foxbat

Jeff's numbers were up in the last decade or so, but the recent numbers that you showed for DOE are down about 40 from last year's numbers. It's only a couple percent drop, but given that Harrison jumped up by 57, also giving it a 100-student net, and McCutcheon crept up, even if by just 8, giving it a near 50-student net against Jeff, it was still an upward creep ... worth watching. West Lafayette, by contrast, like Jeff, also saw a decrease of around 24 students since the last alignment. By contrast, LCC held close to even at -2. Faith Christian was around 232 in the last alignment, but they don't show up in the numbers above since Faith doesn't field/play football. The trending seems to be pointing toward boundary-locked areas like WL and LSC seeing decreases or, at best, staying even and the more open-boundaried districts, the county schools, showing growth. It's a small sample size with just two county schools, two "city schools," and two p/p schools, so take the trending with a grain of salt ... especially given that Harrison has a couple of brand-new housing divisions starting to put up house. Word on the street is that may likely add up to 300-households just between those new housing tracts. Warsaw looks like it dropped down a bit from last alignment, with , Jeffersonville, Merrillville, FW Northrop, and Valpo with an increase and DC seeing a HUGE jump with some 200+ kids added. I'd seen estimates from others about Whiteland jumping up in numbers, but it looks like they saw a decent drop since last alignment numbers dropping about 153 students.

By this count, Harrison has now passed Jeff as the largest school in Tippecanoe County. In addition, the Jeff number is decreasing and the Harrison number is increasing. By the time of realignment or the next one after that, Jeff could be classified 5A. Could provide an interesting mix in 5A.

Baseball wasn't too far off fairly recently. And volleyball just had a nice run. They have decent relationships/schedules in those areas, so I would suspect that they might mirror some of that in scheduling in football; where possible.

Even in the youth league, we'd run a lot of double TE sets. Made for some interesting plays at that level; especially once the counter was mastered.

And the state name just sets you up to mispronounce it too.

I knew about the Refugio pronunciation. There are lots of places in Texas that have off-sounds on the city/town names. I always like Waxahachie, Seguin, Mexia, Nacogdoches, and of course, Luckenbach. Like you said, with 15-18 year old kids, it's not smart to bet the farm. Depends on what side of the bed they get up on ... even if there bed is up against a wall. 🙂

Looks like Hawley and Albany have slain the giants, while Aledo is the stuff of myth and legend. St. Aug's loss to DeSoto earlier in the season looks pretty respectable in light of DeSoto's thrashing of fellow-6A Vandegrift. Hats off to SOC too for its back-to-back wins this season and last. Since the age of suburban dominance, it's the only DISD school to win a state championship in almost three-quarters of a century.

Oddly enough, it wasn't until I moved up here over a couple of decades ago that I learned about Mart's dominance ... and Aledo's. Prior to moving up to Indiana, and coming out of a big 6A Texas school which currently boats over 3,200 students, I must confess that I was a "big school bigot." I've since come to love small school ball. I'm more familiar with Refugio via their FFA program and the fact that my old high school is more populated than the city. 🙂

He was at Texas when I was an undergrad at A&M, when Kubiak and Murray, Kyler Murray's dad, were QBs back in the early-/mid-80s. He's had pretty good success in Texas as a coach ... at least at the high school level ... as he also coached at Southlake Carroll too and has rings from there as well.

Happens all the time everywhere. 🙂

Of interest is the notion that somehow or another parochial schools "steal" the public school talent, but as you pointed out, many of these kids are parishioners before they ever attend any school; public or private.

I'll have to tune in. My daughter was asking me about college bowl game season and when it starts. For all intents and purposes, these games tend to be better games, and better attended, than some of the college bowl games ... especially the Texas 6A contests.

We hear a lot about how people don't like seeing the same teams play in the state championships, but don't tell the folks in Texas that. North Shore and Duncanville will be squaring off again in 6A in a repeat of last year's title game and is the fourth time in the last five years that these two will meet in the championship game. In 5A, Aledo, which will make its eighth appearance in eleven seasons in 5A will square off against College Station which is making its third appearance in six years. Aledo also had a run in 4A as well showing up four championship games in its last five seasons of 4A and taking those four championships before heading to 5A.

There are a couple of issues here. First, realize that LCC is one of only two high schools for the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana. That diocese stretches from the Illinois border to the Ohio border and up to Demotte in the north and down to Carmel in the south. Guerin's the other school. While LCC is a mile down the road from Jeff, there are families that attend LCC that are spread out all over the area ... McCutcheon, Harrison, West Lafayette, and Jeff here in town as well as folks from Attica, Delphi, Brookston, and probably other areas too. While Jeff would get some of those kids, and did get some of those kids over the years, there are other schools that would have "split those resources." In the early 80s, I believe that LCC was a larger school than it is today. Realize that, back in 1990, the diocese announced that it was closing the school due to lack of enrollment, support, and money and it was only due to an 11th-hour appeal that the diocese kept the school open. LCC's getting closer to 300 students, but it's my understanding that it's still not back to peak numbers since its opening. In Tippecanoe county there are some 190,000 people. About 12% of those are Catholic. That gives you over 20,000 Catholics just in the county. By the latest IHSAA numbers, LCC has 296 students. That's a lot of Catholics roaming public school hallways.

I should have said last year as opposed to last season. Technically they are leaving in June, but like you said, they are on the schedules of some of the NCC teams for football. Harrison, along with the other Lafayette NCC schools, has Tech on its 2023 schedule and Harrell's shows it as a conference game, but I think, like you said, it's actually due to scheduling/contracts already in place. To my knowledge, the Tech departure was amicable and mutual, so it's not like the conference is turning their back on them and shunning them like you see in some cases when a conference boots a team or a team leaves under less-than-cordial circumstances.

I believe that 2023 is their last season in the NCC.

www.dirtycheatincatholics.net Lord, I apologize for that there.

There are actually a few kids that played LCC youth and junior high football that then ended up at other schools in the area ... in part because they WEREN'T Catholic. Schools like Faith Christian and St. James Lutheran didn't/don't have youth football or high school football, so the LCC program became a place where kids without a school football program could come to play ... at least until high school. Same with homeschooled kids too. Some of those kids ended up heading to public schools after their time at Faith, St. James, or homeschooling and ended up being strong contributors to those programs and also played in college too. Of course, there's a fair share of Catholic school kids that ended up at those public schools too.

That's what we've done with our kids every year since the oldest was around 6th grade. Each year we ask them if they want to continue where they are or look at a different option. Sometimes we've had some decide to return back to homeschooling full-time and, in other cases, when they get to high school, they get the option of doing homeschooling full-time, part-time, or not at all and, if they want part-time or not at all they get to select the school they want to attend ... although a couple of schools won't allow them to attend part-time homeschooled.

I think he does that every season and someone still does it. I suspect though, being a teacher, he's used to that.

Are we doing an over/under for this?

LCC could have used them in 2002 ... didn't even make it to the sectional championship that year.

Here's the problem with assigning "what everyone knows" The problem with predictive is that it still misses. As an example, I'll apply anecdotal evidence from a Catholic household with very involved parents who are well off. In addition, that household has a parent who coached athletic teams, more than one sport, for almost two decades. His oldest kids grew up from the time they were 3 and 1 1/2 on the sidelines and practices with Dad and the other three from the time they were born. They were all introduced to sports very early on in their lives and encouraged to try various sports from basketball, to volleyball, to soccer, to football, to baseball. The two oldest were in p/p schools and played sports there until they were fifth/third grade when they left the schools while the two youngest played in p/p sports from the time they were about 2nd/3rd grade. Given our predictive component, we expect that all five kids in this family would be counted 100% in the sports count for a p/p school if they went there. All of the background, demographics, and even the extra exposure to sports from having direct exposure through coaching would tell us us, predictively, that they would count toward the "active enrollment" of the school ... especially if they were at a p/p. Realistically, what happened ... The oldest girl attended Jeff and promptly went academics with no sport activity. Was an operator on the robotics team and also participated in quiz bowl activities, foreign language activities, and science competitions including regional awards. The second oldest attended Jeff, did honors classes, and basically attended class, hung out with friends, and went to school events, but spent all of her time outside of school in a professional dance company. The third oldest spent a year on the varsity dance squad as a sophomore, but basically that was about it. Took lots of classes at Ivy Tech as a junior/senior, but not overly attached to the high school and its activities. Got into volleyball her senior year, but was for an area team rather than the high school. The fourth plays football and baseball for Harrison. The fifth plays football and baseball in Harrison youth programs and will likely play for the high school when he gets there. Overall, even in our family, which predictives would say would produce a high level of athletic involvement, that isn't the case. Matter of fact, we're only at about 40% full-time athletics for the family with a little trickle of the one year of volleyball. We easily fit the p/p family demographics from every aspect and we also fit the "intangibles" that are always tossed around about p/p families such as stable households, high education, both parents with ability to work while having flexibility whether both do or don't, stable neighborhood, relatively good health, kids not needing to work to support/help the family, etc. By predictives and all of the discussions so far, we would produce 100% enrollment consideration ... but realistically, it's not the case.

I agree, although Indiana has SF and, as I ... and others ... have posted in other threads, there are tweaks/modifications that can make that approach much more effective and equitable in the overall scheme of things. SF isn't perfect, by a long shot, but it's a step in the right direction to finding a more equitable approach.