crimsonace1

And schedules don't mean squat once the ball is teed up on Friday night. Players win games, not schedules.

Had a game many years ago - before the 3-minute warmup period was created - where the host school's band got onto the field late for its halftime performance (and it's one of those schools where the band has a LOT of sway), played its entire show, and kept on playing even though the clock hit zero. They got flagged for delay of game, home team coach was NOT happy.

Sounds like it was incorrectly adjudicated, given the personal foul (hurdling penalty) could not have been a dead-ball foul.

Had an unusual situation come up in our game last Friday night. Team A ball at the +48. QB drops back to pass, OL holds, flag thrown. Then, the QB scrambles and gets the rare "hurdling" personal foul as he jumped over a player who was not prone. Both were live-ball penalties, both were enforced, the 10 for the hold and the 15 for the PF (although the officials only marked off 24 yards, even though the hold was not beyond the neutral zone). The team ended up converting after facing 1st-and-34. Is that an NFHS rule that live-ball personal fouls are enforced in addition to any other penalties on the play? It's one I hadn't seen before and just wanted to clarify in case it happened again in a game I were broadcasting.

Sectional 13 is loaded. Heck, the entire south is loaded. New Pal is the only reigning state champ in 5A, and they've been steamrolling everyone. Their 28-6 win at Decatur Central in Week 2 keeps looking better and better. Their defense is incredibly good and their offense has been making plays while keeping guys fresh, and is as balanced as it's ever been. Cathedral's defense is one of the best in the state and they've been getting better and better. it's a shame these two are on pace to meet in the sectional, although NP has to get through a solid Plainfield team first. East Central or Whiteland will be a formidable regional foe for the Sectional 13 champ. Bloomington South appears to be the class of the southern regional, but Castle, Floyd & Evansville North are definitely threats in a really good Sectional 16. In the north, Lafayette Jeff has been putting up eye-popping numbers. Their 7-point loss to Chatard in Week 1 shows they're legit. Merrillville has a lot of talent and but isn't talked about as much because their losses are to unbeaten Crown Point and a very good Loyola Academy team. Concord is 7-1 and always good. I wouldn't sleep on Michigan City, either. 5A is often considered a "weak" class without a lot of standout teams, but this year, there are a couple of real standouts (NP, Cathedral, Bloomington South are all Top 15 in Sagarin) and a bunch of really good ones. Now, three of the top four in Sagarin are success factored 4A-sized schools, but it should be a really fun tournament.

Wasn't Trinity Lutheran playing 8-man? Are they back to 11-man football now, or did they just end the program?

This is their superintendent's dream. He believes athletics take too much attention and resources away from academics, and to a lesser degree, performing arts programs. He especially hates football, because of the attention it garners. Honestly, 8-man football would be a great move for Edinburgh, but given his disdain for football, he'll likely use this as an opportunity to kill off the program for good. He did everything in his power to de-emphasize football at a previous stop - basically creating a bunch of conditions that only applied to football (which, if followed, would have prevented them from practicing on any day the heat index was above 90 ... or pretty much any day in August) to give him the runway to fire one successful coach, then refusing to allow the school system to create a teaching position for the next one (who was also successful), eliminating assistant coach salaries for a few years and then suggesting "having the parents coach." His plan worked so well that after he left, that school whose program he basically tried to kill off has won four state championships and football has elevated the profile of the community and school system.

Depends on the school. Some offer need-based aid, some offer discounts for multiple children (or a discounted rate if you belong to a parish in the diocese). Obviously, your Indiana voucher covers some of the cost, but usually not all. The remainder of the cost is covered by donors, or by charging a higher sticker price ... much like colleges, who will give a lot of "need-based" scholarships to bring the price down to where it's affordable.

Quite the opposite. They have JV swimmers who would be state qualifiers, but as long as they keep piling up the trophies, that's all that matters.

What's amazing is that Cascade has been a bit of a cradle of coaches. Darrin Fisher, Derek Moyers and Mike Kirschner have all been head coaches there. Connor has done a phenomenal job continuing that and building it. And yes, my in-laws used to live in the eastern part of the Cascade district, and we've watched it really begin to pop over the last 20 years. Their road was once a sleepy country road, now there are multiple subdivisions both along the road and along the parts of U.S. 40 near the old Plainfield Elks (which is right on the district line between Cascade and Plainfield). Two of those wins are against 0-7 teams, but Greencastle's offense is good. However, their defense has given up 42 points in every game but one this year.

Even if Westfield does annex lands around Sheridan, most school district boundaries are based on township lines and existing boundaries, and are not/cannot be adjusted because the town's boundaries expand and cross said district lines. There are a number of places within Greenwood's town limits, for example, that are in Whiteland's school district (which wraps around Greenwood to the south and east).

Remember, a few people who live in Carmel (especially western Clay Township), Carmel is as much a brand and a part of their identity. It says "we chose the best of the best - community, schools, athletics." Any split would likely take the Clay Township folks from west of Carmel into their own school ... and two things would happen. One, Clay would probably be the better athletic program, and two, the people for whom "being from Carmel" means the most aren't sending their kids to "Carmel." Old-line Greyhounds wouldn't take kindly to them losing state championships to a school *within their own district.* HSE actually has talked about creating a third high school, but IIRC, it would be a magnet/special school (e.g., a "University" early college high school) that would have no athletics and the kids who want to play sports would go to the school where they were zoned.

New Castle, Shenandoah, Eastern Hancock, Lapel, Centerville and Northeastern are all in contiguous counties. If Delta joins, they'd also be contiguous. The travel for Delta and New Castle would be less than in the HHC. Lapel-to-Northeastern will be a haul, but the rest are pretty manageable. It's not like there's a Richmond-to-Lafayette or Lafayette-to-Terre Haute trip in this league.

New Castle's enrollment trends are similar to Rushville's one county to the south. They'll likely be 3A within the next couple of cycles. They'll likely dominate this league in boys basketball, but be competitive in other sports. Lapel - with a LOT of Anderson transfers (about 1/3 of their district's student body comes from out-of-district, and most of those are Anderson transfers) punches way above its enrollment weight. New Castle will be competitive in this league, but they won't dominate it. And that's what you want - a league full of schools that are competitive with each other in most sports. New Castle may have a leg up in boys basketball, but I don't see any other truly dominant teams (possibly Lapel in girls golf).

At the board meeting last year when New Castle said they were considering a conference change, their longtime broadcaster (and all around great guy) John Harp said "I'd love to get a conference together with Connersville, Rushville, Centerville, Northeastern, Delta" (and I believe he mentioned Richmond and Muncie Central, too, but my memory is fuzzy). Their AD said "I've already been in contact with all of those schools." That seemed to be the genesis of this new league. Obviously, not all were interested, but New Castle was the driving force. Eastern Hancock is an independent in football right now and the quality of opponents in other sports in the MEC varies wildly from very good (like Wapahani) to not-so-good (like Union-Modoc). Even though they'll be a small fish in this pond, they feel they'll be competitive. Lapel has been an independent for quite a while since leaving the ICC, and Shenandoah has also been an independent for a while. And Northeastern/Centerville have largely outgrown the TEC. The other thing with EH is, while it's a very rural district, it is benefiting from the growth of Greenfield (which is on the fringe of Indy's metro growth on the eastside). Greenfield isn't growing as fast as the Mt. Vernon and New Palestine districts, but it is seeing some growth. However, a lot of those students are finding their way to Eastern Hancock - about 20% of EH's student body lives in the Greenfield-Central district (and another 15% or so lives in the Knightstown district ... 40% of EH's student body is transfer students). Of the schools listed, EH, Shenandoah and Lapel were all part of the old White River Athletic Conference, which was at one time a really big, solid league, but gradually lost members to other conferences and soldiered on as a five-team league with Wes-Del and Knightstown for a while from the late 1990s until 2010. This feels a bit like a re-formation of that league.

Nobody is leaving the NCC for the time being.

I'm told Rushville and Connersville were invited, but chose to stay in the EIAC. Jay County has said "no." So, if the three accept invites, they'll be a seven-team league. The Hoosier Heritage will likely expand to replace the lost teams, as they'll be down to 5 if Delta leaves.

I can't see the NCC expanding. The only schools that really fit their footprint left the league (Logansport, Indianapolis Tech, New Castle, Huntington North) and aren't interested in returning, the travel is insane (Logansport-to-Richmond and New Castle-to-Lafayette are two big reasons why those two schools are no longer in the league). The only other schools that "might" fit are some county seat schools like Greenfield-Central, but they turned the NCC down 20+ years ago when Jeff left for the HCC and Huntington North got the spot instead. It was founded as an interurban league a century ago, which made sense when few schools played football and had a lot of the other Olympic sports, and so they needed opponents (and basketball delivered marquee opponents several games a year), but the demographics have changed. Honestly, loyalty to the league is the only thing holding it together at this point.

In this case, the player suffered a substantial injury his sophomore year that cost him not only most of his football season, but nearly all of the basketball season. He had a scholarship offer from Matt Painter the summer before his junior year, and there is - for big-time recruits - a LOT of money at play they're risking. As I said, he'll likely be Mr. Basketball this year and probably has a very large NIL contract waiting for him at Purdue he doesn't want to risk by suffering another major injury. I fully understand why he decided to quit football.

JC seems to be another school where basketball dominates the culture. But also, it's a community that - like a lot of rural communities in Indiana - has struggled demographically. They've had some really good basketball teams in recent years - boys and girls - and their GBB coach is top-notch.

NCC has a couple of issues. One is that basketball rules in most of those communities, and for years, football has been seen as something to do until winter. The other is demographics. Marion, Muncie, Richmond and Anderson have seen *massive* population declines in the last 40 years. Kokomo has seen a bit of one. They were once thriving factory towns, but have lost population as the auto industry and other factories have closed shop, and those who *do* live and work in/near those communities are often at county schools. Mississinewa, Oak Hill, Eastbrook, Centerville, Northeastern, Yorktown, Delta, Pendleton Heights and Lapel all have strong athletic programs. How many kids walking those halls would likely have been going to the "city" school 30 years ago? In terms of Muncie - it seems most Ball State faculty/staff I know lives in Fishers or northeast Indy and commutes up I-69. You need bodies to have a good football program, and when your population is declining and your community is struggling economically, it's difficult to build the robust feeder program you need to have success.

MV is in the midst of a bit of a down cycle (in part because their star QB decided to focus on basketball - which was probably a good decision, given he's a strong frontrunner for Mr. Basketball this year), but they won a state title just four years ago and have generally consistently been a solid program. Greenwood is landlocked, mostly built out and has a lot of older housing stock/rental housing in the community. A lot of the talent in the Greenwood area goes to Whiteland (whose district actually crosses into Greenwood city limits and wraps around to the south and east) and Center Grove (which borders Greenwood to the west). Columbus East & North have full open enrollment, and it seems the football players have been gravitating to North in recent years (whereas they all seemed to go to East in the Gaddis era).

It was said postgame IU called all plays on the sideline and didn't make any audibles/pre-snap changes because of the crowd noise.

We tried the midweek regional in 1998-99. It was despised, had incredibly low attendance and was abandoned very, very quickly.

Last year, New Pal had a running-clock margin over East Noble in the State Finals. Two weeks before, Chatard took New Pal to OT. That was the real 4A state championship game.