foxbat

Potentially, but some of those great class teams can be teams that win a regional with that great class with kids that are sophomore and juniors and then pop state the next year with that junior class that are then seniors. That first year a class up is what I was referring too about the "hangover effect." You have those seniors, especially if it's a big class, now that are the remnant of a "great team," but in Year 2, you are back to regular program status. In essence, that decision to keep them up is not based on them winning a couple of sectionals in two years in a new class, but instead on the single Year 1 data which is still, to an extent, an indicator of the "great class." You are correct that most "great teams" burn through that greatness just getting to state in the lower class. It think that probably the vast majority of "great classes" that get bumped to the next higher class. there can be some outliers that make that next level and pick up a regional and that's it, and I don't think it's that hard to use a scalpel in determinations. I guess worst case scenario in not being refined in evaluation is that you get a hangover "great class" that ends up spending three years in the next higher class instead of two, but with a little extra scrutiny, it'd be fairer and representative of the idea of separating great programs from great class to use a little extra scruitiny. In either case, I think you and I are both on the same side saying that 3-to-stay needs to go ... no pun intended. Good discussion.

Not sure about 1 because you run into the issue of a "great class" hangover possibility. Overall, I can live with two. Great class programs would be less likely to be caught up by the number vs. great programs that probably really belong in that next higher class. I know it's too much to ask and maybe a bit more complex, but I'd really to see some scrutiny provided if we end up going back to 2. I think it's possible for the "great class" scenario to end up catching even a regular program. I'd almost like to see a situation where 2 in Year 1 and 0 in Year 2 has the ability to allow you to return and this would favor those average teams with a "great class" situation to not get stuck in a higher class any more than need be. On the other hand, you could make an argument that 0 in Year 1 and 2 in Year 2 is an indication of more likely fit to stay in the higher class kind of pending Year 3's outcome. Going 1 in Year 1 and 1 in Year 2 is a fairly decent indicator that the program seems to have competitive potential in that higher class. I know the IHSAA won't ever do that, but it's an easy system to implement and you can even have it automated if you think through the parameters correctly. It also makes much more sense now that we are doing rolling evaluation. Would still like to see a four-year period for evaluations, but heck I'll take continually improving anytime. My first thought before anything is we need to get back to 2 to stay and get rid of 3 to stay. That kind of lets all but the most elite programs off the hook.

Are you doing the current three-to-stay up part of SF? If so, LCC would have returned to 1A back in 2023. Likely would not have made an impact on blue/red rings as the GID predictor tool shows LCC as a 20+ underdog to both Lutheran and Adams Central that season. LCC would have a been a 3.5 point favorite over North Judson and 13.5-point favorite over Sheridan who made it to semis. Given just a look at the top four that year, LCC would have had a battle to reach semis but would have been easily ousted. That would have left LCC in 1A for 2024. They would have been a 6.5 underdog against eventual winner Providence and a 7-point underdog to northern rep North Judson. LCC would have been a 21-point favorite over South Adams and a .5-point underdog to South Putnam who made it to semis. Given just a look at the top four that year, LCC likely would have made semis and would have probably had a competitive match to try to get back to LOS. That would again have left LCC in 1A for 2025. In that year, LCC would have been a 41-point underdog to South Putnam. Pioneer would have been a 31-point favorite over LCC that year. Of note is that LCC would have also been an underdog to South Adams (27.5) and Milan (15.5 points) who made it to semis. LCC would not have made it to semis and it'd be questionable if a regional was doable. Given all of that, it pretty much leaves us where we are for the upcoming 2026 season for LCC ... back in 1A. It would have been likely that, perhaps with the exception of, maybe, 2024, LCC would not have ventured to LOS in any of those subsequent seasons

I'm quite aware of that. That's why I stated that Brebeuf and Guerin are not associated with the Diocese of INDIANAPOLIS. I'm quite aware of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana as four of my family members have at one time or another been directly paid by the diocese or one of its parishes. Again, Guerin is not under direct affiliation with the Indy diocese. Matter of fact, there are only two high schools in the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana: LCC, the older and smaller brother, and Guerin, the younger and bigger brother. Makes it easy for the bishop to still be a fan as he splits his time by half between his "sons" on each side when they meet annually. As for Brebeuf, I'm quite aware of Brebeuf and the Jesuits. They basically defied the Indy diocese over their insistence that Brebeuf fire a teacher who was in a same-sex marriage. The Indy diocese then cut ties with Brebeuf with ripples that even saw intervention from the Vatican. Cathedral is also "unaffiliated" for lack of a better term, but as we are all quite familiar on this site, Cathedral carries a whole complement of luggage that most public schools and conferences wish to directly avoid ... not that it's really hurt Cathedral any. There's nothing nefarious in Cathedral not being a diocesan school, although I suspect that part of it makes it an appealing school to the state as a whole as opposed to specific diocese or parishes/pastorates. Again, as I pointed out, Guerin and Brebeuf were the two schools that are not directly affiliated with the Indy diocese that aren't named Cathedral. One is in a different sphere of control/direction and the other has already made it clear that they don't bend the knee to Indy. As someone else pointed out, the geography is an odd component in the two picks, so again, there's some interest as to why THESE two? It's unlikely that it's because they are 3A by enrollment because that's also true of Chatard. Maybe nothing more than they were considering three and flipped three coins, ala the Odessa Permian, Lee, and Midland playoff coinflip in 1988, but the interesting aspects of not being in the Indy diocese sphere of control seems interesting even if it is coincidence.

Guerin and Brebeuf are two schools not associated with the the Diocese of Indianapolis directly that aren't Cathedral. Even not being part of the Indy Diocese, Cathedral has it's own considerations that follow it. Not sure what, if anything that has to do with it, but it is an interesting "coincidence," especially when looking at other things like geography.

Roncalli and Chatard have history with Harrison; especially on the undercard. Playing Roncalli and Chatard annual couldn't hurt.

Seems like common sense and completely agree. Unless the kid's carrying the ball on every offensive play, he should be blocking any time he's not touching the ball. Your QB will appreciate it as well as the back who is carrying the ball and even some of your linemen.

This is pretty much the route we've taken with our boys. They played for "club"/"travel" teams, but these were associated with the local high school rather than with a region. The boys played ball with programs that fed into LCC/Jeff as well as Harrison. The boys play with the kids they go / went to high school with. At the high school level, they played on teams that were conglomerations of the local high schools. This summer my youngest will play on a team with kids from Harrison, LCC, and McCutcheon as well as a couple of kids who played with Harrison in the youth programs but are now at schools like Frontier and Seeger. The oldest boy did the same in high school playing with kids from BC, Harrison, McCutcheon, Twin Lakes, Delphi, and Jeff. While there was aleways the temptation and opportunities at times to play with some of the franchise programs, in giving the boys the ability to make the call of where they wanted to play or even try out, then consistently came back to playing with their classmates and kids from the area that they knew. The younger one has had opportunity to play with some franchise teams on an ad hoc basis like in the off-season for a single tournament when his team wasn't active or in a tournament after his team had finished their season, but the local "club" approach has been good for the boys and the family. Like you mentioned, much more reasonable cost, a couple of over-nighters, pretty much most travel limited to instate or just across the border in Illinois and Ohio and coaches that believe in sometimes taking a break for family things. The camaraderie for the high school teams isn't bad either.

I'd say it's kids BECAUSE of their parents. I've rarely had a problem kid on a team, after having met the parent(s), that I didn't know EXACTLY why the kid was the way they were. Conversely, there have been some really good ones IN SPITE OF their parents.

This is the part that worries me most with young kids. It is incumbent on coaches to really drill home that these don't make you invincible or completely protect you; even if they do provide a layer of protection. Good tackling technique as well as safe tackling technique needs to be drilled home again and again and again with kids. And I would say this is particularly important at younger ages where sometimes you get what's available for youth coaches and sometimes something like this might be used as a substitute for safe procedure education and adherence.

I don't know that it would be a huge issue on the distance issue. I mean those distances are like traveling out to Richmond, Anderson, and Marion when Harrison was back in the NCC. They'd still likely retain Jeff on their schedule and they could possibly keep West Lafayette and Lebanon on their schedule, so they'd have basically three games in the Lafayette area every season regardless of whether they were home or away, an under 1-hour drive out to Lebanon and probably two 1.5 hour drives a season; assuming bi-annual split with the rest of the big schools. It'd be something like the following for any two-year cycle: Year 1 Lafayette Jeff - Lafayette West Lafayette - West Lafayette (Home) McCutcheon - Lafayette Lebanon - West Lafayette (Home) New Pal - New Pal (90 minutes) Pendleton Heights - Pendleton Heights (90 minutes) Greenfield Central - West Lafayette (Home) Mount Vernon - West Lafayette (Home) One of the Catholic Schools like Chatard, Brebeuf or Roncalli - West Lafayette (Home) Year 2 Lafayette Jeff - West Lafayette (Home) West Lafayette - West Lafayette (Away) McCutcheon - West Lafayette (Home) Lebanon - Lebanon (45 minutes) New Pal - West Lafayette (Home) Pendleton Heights - West Lafayette (Home) Greenfield Central - Greenfield Central (90 minutes) Mount Vernon - Mount Vernon (90 minutes) One of the Catholic Schools like Chatard, Brebeuf or Roncalli (Away - 75, 60, and 80 minutes respectively) This is just for general illustration as you'd certainly try to avoid playing three games on the road in a row where you'd possibly travel close to 80-90 minutes each week there, but you get the gist. It's not really as brutal as it seems given that they used to make that Richmond, Anderson, and/or Marion trek in the NCC. The biggest drawback for Harrison that I see is that the schedule does little to get them ready for 6A post season outside of New Pal, Jeff, and the Catholic schools, but realistically, being in the lower-enrollment ranks of 6A and in a sectional with Carmel, Westfield, and Zionsville, that may well be a moot point for several years to come any way.

Not sure what the future brings for McCutcheon and Harrison in terms of conferences. Harrison is a low-enrollment 6A that plays like a mid-level 5A and McCutcheon is a higher-enrollment 5A that plays like a lower-range 5A. There were barely a fit for the NCC. Guess they could try to go north into that Portage area, but not sure that works.

Like playing on turf without the burning feet at the start of the season and without the turf pellets in your cleats when you leave.

I'd say you could probably throw Faith Christian into that mix.

I wasn't specifically saying that's what you said, but it is always part of the equation in "limiting enrollment," so I thought I'd get it off the table before even delving into anything else. As for kids with disciplinary problems, historical attendance, disciplinary incidents, etc. these can all pretty much be addressed in the kids that aren't eligible to play. I used disability as a factor because that's the traditional argument when talking about the disadvantage that public schools have, but there are several other non-disability items that could also fall into that. A kid who's got a truancy or discipline issue wouldn't be allowed to play anyway via IHSAA rules, so it really makes no real sense that they should be counted as part of the eligible denominator. It wouldn't be automatic dismissal of the kid in the denominator, but I gather from what you are presenting is you are talking about chronic disciplinary issue as opposed to the kid caught throwing spitballs in Mr. Johnson's science class or a kid whose got a chronic truancy issue as opposed to the kid whose family pulled him out of classes for three days before Spring Break because they wanted a longer family vacation. Again, these end up being quite easy to codify. Without attaching stigma, it could also be kids with a drug dependency issue or single-parents still attending school. BTW, I'm quite aware that a kid recovering from a dependency issue or a single mom can certainly play sports. Matter of fact, in some cases, it might actually be beneficial in keeping them focused. I think these cases would be fairly limited and removing them from the denominator, but having them still play sports is not likely to be a tilting factor on classifications, so I wouldn't let something like that be a clogging factor for not incorporating it in limitations. The biggest issue, even with your initial approach in saying that p/ps can exclude people for a number of reasons is that it presupposes that public schools are at a disadvantage because they can't turn kids away. I would note that there are kids with mental/physical disabilities in p/ps. As a percentage of the student body, it's likely much less than the percentage in public schools, but in still exists. In a multiplier situation, not only do those kids not play, but at a p/p the impact is even bigger than at a public school because, while at both schools, that student isn't going to play and would regularly be part of the denominator anyway, for the p/p they get the added penalty of having that person multiplied. While it is objectively true that public schools can't turn kids away, it overlooks the fact that we're talking about many items that, while fairly complex in addressing and solving them, are actually fairly easy to codify and address in numbers ... or more specifically the denominator. Again, by looking at level the playing fields by being realistic about the denominators, we get much closer to a truer solution than multipliers can address.

Realistically, which p/p schools, in Indiana, are controlling admissions for the purpose of staying in a certain enrollment class? I say that not to be flippant, but to take out the stand-by argument that p/ps are only allowing cream of the crop athletes and shunning everyone else while manipulating the enrollment count to make sure that they are two students below the cutoff line for the next highest classification. That gamesmanship might happen in other places ... heck, there was just a story the other day about a team that lost a game on purpose so that they could be placed in a lower competition state final bracket ... but that's not anything that I've seen here in Indiana. Frankly, rather than using multipliers that tend to make assumptions and use broad-sweeping claims that definitely don't work ... Bishop Noll, Faith Christian, Blackhawk in football, etc. ... I'd be much more interested in seeing a reduction in student numbers for schools that, as you mentioned, don't have the option of admissions. Students who can't play, shouldn't be counted in any school's enrollment numbers for classification. Yes, it tends to be true that as a percentage, p/ps tend to have less students with physical/mental disability, so for them, it's unlikely that that such an adjustment would be big enough to impact classification placement. At the same time, it's fairly certain that there will be some schools, especially in the lower and middle classes that it would result in a change of classification. I think you could also go to an extent, without double-counting, that you could throw in some lowering modifier applied to FRL. That would also allow you to catch some of the socio-economic issues in addition to disability issues as well as a classification modifier. The state already has data on both of these points, so it just now becomes an issue of the formula to make it a reality. I'd be curious to see how many schools end up with this type of class modification change. I'm not sure if it would be huge, but it starts moving the needle to thinking about class as more than just enrollment based in flat numbers. Keep Success Factor in there too, with some minor modifications to length of evaluation and points to stay ... still think it should be four years for eval and an average of a sectional a year in upper classes once moved to stay ... and I think there are the makings of shifting enrollment-based classification ..,. although the initial placements would start with enrollment, but eventually be morphed through a more modified approach to classification.

I'm not necessarily sure this would be practically accurate. In essence, what you are measuring seems to be a "shift" in district dynamic at the benefit or detriment of the district at the high school level. The potential issue with this, and this is born out by several p/ps, especially Catholic programs, that can show that kids come from their own "feeder" ranks. In these cases, many of these kids were "never in the district" to begin with and thus didn't shift anything from a district/districts. Case in point, when we moved to Lafayette, my kids immediately went into Catholic schools as opposed to coming out of a public district. Likewise, when they left the public edit:private schools, they went to homeschool as opposed to public school. It wasn't until high school that my kids then entered the public schools part time. In essence "just showing up" in a public district out of the blue in 9th grade and, effectively moving from private to public in the stream. this is something that you see a lot of where families kids start in private school and eventually land in public schools. I'd suspect the flow actually favors public schools at the high school level in net flow. In essence, the model has a somewhat skewed approach that everyone is a public kid and the p/ps pull from them, but just in my family there are five kids that were never part of the public count until high school. Districts are almost always based on physical/geographical boundaries, although they don't necessarily have to be ... although that's usually the easiest way to do it. when they are though, it tends to lend itself to the idea that everything is public and that non-geographic schools are anomalies to that idea.

This is basically the Texas model.

You can say it, and yes, that's the whole basis behind p/r, but it doesn't make the fact that enrollment is currently burned into the brains of the folks that would likely be the ones that would need to be convinced. As such, presenting p/r with a way to work within the current confines of enrollment thinking with the expectation that over the years, enrollment would slowly be moved out of the equation, is likely the way to achieve any moves in that direction. And, while the IHSAA doesn't necessarily need support to do much of anything, p/r is pretty much something they aren't going to touch on their own without significant internal influence ... e.g., Success Factor ... or significant external influence ... e.g., the new transfer policy. I doubt you'd see the external pressure, unless the state can find a way to squeeze voucher dollars into the equation. For internal pressure, you need the coaches/programs and that requires figuring out how to work it where it starts alongside of enrollment ... at least in the beginning.

Not at all. The norm is enrollment-based regardless of whether folks think its right or not. You heard it this weekend rear it's head when talking about how unfair it is for a team to have to play two classes above their enrollment. Given that norm many are going to base their votes and make their decisions with that in mind. A 5A school may well not want to be pushed down to 3A and will take its lumps in 5A ... as I pointed out, due to potential stigma. It's not about trophies for those that would be forced down a level. Just like the stigma attached to being kept back, etc. Yes, some families choose to have their kid held back and some might even welcome the idea of being informed that it's a good alternative, but I'm fairly certain that most like the virtuous action as opposed to a directed action; especially when there's a potential for imparted stigma.

The biggest problem with relegation would be the stigma attached to it. No one wants to be forced to move down because they don't perform at a level where the norms say that they should be performing ... regardless of whether the norms are correct or not. If it was made optional, you might have some takers, but I'd bet it'd be a hard sell to get the state coaches/programs as a whole to vote for the relegation part. And, without something structured in place for a "scoring process," there's no a chance that the state allows folks to "self select."

Forgot Warren Central too. BTW, when did Cathedral win four in a row in a class? I see three in a row. But if we are doing three in a row, we also have to toss in WeBo and Sheridan into that mix along with Lutheran, Chatard, Franklin Central, Roncalli, Center Grove, and Penn.

Scecina was the first. Scecina lost twice in a row to LCC, but I suspect there aren't too many folks saying that Scecina wasn't good enough to win 1A. It just happened to be those two years that they ran into LCC. If they'd lost in semi-state those two years, it would have been Linton bouncing up to 2A with a pair of red rings ... and there would have been much wailing and gnashing of teeth instead of the near crickets

I think that sometimes the idea of teaching the scheme at the youth level can sometimes be overrated or overemphasized. To an extent, it's a question of how early you introduce that, as well as the complexity of the scheme. When I was coaching youth programs back in the day, I had a counterpart at another program ask me how detailed our play calling was for 3rd/4th grade kids. He confessed that they were just basically lining up in the huddle and saying things like "Mike, give the ball to Bobby and then Bobby, run to the right side behind Tommy" or something similar. We ran a basic system where we introduced back and hole numbers as well as general terms like dive, sweep, and counter to the kids, but these were all independent of the high school varsity schemes. In the time that I coached in LCC's youth program, from around 2002 until my retirement in 2020 when COVID killed the season, I coached under six different varsity head coaches and an interim HC. Every time a new coach came in, we always asked, if they wanted us to run a specific type of offense, scheme, numbering, terminology, etc. All of them said, do what we were doing because the most important things to them were that the kids understood safe and effective fundamentals of hitting and tackling, fundamental football ideology, and probably most importantly, that the kids had fun so that they would stick with football and keep coming back while their bodies caught up to their enjoyment of the game. I recall one coach even going so far as to say, just do what we were doing because there was no guarantee that he'd even still be coaching by the time they got to the high school.

If it's going to be a possession game, Pioneer will likely win that struggle. And they are a team that is geared to do it, has practiced it all season, and has it in their DNA from several seasons.