PDB26

I think they'd have a hard time not sending them the same direction. Thought it was pretty funny though, and it definitely sounded like something that would get said up around these parts.

That's exactly what would happen.

It's not untrue, but they also didn't play each other between 2012 and 2020. As far as evidence goes, that's evidence of nothing. However, I have to say that the loss this year has bothered me most. It's a game you should win but don't deserve to if you can't capitalize on four extra possessions. On a related note, I've seen few games that I felt Penn deserved to win, but, for whatever the reason, did not. The semi-state against Carmel in 2013 is one that comes to mind. I would have been very interested in seeing that team in the finals against WC. I also want to mention that the boys from Mishawaka were always the toughest bunch on our schedule. Those teams and the guys on them were always warriors and they never quit playing.(I still think Mishawaka made the right choice to leave the conference. Which is where this all started anyway.) I'm just not sure the evidence to suggest a true decline is there, Losing close games to Elkhart and Valpo, not a moral victory, shouldn't be taken as indicators of decline. Elkhart should be and was expected to be competitive with Penn from the start. That school would have been competitive in 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020. If they had existed there'd be a few more blemishes on Penn's conference record. It also would have been hugely helpful for the Penn program to have that school on the schedule. Valpo has been competitive with Penn for the most part even if that series is decidedly in Penn's favor still. Not winning a sectional for three years is not the expectation on Bittersweet Rd. The 2018 loss doesn't seem as bad since Valpo went to the semi-state at least. The other two don't look so great. Maybe, I'm trying to avoid banging on the staff or players. Maybe that makes me averse to throwing around the "down" term because of the connotation. I'm certainly not avoiding the term out of pride. If we're in the same position next year, then I'd be able to say that the program is definitively down. I responded to this above, but I guess I screwed it up somehow and deleted the quote. Penn's schedule is similar to those times. The same cannot be said for the teams playing in the MIC (HCC too as the donut counties grow). There are lots of important factors that go into building successful programs. I think the most profound and unique factor that the MIC has access to is the level of competition within their conference. I think this is important, and it doesn't matter if the goal is to compete with those teams or to be the dominant team in the north. Competition within a conference and at the freshman and JV levels matters for development. It matters for the evolution of a program. I agree with you on this point with the caveat that it's either indifference or complacency. It's possible that there's complacency about what it takes to help a program succeed from the administration and community as opposed to indifference, but it does seem that there is not the same fervor for success among those two groups. I think continued participation in the NIC, especially with the departure of Mishawaka, is pretty good evidence of complacency or indifference though.

Not really, no. I think it's fair to say that they have underperformed over the past two seasons, but they were in the finals in 2015 and 2017. Valpo just finished off their best three year run since Renn was lining up in the gun rifling it around the Region to Samardzija and company. Hate to lose three in a row to anyone, but that series hasn't always been one sided or anything. Wrong. Marian got their first win against Penn since 1973 this fall. Not a lot of games in that series, and even fewer competitive ones. Also, I don't know if I've ever see Penn take the ball from their opponent five times and lose. Congrats to Marian for overcoming that and getting the win, but I'm not staking a whole lot on that result. Sadly, yes. The series had gotten less one-sided since Mishawaka's breakthrough in 2009. Even more reason to ditch the NIC at this point. 0-1 is not a position the Kingsmen are used to occupying. Happy for the Elkhart merger and the coaching staff there. For both the kids in that program and the competition. This is at least partly true, but the same cannot be said at all for the teams in MIC or the HCC in that regard. Agreed. That's why they need to unhitch themselves from the NIC, preferably with Elkhart in tow. That offense has given Penn fits at times over the past 20 years, certainly. I don't think enough emphasis is put on the competitive advantage the MIC programs have gained through their association with each other. I think there's a reason that those schools have widened the gap between themselves and the rest of the state. It's not just because they have good athletes, that helps, but that the association between those schools has created layers of competition throughout those programs. Not just at the varsity level. I don't know if people realize how trivial a lot of the reps Penn kids, through no fault of their own,get in freshman and JV ball are. That's why I'm a proponent of them getting into the DAC. If a school goes 264-19 in a conference, they aren't getting much help at getting better.

Amazing success in and out of conference! I'm not down on Penn's coaches or players, but the NIC doesn't offer anything to the program's benefit anymore. NIC record from 1977-2020: 264-19

I think thought this was a fallacious argument in '02 - can't say for certain because I don't remember what every sport did for travel - and I definitely do now. Here are the 2019-2020 away schedules for Penn sports: 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. I don't think the football program is down, but it needs to compete weekly against 5A and 6A programs if the goal is to be competitive year in and year out with Indy. The only way to do that is to join the DAC or go independent in football.

You could probably make an argument for tackle starting in 8th or 9th grade if you were looking to push it back. USA Hockey has removed full bodychecking from youth hockey prior to 14U. Body contact and the basic physical elements of the game are still in play at younger ages, and building blocks for full bodychecking are expected to be coached at those levels. However, football is predicated on physical contact in ways that hockey is not. I accept 5th and 6th grade as fine starting points, although I think the arguments for what is gained by playing tackle ball earlier as opposed to later probably come down to arguing about things like toughness. And the tackling at those ages is usually laughable anyway. Not sure there's a ton of head rattling going on either. I think the best questions are: What makes the sport most accessible? What format at which ages allows the greatest number of players to fall in love with the game while still developing them as well rounded players? Does tackle football at earlier ages actually make for better tacklers and players by 9th grade, or is flag or some sort of hybrid football going to teach better body positioning? Is there some sort of hybrid format that allows for better development for players of all body types at different ages? What are the safety issues at different ages and do different formats allow for controls of any safety issues? I don't anticipate a ton of pro-8U tackle football responses here.

Penn now has TCU Freed Field and a Zolman Tire concession stand. Not sure where it ends. Freed Field was named after a Penn Township Trustee. While the renovations are nice, particularly the concourse area in the southwest corner of the stadium, a part of me feels like the place has been thoroughly sterilized through renovation. Beat me to it, one of the best stadiums in the state IMO Big time. It's got a rugged quality to it that matches their teams perfectly. Absolutely loved playing there (Rice Field would be my second favorite NIC location for a road game). I'm sure it helped that the environment was particularly hostile.

I think the higher-risk choice would have been to stay in the NIC. Good on Mishawaka for making a choice they feel most benefits their school and athletics programs. Too much potential for instability in the NIC.

A more balanced league, and Marian could still schedule some larger schools or the big time Catholic programs of similar size if they want to replace the competition lost. Probably not the best spot if they end up having to square off with Clay, Riley, Washington every year. Maybe SBCSC gets it figured out, but I feel like that's the refrain to a very familiar song. I'd expect the league to go back to rotating teams on and off of schedules in a two year pattern if it was reduced to 10 teams. Some (Penn-centric) numbers just to add to the idea of balancing out the NIC with the removal of Penn and Elkhart. Penn has only lost 20 conference games since joining the NIC in 1977. Penn lost a conference game on 9/27/85 and didn't lose again until 10/2/09. This means Penn lost 14 games in its first 9 seasons in the conference and 6 games in the last 12 seasons. Since 2009 Penn is 96-6 in conference play with three losses to Mishawaka (-16, 2009; -7, 2010; -7, 2018), and one to each of Elkhart (-1, 2020), Marian (-4, 2020) and New Prairie (-4, 2019). In 96 wins the margin of victory is 30.15 points. In 6 losses the margin is 6.5 points. Since 2018 Penn is 11-4 in the conference. The margin in wins is 20.54 and the margin in losses is 4. As I said earlier in the thread, the goal is to be consistently competitive with the 6As in Indy, and Penn and Elkhart will be better served getting out of the NIC and into the DAC where the members are much more similar.

Would you say that the majority of these games are competitive?

I was there; it was awesome and a great game. Penn had an 89 game regular season winning streak going until an October 11th date at Ben Davis that year as well. I was there; it was much less awesome and not much of a game either. It's a shame that series came to an end, at least for Penn.

All of that writing and no real solution offered. Indianapolis has always had the largest schools and the best athletes. Nothing new there. The salient point is that the best 6A competition in the state exists in the Indianapolis area and, most importantly, it is organized into one conference that pits all of the largest schools against each other. This has to have a meaningful developmental effect on member programs from top to bottom. Varsity players get more meaningful reps in more games. Varsity coaches get more meaningful and challenging reps, if you want to think of it that way, every game and offseason. Every game is a referendum on what you're doing all coaches at all programs, but the concentration of power in the MIC has to have a magnifying effect. How much have MIC programs evolved over the past 20 years? I don't follow MIC freshman and JV football very closely, but, there is no reason to believe that those games are not, on the whole, more competitive and beneficial to players and their development. Size matters in a developmental sense. If you have a league of large, healthy programs with high levels of participation at all three levels, you should see the best players improving at each level. Teams that consistently face weaker competition at the developmental levels will not see those same increases because they're already just better based on size alone. 1996: The MIC is formed. A conference member first appears in the largest class of the state finals in 1999 and every year since with the exception of 2010. Some years both participants are from the conference. You know how they say there isn't an off-week in the MIC? Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but it's doubtful you can say that if you're a 6A school playing in any other conference in the state.

Ok, that's what I was curious about. I didn't know that the magnet program was capped, but that makes it easy to adjust the enrollments then.

Haha, too much experience with and respect for all of those programs from me. I would have to see them go down and stay down to believe it. I'd react the same way about CG if this thread was reversed.

BD and WC in 2021.

How does the IB magnet program at Adams affect enrollment currently, and even if Riley's district is expanded? Does it at all?

First, I keep copy/pasting from a misspelling of Merrillville, sorry to any Pirates out there. My main focus with the school pairings was to get about as short a trip as possible for each school. I figured sending LC and Portage back and forth to each other along 30 would be the least desirable of all trips. Again, there could be a lot of flexibility in the pairing or scheduling of any other needed rivalries, either through the open dates or something other flexible scheduling scheme. These were just the two most basic options that seemed to clear the supposed hurdle of travel. Plenty of evidence to suggest that Penn is comfortable traveling for competition IN ALL SPORTS. I think that starting with Lafayette makes a lot of sense. The goal is to mount a challenge to the HCC and MIC, and we'd eventually see those teams trying to schedule DAC teams if that goal was met.

It appears to be the same coach. My guess is he's a defensive coach who understands his combination of athletic ability and a poor pursuit angle means he's not getting to the action with the official, so he's getting out to where all the other players are to try to keep the peace there.

This is how I envision the expanded DAC. There are divisions only serve the purpose of mitigating travel concerns. Membership: Penn, 3338; LC, 3316; Elkhart, 3185; CP, 2855; Portage, 2436; Merillville, 2187; Chesterton, 2063; Valparaiso, 2054; LaPorte, 1819; Michigan City, 1611 Penn, 3338; Elkhart, 3185; LaPorte, 1819/Michigan City, 1611; Valpo, 2054; Portage, 2436/Chesterton, 2063 + 2 interdivision play, 3 non-conference Lake Central, 3316; Crown Point, 2855; Michigan City, 1611/LaPorte, 1819; Merillville, 2187; Chesterton, 2063/Portage, 2436 + 2 interdivision play, 3 non-conference Or the DAC structures it so each school has a team they play every year and it’s a reasonably close game. Then the conference decides how many league games to schedule with teams rotating on and off. I still would want to see 2 or 3 non conference games. Nothing would preclude league members from scheduling each other in off years either. Penn, 3338; Elkhart, 3185 LaPorte, 1819; Michigan City, 1611 Valpo, 2054; Chesterton, 2063 Lake Central, 3316; Crown Point, 2855 Merillville, 2187; Portage, 2436 The final piece would be to establish some sort of long term arrangement or relationships with schools in the HCC, Jeff and Harrison, while still maintaining any other Region specific relationships and special games that are in place now. Looking Hobart for wish fulfillment. Two Fun facts: The first story I ever heard about Hobart was that my grandfather (allegedly) punched a guy out in the bathroom at the Brickie Bowl in '79, and the first time I encountered anyone from Hobart was when I went to the state finals for the full day as a kid in '96. I was standing in line with my mom, grandma, a couple other Penn old-timers and some dudes from Hobart. They were a little older, wearing letterman jackets, and awesome. We still talk about those two at family gatherings, partly because they were friendly, but mostly because they were talking about guys biting off fingers in fights. My guess is you had to punch the other guy out to keep all of your fingers.

It depends on how far north and exactly where you are when you're looking south.

Can't say for sure. I remember travel was the sticking point in '02, at least it was claimed, but I don't think that's the case. If Penn wants the program to be great they need the DAC. They've traveled more than ever in recent years, so I'd consider that encouraging. Not sure what the structure of the new DAC would be, but I'd want the ability to get a game or two out of the conference and still see everyone within the league over a two to three season span. The point of this arrangement is to get these 6A and 5A schools competing to in a similar fashion to what you have in the MIC and HCC. The Elkhart merger might be the last great hope for these teams even if Elkhart is not by itself. New NIC: SB Adams, 1913; SB Riley, 1148; SB Clay, 988; New Prairie, 961; St. Joe, 857; SB Washington, 778; Marian, 645; Jimtown, 595; John Glenn, 594; Bremen, 509 I think both conferences raise their profile in ways that matter to them. The NIC, with Marian remaining or moving to NLC, becomes better and wide open (maybe even gets some juice going in the SB schools with the chance for success), and the DAC gets two mega enrollment schools with football tradition and heritage (heard many Penn/Elkhart Central war stories in my time) that will challenge from day one of membership.

@DT Not to diminish Marian's successes and their win over Penn this year, but I think joining the DAC might be the best case scenario for Penn, Elkhart and the DAC member schools. Penn blundered, even if it wasn't apparent then, when they chose to stay in the NIC in '02. The NIC is an objectively bad fit on size alone, if not an outright bad football conference, for schools like Penn and Elkhart. Penn is able to get some better varsity games now that they player fewer conference games, but the JVs and freshmen typically do not play games against those opponents. They usually get to see an NIC team twice. This year they did see Elkhart twice, and they had been playing Elkhart Central twice a year for several years. From experience, Penn's freshman, JV, and for years many of the varsity contests have almost always been unable to deliver a sufficient number of quality, live reps for players for development. Most other NIC schools typically field significantly smaller, less talented freshman and JV squads because of their varsity needs, school size or program health or some combination of these factors. I looked at scores from Elkhart's freshman and JV games this year and they looked an awful lot like Penn freshman and JV games from over the years. I have to assume that the level of competition in the MIC and HCC is typically flatter across the board, freshman and JV rosters are at least more comparable in size, and, if nothing else, the success of programs within those conferences has to better illuminate areas in which you need to evolve or improve. Maybe the freshman and JV teams in the DAC would end up being similar, but I would have to see it to believe it. I don't think this is a grass is greener situation. I think joining the DAC is really the only way those two programs can get the push they need to develop players and evolve to compete with the Indy schools. Or else Penn and Elkhart agree to play all of their freshman and JV games against each other. Might be a good way to manufacture a Mishawaka type level of rivalry if nothing else. I just don't see them going independent. NIC North: Penn, 3338; Elkhart, 3185; SB Adams, 1913; New Prairie, 961; St. Joe, 857; Marian, 645 DAC: Lake Central, 3316; Crown Point, 2855; Portage, 2436; Merillville, 2187; Chesterton, 2063; Valparaiso, 2054; LaPorte, 1819; Michigan City, 1611