foxbat

Looks like there's a much bigger issue going on that way than just football.

Of course it is. That's the whole issue with big brothers. Yet Brownsburg, 2995, did it last season and in grand style, 31-7. And Center Grove, 2754, did it in 2019. I like the idea of the backyard, the external, being secondary to my own house, the internal. The goals I always set for my kids, albeit it was youth ball, always focused on our program regardless of who was on the schedule, as primary goals. Secondary goals existed with external ties. The same was true of individual goals ... I always wanted my kids to be able to see goals met during the week ... during practice ... rather than that 32 minutes of game time on Sundays. That provided lots of opportunity for the kids to strive, meet their goals, and grow.

The quickest way to break out of your big brother's shadow is to kick his *ss ... preferably in front of his friends.

I think you'd be more likely to see Westfield and Zionsville push to boot some of the other schools out of the HCC and look at re-votes to admit Carmel and/or Center Grove rather than jump ship to form a new conference.

Now that's a multiplier that makes more sense.

"But you ain't got no hair, Lieutenant Dan."

Same standings guy that does the Cubs pre-season standing?

Again, as I mentioned in another thread, LCC formed the youth league with three other public school programs. By the time I'd come on board, that league included: Battleground which feeds into Harrison Klondike which feeds into Harrison Benton Central East Tipp which feeds into Harrison LCC Delphi West Lafayette It eventually also included teams from Rossville South Newton Kankakee Valley and also was involved in playing cross-league games with Monticello's youth football that include teams that fed into Twin Lakes and also played with teams from North White and Tri-Central. Of course, locally, there's also 56ers which is Jeff's self-contained program, HYF which is the Harrison self-contained league, and the Mavs program which has gone to non-contact. There are also programs like the Lebanon Youth Football that includes Lebanon, Western Boone, Tri-West, North Montgomery, South Montgomery, Crawfordsville and Danville. Yes, there's CYO leagues, but there are LOTS of public youth programs that are out there.

I think some schools can handle/manage that non-contact item. @Coach Nowlin can provide more insight on that as RCHS moved to a non-contact model, but still maintained good numbers/interest/buy-in. With that said, there's a very good community buy-in/support for RCHS and that was there before the shift and was, in my opinion, much stronger than just the contact element. That may well be tied to a small community aspect as opposed to even the football aspect. It may also be tied to a difference in small-school compared to big-school ball. Most of what I've observed with that has been tied more toward anecdotal experience as opposed to data analysis so far. With that said, I have a couple of posts here on GID where I gave the data analysis on the LCC program before and after the start of their youth program and the data for that school pretty much shows that the youth program had a major ... positive ... impact on the program's trajectory. The idea of kids not seeing football until 7th/8th or even high school was one of the specific stated reasons for the introduction of the youth program. The expansion of the program, to include 3rd graders, and 2nd graders with parental/league approval was tied to some of the safety concerns that we were seeing with 4th graders being at a distinctly different level than 6th graders. That's when we split the league into a 3rd/4th and 5th/6th league.

Yeah, I know. For some reason, my autospell puts in Peeples and I didn't override it / see it ... was focused more on the general content. Not sure why it does that since we get plenty of team e-mails from him ... including one this morning.

I don't think it's necessarily a downfall, but instead a "not keeping up" ... which makes it look like a downfall. If you go back a decade or so, you'll see a situation where Harrison had three 0-10 seasons, 2011-2013, in a row. This was on the eve of Coach Peeples taking the reigns there. In those years, you'll also see that McCutcheon was also struggling ... along with Jeff too. The local town talk tended to be around which of those would end up "winning the area" because the idea of having winning seasons was out of the discussion. Coach Peeples embarked on a steady program of building Harrison's foundation; nothing overly flashy, but getting student/school/community buy-in and building his pipeline. The HYF self-contained youth program was formed and instead of the various feeder schools competing against each other, they started playing together ... at least in the K-6 kids. Jeff also had the Moore transition into the Shanley-era where there was a change of buy-in and foundation-building. McCutcheon, at least from my viewpoint, seemed more in a status quo mode where they were expecting to get better, but didn't seem to be taking similar growth steps of their Lafayette-area brethren. McCutcheon had big kids in the mid-2010s and was relatively competitive. One other thing that may have also contributed, although this is pure conjecture backed with a little anecdotal info, is the move toward non-contact football at McCutcheon. At one time, McCutcheon had Little Mavs, which was a self-contained contact youth program. About a half-decade or so ago, they moved to flag-only. It likely hasn't had a physical/direct impact on the high school program, but it may have had an impact on buy-in. Anecdotally, I was over at Jeff a few years back for Jr. Broncho baseball tryouts and I was talking with a couple of parents who had commented that there were some McCutcheon kids trying out for Jeff youth baseball. They had stated that the kids had come over to Jeff to play tackle ball with the 56ers when McCutcheon went to flag through 6th grade and had stayed behind to also tryout for baseball. Again, just anecdotal and just a local outsider's view. McCutcheon folks may be able to give much more direct and accurate inputs.

Given that outside of last season, McCutcheon hasn't been the victim of a 3-win-or-less season since 2012, I'm thinking that "thrilled" isn't the way I would look at a 3-win season if I were McCutcheon. Those three wins would require McCutcheon to beat AT, Marion, and Muncie Central. For a little context: AT is the team that folks have been talking about in other threads as being so bad and that they should go to the MIC for other-than-football reasons. In the four meetings with Tech since 1994, McCutcheon is 3-1; dropping last season's match, at home, 34-28. Given the shade thrown at Tech in other threads, a win over Tech by McCutcheon would be fairly status quo. Since 2014, McCutcheon is 8 for 8 on beating Muncie Central. If you toss in the old Muncie South, then they have met 12 times with McCutcheon holding a commanding 11-1 lead in the series ... their last loss coming to Muncie south in 2000. A win there would/should be status quo. Marion and McCutcheon have met four times since 1994. The series is tied 2-2 with Marion winning the last two in 2021 and 2020; outscoring the Mavs 25.5 to 6.6 across those two games. Picking up a win over Marion wouldn't be status quo, at least based on the last two seasons, and fits into my major-bit-of-luck scenario leading to a 3-win season. While three wins would be good for the start of the Strasser era, I just don't see it as being anything in the realm of considerable improvement ... again since McCutcheon hasn't seen a 3-win-or-less season since 2012, they will likely consider considerable improvement being an even or winning season and getting some wins against teams other than Muncie Central, Anderson, and Richmond. Incidentally, I would be quite surprised if Coach Strasser's spending any time at all right now conjecturing about the fate of the NCC and grabbing a piece of the Iron Throne in a new Westeros. As you pointed out, he knows what he's getting into and right now, and I expect that he's spending pretty close to 100% of his time working on his Xs and Os and Jimmies and Joes and not a whole bunch of time playing negotiating strategies of where a team that he just inherited might be able to curry favor in a yet-to-exist league ... maybe the AD might be thinking about it, but I suspect that Coach Strasser's focus is 100% on the team and this season.

At 1-8 last season, considerable improvement will be pretty much anything unless they catch COVID again. The will likely be, at best, 1-6 by the end of September. That 1 will likely come against Muncie Central ... a team that went 1-9 last season. The two in October are likely to be 50/50 and that includes AT who everyone is talking about being outclassed who beat McCutcheon at McCutcheon last season. They are likely looking at 2-7 by the tourney with a little luck in October and 3-6 with a major bit of luck. And that's where the luck ends as they will face Decatur Central, Plainfield, or Harrison in Round 1 of the tourney. Basically hope to roll a 13 with two regular die. They may get better in the future and may start in building this season, but would not expect to see what would be considered "considerable improvement" being a major luck scenario that sees 3-7 with wins over AT, Marion, and Muncie Central and, more likely a result that probably ends up 2-8.

On the boys' side, they won NCC title in soccer in 2018 and 2019. In everything else, nothing since 1960 or so.

Silver Dollar?

We have five kids, so with the Jeff games it would have been a couple of kids at that one, then dropping off a couple others off at another location. It'd be nice if we could drop them off and get straight to dinner, but that never happens. Kind of like right now with travel baseball and football. It'd be great of they all worked out logistically, but they always start/stop with the least amount of opportunity to maximize time ... unless you are considering maximizing time that I have to spend in the car, in a parking lot, or on the road.

Gonna have to figure out how to monetize that. You're lucky ... you were at a school where no one on the team had a peanut allergy. See you in a couple of weeks if it's like the retirements that we've seen in the past.

Depends on whether the vast majority of umpires are practicing Baptists. 🙂

Pioneer and RCHS are a couple of examples of teams that wouldn't even throw the ball to the ref after the play was over and were successful.

Harrison will be a team to watch this year. Historically they are a team that hasn't been on anyone's radar with three back-to-back 0-10 seasons leading up to Coach Peebles arrival. The Roncalli game in 2020 where Harrison went back and forth in lead changes and dropped a 4-point game got lost in a 6-4 season with losses to 6A Westfield and Zionsville who also lost at LOS in 6A/5A respectively that year. Last season should have raised eyes with the win over Jeff and the Zionsville loss, which as you mentioned, Harrison led going into the half. Zionsville did a great job coming out and riding Price's legs and a great half-time adjustment to take that sectional title. Most folks wrote it off as Harrison still looking like those 0-10, but I think there's some decent progress being missed there ... which frankly is fine with me as you get a chance to sneak up on folks that don't look behind the curtain. Plenty of undercard work going on and a program that is continually growing in count, physically, and conceptually as well. I think these next couple of seasons will give us a really good idea of whether they are poised for that next step or still need a lot more work. They get West Lafayette and Plainfield right out of the gate as well as a scrimmage with cross-town 2A LCC. They will then face off against 6A Jeff at the end of September. Unfortunately, due to the NCC rotation, they won't get Kokomo this season.

And in two of the three years that MC lost regionals, the team they lost to are the likes of Zionsville and New Pal and in all three years, the teams that they lost to ended up at LOS in that season.

I'd guess it's not the driving factor for most.

Most officials, at least in the youth program games, brought their water bottle or cooler to the games, but the one thing I started to notice is that they only drank from them between games or at half-time. We always tried, whenever we had a water break on the field, to offer the officials some water too. I know that sometimes there could be the appearance issue in taking a drink from one team, but I think it'd be a small, but nice gesture if, when any team called a time out and had water on the field, bringing a bottle for the officials to share would become a norm. One other edit: In the recruitment thing, in the youth programs, we hired Friday-night officials to ref our games and encouraged them to bring members with their crew if they wanted to do training. We'd typically get a senior ref and then usually a new ref that they could train with things like placement, ball marking, calls, etc. It was the best of both worlds as the junior guy got some great one-on-one time with a senior guy and the senior guy often spent additional time during the game explaining to the kids and coaches, why something was being called and also helping coaches train up kids in how to avoid the infraction in the future.

Harrison travels to Fishers this afternoon.