foxbat

No one, or I should say no one in Sectional 28, was surprised when Chatard ended up in 4A in Roncalli's sectional. No one from that sectional will be surprised to see Brebeuf end up in there with Roncalli either. And certainly seeing Chatard back with Guerin. The only thing that would somewhat surprise me, but wouldn't put it past the IHSAA, is finding a way to get LCC into Sectional 28 with Chatard, Guerin, West Lafayette. 😃

If Chatard's back in 3A, don't be surprised to see the resurgence of the Sectional of Death minus Brebeuf. That will put Guerin, Chatard, and honorary P/P, West Lafayette, in the same sectional again.

Last two seasons, THS and Harrison have kicked off their respective seasons against each other.

Should be eight south of 24 in a couple of years as Harrison's going to grow into 6A even without a 5A SF victim.

I just realized that. Must of hit the scroll wheel in the load.

Lawrenceburg was the first 1A state champ in modern history back in 1975.

I think you'd have to add Pioneer to that mix. LCC and Pioneer have often been the ones to eliminate each other in sectional or regional play, so despite the strength of program, they sometimes never made it out of sections due to the eventual state champ. Since 2009, the last 13 seasons, LCC and Pioneer have met in post season eight times and eliminated each other ... and in four seasons they were in different classes, so they couldn't meet. In four of those eight seasons, they entered post season as #1/#2 and in another two they were both in the Top 3/4. Pioneer's early exits from post season weren't due to a mishap or weak schedule that caught up with them ... in some cases, they played the state championship game in the first or second game of the post season. Pioneer definitely fits in the pound-for-pound group!

Is that CJB's bike in the backgorund?

Reminds me of Alfred Doolittle's response to Colonel Pickering.

Of interest to me is that athletics is getting the spotlight here. It is estimated that some 50-75% of college students change majors at least once in college. The number of students who transfer institution as a whole as opposed to within is also not a small number. As you point out @Bobref, we see this movement in real-life and, more specifically, in college environments in non-athletic aspects already. We don't lament students transferring schools or majors when things work out ... well, maybe if you are the parent covering tuition costs and your kid keeps changing majors and turning school into a profession there may be some lamenting ... to the contrary, we often encourage them to find what works for them if the current path isn't.

Are you drawing a distinction with club, like the year-round guys, versus a travel baseball team that plays about 6 weeks or so in the summer after the high school season ends? Or are you considering those the same thing?

LCC won football and baseball in 2009, but last time basketball was at the state level along with football was 1999 and while football took state, basketball finished as runner up. Impressive!

A lot of the youth league stuff in the area tends to be Sundays to allow for the use of the high school fields with no need for worrying about potential conflicts since IHSAA doesn't allow high school stuff on the Sundays. I'm not so sure about conference-based in Harrison's case though as last season, Harrison's JV only played three games with NCC opponents and, the season before, it only ended up being two games within conference.

Only true believers can see it. 😃 http://www.ossaa.com/Football.aspx

Oklahoma has about 80 teams across two divisions that play 8-man. Here's a link to their IHSAA equivalent. Don't know if they have links to officiating mechanic guidelines or anything like that there, but it's a starting point.

I agree that Saturdays seem to have been the call for JV recently ... at least up north here. I don't know if that's tied to class or not. Harrison has, for the most part, played the bulk of its JV games on Saturdays.

Alleged photo taken in the Park Tudor parking lot on count day. 😃 Lord, I apologize for that there.

I think it could be, but it could also take out some smaller schools that might be willing to go through that maintenance or have nicer grass fields. I know that LCC's baseball field is a nice grass field for a 1A/2A school. The football field also holds up remarkably well for a grass field. For 1A/2A contests, I think it would be OK with parking ... although, historically, they have had to do grass parking for Pioneer and the re-start game against West Lafayette. My other concern for a turf requirements, and I'd probably need to take a look at @crimsonace1's map that he created for more clarity, is are there some 1A/2A schools that aren't close by some of those 6A/5A turf schools. It might be six-one-way, half-dozen-the-other on travel since they might be playing someone on the other end of the north or south part of the state, but at least in that travel component one gets to be home. I'd be interested in whether there's a difference in that thought process for smaller schools vs. larger schools too. Before I moved to Indy, I was a big-school football bigot. I came from a school in Texas that would be 6A classification in Indiana and would be top 10 in Indiana by enrollment. While home field was nice, being on the road wasn't really on the player's minds except in maybe a handful of schools. Since coming to Indiana, I've absolutely fallen in love with small-school ball and learned A LOT about the character across the classes and it seems to me, solely my opinion though with no statistical data behind it, that home field plays more in the psyche for smaller schools than larger on average. Sagarin has, for the last few years, provided less than 2 points advantage for home field ... last year it was just 1.28 for the whole state. I wonder if that's really evenly-distributed across the classes or, like I saw with big schools, at least in Texas, not that big a thing, but maybe much more for smaller class ball. Might that have an impact in which classes or programs all-out embrace neutral semi-state fields vs. those that are going to look much more at cost-benefit?

Is it a question of venue as opposed to just location? Jeff has been a "landing place" for basketball tourneys and post-season play. Similarly, I get the impression, when the IHSAA sets some of the regionals/sectionals etc. for baseball, it's as much about the venue as anything else. With that said, I'm merely asking as opposed to passing judgement on Washington's facilities vs. Seymour's as I'm not familiar with either school's facilities. I think the other issue with football, as you pointed out, is the aspect of maintenance up to the semi-state; especially among smaller schools. The cost to most 1A/2A and possibly 3A/4A of maintaining non-turf fields for two or three extra weeks would probably make it not worth hosting. The argument nowadays is that, at least if you go somewhere where the field is in disrepair for football post-season, it's kind of "baked-in" to the equation that you take what you get. If we went to neutral fields, there would HAVE to be, or at least should be, an expectation of a certainly level of amenities, field condition, etc. That expectation would probably take several schools out of WANTING to be considered. Obviously, turf fields make it easier for the maintenance, but there are even some turf fields that might be, arguably, better turf fields to play on post season than others. I suspect there would be much more grousing if the state went to neutral sites and field conditions/amenities were, within reason, less-than-stellar. It's kind of like $1 beer night at the local dive. No one asks what label it is and, even if it tastes like paint thinner and is sometimes warm, there will be little complaining. At $8 a glass, the expectation is ice cold and name-brand.

Works for me!

Can't say I'm going to miss Zionsville in that sectional with Harrison after the last two seasons.

There's always 28; especially when Chatard comes back. 😃

Already posted by @EasyEJay. See

Part of it is the increase in 1A teams which slides those at the top of 1A into 2A. Since the other classes, outside of 5A, have set numbers, there's a "trickle up" effect. That'll cause the lower-end cutoffs to be higher.

Unless someone sends the IHSAA an anonymous note stating that Breman is indeed named for Pope Breman VI ... hence the 'B' that looks like a '6' on the helmets. When that happens you shall mysteriously be cast into the Sectional of Death in 3A. 🙂