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foxbat

Booster 2023-24
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Everything posted by foxbat

  1. If I had 2,000 boys to choose from and created a pretty good team and then someone else said, "Hey, I've got another 1,000 boys that look like the 2,000-boy population you just created your team from," I'm pretty sure I would look through the additional 1,000 as opposed to waiving them off. Realistically, if someone said, "I've got another 20 boys," I'd probably waive it off as not necessarily worth the time/payoff, but for an additional 1,000, even if just 15% were interested in being part of the football team, the likelihood of improving on the original team from the 2,000-boy population is decent.
  2. For small schools, if you are including Linton, Pioneer, and Lutheran, then LCC should be in that mix too. In last 10 seasons: State titles: 2 in 1A ... over Lutheran and Linton State appearances: 2 in 1A Regionals: 4 ... 3 in 1A and 1 in 2A Sectionals: 7 ... 4 in 1A and 3 in 2A And this is all since the four-peat state run in 1A, 2009-2012, which would tack on an additional 4 state titles, 4 appearances, 4 more regionals, and four more sectional titles.
  3. I'm assuming that's more fans than players/coaches. While CG had an outstanding season last year, culminating in a blue ring, it would seem that the gaps in wins is getting noticeably tighter. In 2021, CG beat FC 35-7 in the sectional game. This past season, it was just 14-10 in sectional. A differential drop of over three TDs. In 2021, WC got dropped 38-14. That dropped to just 17-8 and 42-32 in regionals. A reduction of two TD differential in both games. In 2021, the divide with Carmel was almost four TDs. That dropped to a four-point differential in 2022. For BD, in 2021, it was over a three-TD differential and over a five-TD differential in semi-state. In 2022, that differential dropped to a single point. Granted, it's just a single-season comparison, albeit the most recent, but that seems like a lot of teams getting better.
  4. Unfortunately, more and more kids may be drawn to the idea that, they may never see a college field, but there's still options for exposure in other areas. While there's certainly the "next step" for talented players in college, realistically that number is limited. On the other hand, other outlets for "noticed" people, who have some talent but not enough for post high school, are growing ... and not in a good way. Need look no further than the "Cash me outside, how bow dah" girl who ended up with millions for being a brat. The image of being the "bad boy" or "the assassin" or "the thug" seems to have niche appeal in social media even if athletics can't be taken to that next level.
  5. Those are the only three that I can think of. LCC probably came closest of those that didn't; dropping a 17-14 semi-state game on the road to eventual 2A champ RCHS back in 2014.
  6. I would agree with this. Plainfield played some nice heads-up ball as the season progressed. They play best when they keep things tight to the end. If they keep it tight, they seem to be able to wait teams out to make a mistake at the end and then capitalize on it. Kind of like boxers taking it to the scorecards and winning it in the last two rounds.
  7. This hasn't been all that much of an issue. Cathedral's pretty much the only program that moved up a class and kept someone from that new class from winning in their regular class level ... that would be in 5A. Also, there are teams that moved up via SF that ended up in the new class by enrollment anyway. Linton and Scecina both ended up in 2A by SF and both remain there because of enrollment. 1A Adams Central may well end up being SF'd, but realistically they are likely to hit enrollment to go to 2A at the same time. Lutheran would likely be the only 1A school to head to 2A that could, potentially, keep someone in 2A from winning that class. Chatard could also be in that same position, but last time they were in 4A, IHSAA put them up against Roncalli, so that pretty much made sure that Chatard wasn't going to keep a regular 4A school from taking 4A. You can certainly argue that Pioneer and LCC, both of whom were SF'd might have won 1A more if they hadn't been SF'd, but also realistically, while LCC has won a couple of state championships in 1A after having returned from 2A, they were also dropped four of six seasons in 1A as well by teams that ended up at LOS in 1A ... and only one of those was close as the rest were losses by four or more TDs including a 70-7 drumming at the hands of Pioneer and 42-9 at the hands of South Adams. Similarly, Pioneer's return to 1A was pretty anti-climatic with a 2-8 season record and an unceremonious first round bounce from the tourney by Triton 42-6.
  8. Could the IHSAA basically say that, should schools decide to form a co-op, said co-op is an all-sports co-op? That is, they would perform as a co-op across all sports instead of just football or just baseball? That would address that concern, although it would also likely have most schools decide if it's all or none, they'll take none.
  9. Rumor has it that 1A Faith Christian in Lafayette, will finally start playing football, but will be playing 8-man ball. They've been around for about 25 years and were admitted into IHSAA about a decade or so ago, but never had football at the school until now.
  10. Didn't HHC basically oust LCC? If not officially, then they were certainly helpful and showed up for the packing party when LCC departed for the HC.
  11. Do we go nine again, or do we add another? If we add another, who: Is a good fit? Who is realistic? I would assume that bringing in another 3A/4A team helps in making things a bit more competitive for Western ... along with the recent addition of Logansport. Other than maybe Pioneer, I don't see anything in 1A to consider. Anything in 2A/3A, especially with the Sagamore Conference shakeup, make any sense? Tri-West perhaps? I'd see Lebanon as more of a "fit" maybe linking up with Harrison/McCutcheon if they form a new league, but Lebanon could be an interesting addition of strength on the upper-end of the HC compared to the departures. Might go a decent way to making sure that Western doesn't get cold feet.
  12. It looks like West Lafayette has snagged TippValley to fill in their schedule for that opening too.
  13. I didn't want to toss WeBo under the bus like that. 😃 Seriously, when SF was first being considered, I thought the same thing about the yo-yoing; especially in 1A. Part of that was also, when it was first implemented, it took four points to stay up instead of two points, which I though for sure would set up a situation of roughly three or four teams taking turns wearing the crown. That hasn't ended up materializing; especially with the two-point modification. That kept Pioneer up in 2A instead of letting them back down ... and keep in mind that had they returned to 1A it would have been on the heals of picking up a regional title in 2A the year before over Andrean. For the most part, there really hasn't been any yo-yoing of 1A teams. Note that LCC won a sectional in 2A last season, so another sectional win and they stay. Although it's been about a decade since the first teams were SF'd, we're still still very young in the process. We've only had a about five cycles and, in that time we've also had some issues with having to modify the stay-up points, so we've really only had four cycles and one of them was the wonky COVID cycle. We don't have as many data points as it seems like we might have at this point, but I think SF is doing a decent enough job at this point, even if it's not at 100% of what it was expected/hoped to do. I'd say it's a step in the right direction and better than where we were. As for the p/p auto bump, in 1A, the only really competitive school at this point is Lutheran that's there. SF is about to take care of them. I also suspect that they will be able to pick up two points in 2A barring getting a 2A sectional of death like the 3A sectional of death or the infinite wisdom of putting Chjatard and Roncalli in the same sectional when Chatard bumped up to 4A. Enrollment will end up taking care of Covenant Christian and Park Tudor most likely the next time around, so it's likely to be a fairly moot point in the next year or so.
  14. Pioneer saw LOS three times in three years, and four in five, before being bumped as well. The last three visits were: lost the first, then the new cycle came, then won two back-to-back. Matter of fact, if you look at their time before going up, you realize there may need to be something beyond just a two-year window and simple cutoffs. 2013 - Sectional champ 2014 - State runner-up 2015 - Sectional champ 2016 - State runner-up 2017 - State champ 2018 - State champ It's not Sheridan and LCC four-peat visits to LOS, but it's definitely close in the neighborhood ... about a couple of doors down.
  15. The only reason that LCC moved back down was due to a fault in the original implementation of SF which required four points to stay up as opposed to two points. Had two points been in place like it is now, LCC would have remained in 2A. Yes, they are CURRENTLY in that SF debate, but at the time of the SF decision, they weren't and shouldn't have been. You can also make a similar argument for Pioneer, until you can't. Pioneer was as much a dominant force in 1A as LCC and I would argue probably even more so for a long time. Pioneer and LCC tended to finish #1 and #2 almost every other season for maybe the better part of a decade; typically ending each others' seasons. It was a shame they were in the same regional/sectional most of the time. When LCC returned to 1A in 2015, Pioneer turned around and smacked them around ... putting an exclamation point on it with a 70-7 on LCC's HOME FIELD. This, incidentally is that same LCC program post 2A that you mentioned. In that run up to being SF'd to 2A, Pioneer appears at LOS three seasons in a row and putting the icing on the cake outscoring their opponents in post season 364-14 including that 70-7 beatdown of the former 2A and state champ Knights. Pioneer then enters 2A and pulls a similar move to LCC's first run in 2A including knocking off 2A p/p Andrean and picking up a regional. Again, the difference is that Pioneer picks up 2 points after the IHSAA changes the rule, otherwis they'd still be in 2A too ... but then they end up back down in 1A. Their run up to 2A and their first two years in 2A look similar to LCC's. Incidentally, LCC teams, while strong in general, look nothing like the teams that were in that 4-peat period. LCC is one of the few teams to be SF'd by NOT getting to LOS in the year before they went up. Ask 1A South Adams just how "worrisome" 1A LCC was as they were wishing them well on the way out of 2A with a 42-9 victory over LCC.
  16. When you say "plays" are you meaning they are competitive or participates? If participation, then there are certainly some others like Traders Point ... for competitive it likely depends on what we are putting as a definition of competitive vs. dominant vs. punching above weight class. The only one in 1A that's been close to LOS without buying a ticket, outside of Lutheran, now that LCC's been SF'd, is Covenant Christian. For comparisons in 1A: Traders Point's history in IHSAA, since 2018, consists of no titles. Eliminated in the years by South Putnam, LCC, Tri-County, Carroll, and Park Tudor. Covenant Christian's history, since 2015, consists of a state championship in 2020. Outside of that, bounced in sectionals by Riverton Parke, North Vermission, South Putnam, Traders Point, and Lutheran ... rather unceremoniously this last season 56-0. Oldenberg Academy's history since 2015, consists of no titles. Bounced by North Decatur, West Washington, Tri, Hagerstown, and Milan. In don't think they compete anymore in football. Indiana Deaf ... speaking of teams that "don't have to take everyone" ... history since 1985, consists of no titles. Park Tudor's history, since 1985, consists of three sectional titles in 2002, 2005, 2022.
  17. Let's be fairly realistic about this ... and this is the main reason that I'm against an automatic bump and, instead, all for a PERFORMANCE-based bump. Folks often lump LCC into the "dominant" school programs of the IHSAA for all time. But looking at the numbers at the time of SF policy consideration, and if you are including LCC as a reason for SF, then SF's reason for existing is flawed because LCC was, prior to the SF implementation and prior to their 4-peat run in 2009-2012, which ended in being part of the inaugural class of SF, a team that looks like lots of other public 1A schools in terms of their PERFORMANCE to that point . Prior to their 4-peat run in 2009-2012, LCC the following post-season record ... starting in 1976: 1976 - State champion 1989 - Sectional champion 1999 - State champion 2005 - Sectional champion That's it! Two state championships, a decade and a half apart and two sectional championships ... every other season they left with nothing; including eight of those 33 seasons being bounced in the first game of sectionals. The only thing that was close to being a power run was the fact that it took only six years after winning the state championship in 1999 to finally get out of sectionals again in 2005 ... then again, in three of those six seasons they were bounced by two different teams, in the first game of sectionals, so I'm not sure that's a real power run. Incidentally, go back and look at how many DIFFERENT teams ended LCC's seasons in that timeframe. It's not like it was just Pioneer. In addition, it was Sheridan, Westfield, Frontier, South Decatur, Clinton Central, North Miami, Caston, North White, and Seeger; all public schools that ended LCC's season. By the way, just for a couple of interesting comparisons, Clinton Central, who was one of those teams that ended LCC's season three times and all three times causing LCC to exit sectionals in Game 1, had: 1997 - Sectional Championship 2000 - Sectional Championship 2002 - Sectional Championship While Sheridan had: 1976: Sectional Championship 1980: State Championship 1981: Sectional Championship 1983: Regional Championship 1984: State Championship 1985: Sectional Championship 1987: State Championship 1988: State Championship 1990: Sectional Championship 1992: State Championship 1994: Semi-State Championship 1998: State Championship 2004: Sectional Championship 2005: State Championship 2006: State Championship 2007: State Championship 2008: Semi-State Championship And Pioneer had: 1997 - State champion 2001 - Regional champion 2002 - Regional champion 2006 - Sectional champion 2008 - Sectional champion While Fountain Central had: 1978 - Semi-State champion 1983 - State champion 1996 - Sectional champion 1998 - Sectional champion 2004 - Sectional champion 2006 - Sectional champion And North White 1994 - State champion 1998 - Semi-State champion 2000 - Regional champion And, lastly as another data point set, Seeger: 1977 - Sectional champion 1995 - Sectional champion 1999 - Sectional champion 2002 - Sectional champion 2003 - Semi-State champion 2004 - State champion There's no way that anyone can sanely convince me that LCC's post-season records, prior to their 4-peat run when SF was being considered, would be even in the mix as a data point for making the SF argument other than because they were P/P. It wasn't until LCC thoroughly thrashed Fountain Central 52-0 in 2009 and then a year later 31-6 that anyone started taking notice and lumping LCC in with the Chatards and Cathedrals of the world. Realistically, LCC's records to that point were no more spectacular than Seeger's, Pioneer's, North White's, Fountain Central's, and, of course, not Sheridan's. With the 4-peat, LCC shot into IHSAA "legendary" status, but at the commencement of SF consideration, they looked no different than plenty of other public counterparts in their "dominance" moniker. If LCC was in the discussion driving SF, then it was pretty much 1) based on the 2009-2010 seasons ... so two data points ... which isn't a great driving force for policy, 2) ignoring all other data points of all other teams prior to 2009, or 3) based on the P/P categorization. In reality, none of these SHOULD be true. Lumping LCC in with some of the other P/Ps mentioned, ignores the data that was present at the time of the decisions and also generally tends to distort the analysis. We can do a "lookback" a decade after the fact that LCC is in the SF discussion "post implementation," but by the data at the time, there's no honest way that someone could argue that, prior to the 4-peat season run, which started right around the time that SF discussions were peaking, that LCC could have been a driving factor, in football, for SF in the same bucket as Chatard/Cathedral unless we are willing to admit that it wasn't even really about whether the teams were dominant or even winning.
  18. I like the idea of the lookback or trending forecasting model as opposed to just a set 2-year snapshot. Ultimately, you want programs to move up to a next level because their PROGRAM is ascending and not just because a couple of teams did so in a couple of years. The main reason that I suspect that most people who think that 2-year is too short and argue for 4-year isn't specifically because it's accurate, but because 1) it's better than 2-year in looking at program ascendancy as opposed to just limited team success and 2) it's easy to implement, as well as explain, than the lookback or trending modeling might be. Edit: BTW, Scecina is a school that got bumped and didn't win a state final in doing so ... 1A to 2A with a pair of red rings. Happened in the first implementation of SF bump ups.
  19. I got this message when I tried to access the link: 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons At first, I thought perhaps it was something like healthcode violations or money laundering or @Coach Nowlinusing his Rensselaer Mafia connections to have the place shut down ..."Nice burger joint you got here. Be a shame if something happened to it." Turns out it's just that the PharosTribune isn't GDPR compliant. With that said, @Coach Nowlin did have a "stray" golf ball collide with someone recently, so the folks from Mr. Happy Burger might want to just let him play through to be safe.
  20. Heard there were special dispensations provided, along with Subways subs, at the rest break on the way home. Hopefully, they'll pad the schedule a couple of minutes to stop off and take a look at the Grand Canyon.
  21. Apparently now official and decided. And then there were six.
  22. The issues that we had between crossovers was that each league had its own set of rules. Most were the same, but ball carrier weights, for example, might differ. It might also be other things such as defense alignments, etc. Since these were typically a week or two of crossover, we just kind of compromised where there were variances.
  23. Sometimes there's crossover activity with youth leagues/programs. I recall a couple of seasons where Little Gridiron played some games with Monticello Youth Football. The teams didn't join the leagues, but the leagues played some crossover matches. One year one of the LGI programs played both LGI and played MYF in weekends when they were going to have a bye. Just recently, I know that LCC was playing some of the 56er teams even though I don't think they had officially joined 56er football.
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