gone to Saturday, although I remember a time when there was a Saturday/Monday split.

Very true, and I didn't mean for that to come across as challenging as it might have. Specialization is such a serious problem that I am always interested in discussing. Not sure if there's an actual solution though.

I don't worry about it. In my experience, the families that are most concerned about this type of thing find a parochial school or a smaller public school. I also don't think it's that much of a problem since school consolidation will likely create more opportunities to be on a team. A decade ago, Elkhart Central used to have an abysmal freshman football team. We're talking 15-16 kids (with a couple sophomores thrown in there, they were always up front about it). That's not fun, and I wouldn't describe it as an opportunity. I would imagine that the freshman football team at Elkhart High School is a lot of fun to be a part of now. It helps that they have a good program in place (which should increase participation on its own in theory), but the team would also logically have more potential players. The opportunity to participate is different than the opportunity to start. If we focus on football only, and even at the largest schools, nearly every player that makes it through their senior year should have had ample opportunity at a starting position. If they didn't end up starting then they probably weren't able to perform at the necessary level. I don't want to disparage guys who don't or didn't start, but how many of those guys (hedging a little) would have started somewhere else anyway? I get what you're saying to some degree with sports that have smaller teams. But I would apply logic similar to the football example to this problem. When you're cutting down to a manageable, reasonably sized basketball team or a hockey team or whatever, you're going to have a handful of guys that you know are automatically making the team. They're just that much better, faster, bigger, stronger etc. The bottom is usually pretty easy to cut away too. Kids that can't run, throw, jump, etc. The bubble is where you might lose some opportunity to be on the team and usually there is very little to distinguish the bubble guys from each other - which is how you end up on the bubble anyway. Anyway it's worthy of discussion. But have any studies suggested that school consolidation -> increased specialization? This does seem like a safe, common sense assumption, but usually consolidation is considered to lead to an increase in athletic and other extracurricular activity. Coaches, parents, the private coaching industry with travel sports industry (in other sports, but I guess 7 on 7 now) and the lure of scholarships are more likely culprits for specialization in my opinion. We could dance around the idea that more potential players and fewer spots (consolidation) allows for coaches to demand specialization, or for parents to encourage it, but from what I've seen I'd be less likely to point to consolidation as the driver of specialization, while I am willing to concede that it might be a factor. Most of the time in school coaches were the culprit when it came to forcing better players to specialize, and players did out of fear of retribution. They weren't the players that were at risk of getting cut because they couldn't play. Just an example of why I'm discussing this, but in my current line of work I can think of experiences with a handful of families with 10, 11, 12, 13 year old boys that have considered specializing or do specialize in hockey only. In Indiana. And it's not like they're the best players either. The best players are, of course, the best athletes. I totally agree with you on the destructive and limiting aspects of specialization, and I do everything I can to discourage it.

I think they're using the old Elkhart Central building specifically for freshmen.

No kidding. It hasn't happened yet, therefore it will not. Not sure how Penn to SAC is any more feasible then.

Penn and Elkhart to DAC, SAC opens schedule to non conference games. DAC, SAC schedule games with each other. DAC, SAC schedule games with HCC. Get JV games with those same opponents. There would still be a lot of work remaining for each program from that point, but I think that's the best place to start for the 5A and 6A schools in the north.

Agree. To some extent at least. Disagree. Impossible. Mishawaka's toughness is immutable. I'd be curious to hear from @LaSalle Lions 1976 on this. The disfunction, at least from the outside, has always seemed to be at a corporation level on top of any disfunction within the athletic department at the corporation level. Not sure how the interplay between the corporation's department and the schools' departments works out.

It's possible, but Mishawaka always had the toughest players. I think that Coach Aldrich's teams finished strong and Coach Curtis had success against us and teams in the DAC. I think their profile would have kept them competitive, but probably a higher degree of difficulty for them in the DAC based on size for football. I don't hate the idea, although I loved going to Lake Central every time we had a game there. It just felt mean over there. Ames is awesome, and that could be good. Maybe even a way to handle freshman and JV games if schools don't want to relinquish a Friday night at home.

Trying to get back on track with you, I don't know what this really means for the other schools, at least in football. Marian is relevant for now and maybe into the future. I think the parochial schools in this area have proven to be more boom and bust than the traditional parochial powers in the state, but that's no reason to believe they can't sustain success. Mishawaka leaving for the NLC was a damaging event for the NIC. The South Bend schools are a non-factor in football. Even Washington's mini-renaissance from 2008-2011 feels like a lifetime ago - and those were some very good teams! The NIC, having grown into this twelve school amalgam split into two divisions, feels like a conference without an identity. I think that it's in the conference's best interest for Penn and, probably, Elkhart to move along. I don't know if that power vacuum would positively affect the NIC, but I don't think it would be a negative for the remaining members.

I agree that there are some more complex travel issues. In my mind, it's just as important for football that freshman and JV teams are playing the conference opponents. I'd be fine with a football only arrangement, just, again, not sure it's totally necessary. If the DAC and Penn wanted it, I'm sure scheduling could get creative enough to get the long trips onto weekend/friday nights for most sports while trips to LaPorte, Michigan City, Valpo and Chesterton could be played at any time. I just remember how easily things fell apart over travel, and I just don't think it needs to be that way. I also think Mishawaka backing out of going to the DAC was more important than travel for Penn back then.

The thing is that Penn could move to the DAC in all sports and still play games against some programs in the NIC to fill out the schedule. So many schedules feature numerous DAC programs while Penn participates in the NIC. It would not require major reshuffling. Not to say that your solution wouldn't work, of course, just that it's probably not necessary.

Shared this in a different thread. It's Penn's away schedule for 2019-2020 in all sports, and they seem to be comfortable busing athletes to competition. Boys Basketball: LaPorte, Crown Point, Clay, Michigan City, Adams, Valpo, New Prairie, Northridge, St. Joe, Bremen, Marian. Some games were Saturdays and others were the school night variety. Girls basketball away: Oregon-Davis, Bremen, Lake Central, Warsaw, Lafayette Jeff, Marian, Clay, Merrillville, New Castle, Carmel, Adams, Ft. Wayne South, St. Joe. Baseball away: Noblesville, Lakeshore (MI), Bremen, Marian, Lake Central, Clay, New Prairie, Adams, Plymouth, St Joe (MI), Warsaw. Softball away: North Miami, Carroll, Portage, Munster, Riley, Bremen, Center Grove at Northwestern?, Elkhart Central, Carmel, Concord, Crown Point, Washington, John Glenn, Jimtown. Boys soccer: Northridge, Munster, Adams, Riley, Zionsville, Elkhart Central. Girls soccer: Homestead, Carroll, Indian Invite at Newton Park (Lakeville), Zionsville, St. Joe, Newton Park, Warsaw, Ft. Wayne Canterbury, Marian, Noblesville, Guerin Catholic. Volleyball is the only team sport that doesn't seem to do much travel. The "individual" sports are slightly more affected by a switch, but here's boys tennis away: Warsaw, Mishawaka, Elkhart Central, Culver, St. Joe, Concord, Carroll, Homestead. Girls tennis away: Mishawaka, East Noble, Homestead, Elkhart Central, Valpo, St. Joe, Avon, Culver. Boys/Girls swim away: Northridge, Munster, Washington, Lake Central, Bremen, Concord, Mishawaka. Wrestling and track are most affected. Not really sure about Golf, but I think they can probably handle it.

LOL. Really excited for Mishawaka programs getting out of the NIC. It's a great move for them. All upside in my opinion. Didn't realize my comments about Penn would spark something like that off. I was trying to engage with @Gindie, since there don't seem to be many Penn folks around here, on their comment earlier in the thread about DAC being too far for Penn to travel since they do a lot of travel for competition in most of their sports now. Sorry for that.