foxbat

We don't run anything specific at LCC in the youth program. More of a hybrid. Straight I and split backfield formations and, very rarely, a little wishbone. Also run out of a semi-spread, but more trips and twins. We do run motion and jet sweep even at the 3rd/4th grade level. The hardest thing that I've found is trying teach kids to even consider trying option plays. May try in a bit more earnest this next season, although that's probably up to my OC. I mainly handle the defense.

Those were a couple of good-sized classes coming up through the youth program ... the egg in the snake. Next year's 7th grade class will be the pebble in the snake barring shaking the tree a bit.

Something about frying the fish takes away the mystique?

I think they only return about 17 kids total. I think their full roster was only around 25 or so for the season and I think they only dressed 20-21 kids for the LCC game. It definitely took its toll on them in the second half, but it seemed to have less impact on them during the regular season. With that said, LCC is a well-conditioned team since they have to compete in the Hoosier Conference, so it's probably less of an issue for higher-flying 1A teams in general 1A competition. Like you, I also think Trader's Point looked pretty solid in their game with LCC ... just eventually succumbed to grind.

Come on man, who ever heard of a kid wanting to "eat his sushi first" at the dinner table? 😃

I thought that some folks had mentioned North Judson coming back stronger next season. I'd be interested in seeing Covenant Christian given that they were the only other 1A school this season, besides LCC, to hold Lutheran under 7 TDs.

Not sure why these were in my office instead of at home in my study. Perhaps a bit of serendipity. Thought I'd share a blast from the past. Your 2019 1A Class A State Champions when they were just starting out.

So if the issue is the top echelon, i.e., 1-16 in 6A, what happens if you roll 17-32 into 5A and make 5A 48 teams? It would mean an increase in numbers of roughly a bit under 500 students for the cap of a modified 5A. Even accounting for the Success Factor additions, the current range of 5A, you are talking about a roughly 1,020. If you look at the range of a new 5A, using the current 17-32 of 6A, you end up with a roughly 1,500 range of the new 5A. More importantly, if you endeavor to make the new 5A spread the same as the current 5A spread, the new 5A spread would only lose four schools, not including the two from Success Factor ... the four dropped to 4A would be Seymore, Musnter, Mishawaka, and BNL. Given that mix, you'd probably just leave those four in 5A and go with a 48-team new 5A class.

Thoughts here are solely my own and carry no official line/direction/knowledge or even correctness. Classes coming up through LCC's ranks are pretty competent and there are also a couple of good-sized classes classes coming up as well as a couple of really small classes ... from a numbers perspective. @LCCAlum can speak better to the 2020 and 2012 freshman classes. Lots of guys to replace/rebuild/reload. By my count, 7-8 on defense and 7 on offense. Good news, or perhaps bad depending on the way you look at it, is that they are mainly two-way players. Given that the idea is to move more toward old-school LCC of having, optimally, 22 one-way players, it might be less of an issue moving forward as you can have a guy that's a good DB, but has stone hands Also some key players coming back too that have really started to shine toward the latter part of the season too. Look for Dienhart and Buche's little brother to more active roles in 2020 ... although the younger Buche did see catches in roughly nine games this season. As you mentioned, Smith had some nice time and performance this season too spelling Schrader. The latter part of season will do wonders for Barrett's confidence and leadership levels ... as you also noted by his performance at LOS in the big game on that last drive and also by his performance in the Adams Central game too. I think @Coach Nowlin also commented positively about him and how he handled that last drive of the of the first half in the RCHS game. I've heard others refer to that drive as being the drive that was transformational for him. Definitely a lot of work ahead and given the exodus of starters in a rebuilding year, it makes things a bit shakier for calling next year a reload year ... I'd still classify it as a rebuild year. With Barrett's solidified performance in the second part of this season, and especially in the tourney, perhaps "modified-rebuild" might be a better term.

I assume you are referring to the completely "random" Sectional of Death? Folks often mistake West Lafayette for being a Catholic school given its proximity to the Cathedral. 😃

Attendance on Saturday was 22,638 for a two-day total of 41,876 for the six games. That number is up slightly from last year's total of 41,538. Saw this in a teaser for an Indy Star article for December 1 ... the article though was behind the firewall. That would put Friday at around 19,238. Edit: Here's the link in case anyone wanted it: https://www.indystar.com/restricted/?return=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indystar.com%2Fstory%2Fsports%2Fhigh-school%2F2019%2F12%2F01%2F2019-indiana-high-school-football-state-finals-provide-drama-great-stories%2F4343907002%2F

Be careful what you wish for with regard to competitive balance. Oklahoma's Division II 6A has seen Bixby in the championship for the last six years including this year, won it four times ... and might make it five this year.

I would stop holding Oklahoma up based on previous arguments. First, two of Oklahoma's classes are less than 11-man ball which Indiana does not have and likely will go kicking and screaming before it looks at that. Secondly, and most importantly, the biggest thing that jumps out is that Oklahoma's class structure has very little to do with competitive balance based on how that term has been tossed around on GID and with the numbers thrown around. OK's 6A Division I group, the largest, has a range from 5,037 ADM to 1,798 ADM. That's about the same as Indiana's entire 6A class excluding Success Factor folks. Their Division II 6A looks much more like Indiana's 5A in terms of size and spread.

With open enrollment, any school that has open-enrollment can do so ... and more and more schools in Indiana are opting for open enrollment. As a matter of fact, let's say that the idea of recruitment was indeed something huge going on, open-enrollment basically knocks down the advantage that would be likely for a private school. Any public school with open enrollment would be able to tout that you could attend their school basically for "free" as opposed to, even if you could be recruited b6y a private school, they'd have to pay your entire tuition ... which isn't a good business proposition given that the vast majority of them get little external money outside of their own constituencies ... with the exclusion of vouchers. Even in the case of vouchers, the amount is tied to what the "sending school" spends per student and is typically a percentage that doesn't cover full tuition. The average kid across a system like LCSS would likely see, at best, and assuming only half get some type of student aid, about half of what it costs to attend the junior high and less than half what it costs to attend the high school.

You're equating advantage in sports with advantages in general. Faith Christian is a private school, yet doesn't field a football team for IHSAA. Don't know the reasoning behind it although size and other things might be a consideration. Nonetheless, parents send their kids there. Some parents do it solely for the religious implications. Some may well do it for sports. Some might do it for smaller class sizes. Some may do it for college prep. Some do it because of the state of the public school system in some areas. I recall growing up in New Orleans that over a third of the schools were private schools and that was tied heavily to, at the time, a problematic public school system. When I moved to Texas, my parents, who are both products of Catholic school education into college, I went from attending Catholic schools to attending public schools ... the junior high right close to our house was a nationally recognized junior high. Their are also not set reasons either. There are some families that are split between the public schools and Catholic schools within their own kids based on the desires/needs of the kids. I've coached a few that started in the Catholic schools and then ended up at the public schools with their siblings or, in some cases, while their siblings still attended LCC. I know of one family whose oldest son is in a gifted-and-talented program in the public schools, because that isn't an options in LCSS, and his two siblings attend LCSS schools. The problem with the private/public debate, especially when it's wrapped up in discussion on a football message board, is that it's not nearly as black and white or cut-and-dry as folks would like to make seem. BTW, for general disclosure: My parents both graduated from Catholic elementary and high schools. My mom graduated from a Catholic university. My dad attended Catholic University in DC before leaving for the Air Force and then finished up at a public university on the GI Bill. My siblings and I attended Catholic grade school until we moved to Texas when I was in junior high. Then we attended public schools through high school. We are also all products of public universities ... land grant schools. Two of my kids attended Catholic schools until we started homeschooling them ... around 5th grade ... and their younger siblings. I have two that are currently homeschooled, but will likely attend a public high school. I have one who is currently full-time at at a different public high school than my youngest two will likely attend. My oldest two attended the local public high school part-time while being homeschooled and also attending the local community college for high school. I still coach in the youth program at a private school and have for just under two decades.

I've always argued that special needs kids, or more specifically those that are unable to participate, should not be counted against any schools', public or private, enrollment numbers for a sport. I'd also be fine having something in place that looks at academic qualifications and adjust for those. If a school has a 20% academic rate that would prohibit kids from participating in sports, then I don't see a specific reason why, for sports purposes, the enrollment shouldn't reflect the number of eligible kids. The devil would be in the implementation though that, like Success Factor, it would have to be determined at the time that enrollments were set for the two-year period. With that said, I'm saying this for a 40,000-foot level. As an educator, I'm not exactly happy with any situation that might "reward" for academic deficiency and I realize that a system could be potentially gamed, but I also wonder to what extent a school would flunk their students just to move down a class. Have to think that one out a bit more.

I was going to include charters, but code not to as I'm not exactly sure where they fall into the mix of the discussion at this point given their hybrid nature. Kind of best of both worlds / worst of both worlds tendencies. School of the Deaf also probably looks more like a charter/magnet than either public or private.

Faith Christian is 1A and also in Lafayette with LCC. Edit: Not to mention St. James Lutheran High School.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. Kind of reminds me of the exchange at the end of Sneakers: Crease: Ah, I have never taken my wife to Europe. Abbot: I'm sorry to hear it. Give me the box. Crease: You will buy me two round-trip, first-class tickets to Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, and Scotland. Bish: Don't forget Tahiti. Crease: And Tahiti. Abbot: Tahiti is not in Europe! Carl: Excuse me. When you get the box, you give us geography lessons. Until then, this man goes to Tahiti.

Bishop Noll? South Bend St. Joe? Culver Academies? Faith Christian? Heritage Christian? Or perhaps some of those have like Carmel? West Lafayette?

You may be painting with a broad brush by tossing Lutheran in there, but the numbers don't bear out ... especially for results as that is what ultimately counts. You stated LCC and Lutheran. Harrell's shows Lutheran's full-schedule games since 2006. In that time, in 14 years, Lutheran has been eliminated from the tournament by 11 public opponents, 12 counting Indiana School of the Deaf, comprising 9 different programs. Regardless of "reloading" capability, Lutheran still gets eliminated by public programs on a fairly regular basis. Their success has also been clumped too. LCC's a bit different, but even then, you're also looking at the last decade or so of LCC's playing history for a school that has six decades of history including the scheduled, but 11th-hour reprieve, shutdown in 1990.

It was nice seeing Coach Wright up on the big screen at LOS on Friday ... albeit as a fan and not roaming the sideline. Got that opportunity at the semi-state game back in 2011. Took my son, who was five at the time, down to the field after the game just so he could see Coach Wright up close. Had to explain to my 15-year old daughter, who really doesn't follow follow football all that much, who he was when they showed him up on the big screen on Friday. The word "legend" was the first descriptor.

I'm my honest opinion, and solely that as I'm not in the Sheridan locker rooms, I think Sheridan made a mistake leaving the Hoosier Conference. I also don't see how that move equates to increasing the chances for deeper run unless it's an argument about potential injuries in the Hoosier grind. They end up playing the same level of competition in the tourney regardless of the conference, so the Hoosier puts a little meat on the bones.

Not as long as it might appear perhaps a half hour to run through all those teams ... also mainly because I'm not as familiar with the schools in the Southern part of the state like North Vermillion and West Washington outside of specific seasons. The biggest thing slowing me down is that I type with four fingers and don't know the home keys. In reality, knowing the history makes the idea/premise fairly easy to have figured out and John Harrell's site makes it a breeze to find data to support/refute things that tend to be made with more emotional appeal. The way he has things organized makes it even easier to have looked for this data ... at least back to 1994 which gives us a couple decades plus of points. This is actually something that was already on my radar as I had a discussion with someone last week who said that LCC was "picking on" county schools and he specifically named Lewis Cass and Pioneer. As I pointed out, Pioneer easily holds its own against LCC with Pioneer not only leading the series, but leading the tourney series, and also having won the last three contests and dealing LCC one of its biggest defeats 70-7. In the case of Cass, Cass is 0-2 against LCC, but in the same years that LCC beat Cass, Pioneer also beat Cass. Matter of fact, I believe, in a quick look on Harrell's site, that Pioneer leads the series with Cass 7-6 although they've not met in tourney play. Seriously, I'm just a guy in the stands who enjoys an analytical and strategic approach to the game/sport. Been doing it for many years ... all the way back when I was coaching youth baseball in college in the late-1980s and early 1990s. As for LCC incorporating into their sports programs, I have no idea, but I do know that one of my project teams at Purdue will be doing a presentation on it this week and I'm very much looking forward to seeing it.