foxbat

It's like the folks you catch with academic misconduct. They put more effort into cheating, working to not get caught, and then working to provide denial when they get caught, that if they'd just expended the same energy on the assignment, they would have gotten an A.

Thanks for posting this. It helps to remind us that, while the vast majority of these kids will not go on to play football at a higher level, they are certainly poised to be good members of the community at higher levels.

Does this mean that he's taken a position somewhere in Region 4 or can he, at least, still retain that VP on the IFCA state board without taking the reigns somewhere?

Doesn't sound like those options are all that different.

Below you can see the crowd exiting Rodney's favorite store, Pitchforks and Torches, after getting some great Black Friday deals.

Does provide the advantage of being in the hallways throughout the day and feeling the pulse daily. Sometimes can find some gems walking the halls that don't initially show up for the first seasonal practices.

Expecting an audit?

Some lay coaches can make it work, but most need another job if they don't have the teacher job or something else in the building to feed the family and keep the lights on. The other issue that I've heard some folks also talk about is, when you have a coach full-time in the classrooms and on the field, that "in-building" presence for building the team is beneficial to the program.

How do you get clowning out of a factual statement? He always looked at GID as a monetized business, but that's not really its business model. Anyone who was around back when Tim Adams was running it realized that very quickly. It's still being run by volunteers in the same vein. It's a different business model.

I think that's the issue that the guy with the Facebook site didn't quite grasp.

Need to get back to the old days where guys would bet booster memberships on the state championships. Everyone wins even if their team didn't.

The one about vouchers? I'm not sure if it was asked with regard to why they don't in general or why they don't because they are receiving vouchers. In the latter case, it's because while the legislature will tell you it's about school choice, it's at best, about limited school choice. I think it'd be a great idea to say that, if you receive state money, you have to provide the same services that the state schools do. Unfortunately, the legislature did not put that provision on vouchers ... instead opting to allow the "poorest of the poor" ... e.g., a household of four with an AGI of $230,880 ... to take advantage of them. If you are sensing some sarcasm here about the "poorest of the poor," then I'm glad it's not lost as I'm not a fan of vouchers; especially in their current incarnation in Indiana. One the other hand, if your question was more generic as to why special ed isn't at the schools, I think it's somewhat of a misnomer as there are p/p schools with special ed level students, but not necessarily with special ed programs. And certainly not where they are servicing the full range of special ed. This is particularly true in smaller p/p schools. The funds aren't there for smaller of numbers of special ed kids. I know of a situation where there was a kid at a Catholic school and his younger sister, who eventually be attending, had a feeding tube. The school did not have the ability to be able to have resources for that specific instance, so the younger sister ended up going to the public school where her brother ended up joining her a couple of years later.

Numbers used in this analysis are based on 2022 unless noted. That 60-student drop, cost the school roughly $840,000, assuming that they all came from the Deanery, in just a single year. Logically, that's just the start. A kid that you would deny in their freshman year, for whatever reason, likely doesn't apply again in his sophomore year or junior year or senior year. So any of those freshman that wouldn't be admitted would be around $64,000 lost over a four-year span. If only half of the kids that were "kept out" were freshman, you're talking about a loss of just under $2 million over a four-year period. All total, assuming you cut 60 and 30 were in the freshman admittance, you're talking about $2,280,000 for a single year cut of 60 students plus ongoing fallout. For a 1A title in football? I'm not seeing it. Mind you that this school won a 2A baseball title in the previous year and had a 2A boys soccer team that's won a dozen or so 2A sectionals in a row. Then there's an even BIGGER issue. Providence draws 299 of its 328, over 90%, from some 13 of its parishes. How long do you think Catholic schools last when they are keeping their own parishioners from attending? If Providence spent even a couple of years artificially blocking parishioners from entering, they would likely not be seeing an uptick as they would have poisoned their own well.

Some of these are football, but 8-man like TPC, Indiana Deaf, RCA, Dugger Union.

It's too dissimilar between a school and a school. As @wabashalwaysfights pointed out with Crawfordsville, Benton Central, and West Lafayette. Those were three 3A schools roughly 30-40 minutes on either side of West Lafayette and their student body make-ups had different DNAs.

So what you are saying is that faith without works is a dead tourney season?

What about Concordia Lutheran's 623 kids? Asking for a friend as I/he have never heard a p/p complaint with the words "Concordia Lutheran" in it. Wonder if it's just coincidence tied to 2-8, 0-10, 4-7, and 2-8 ... Concordia's season record for the past four seasons ... and the fact that they haven't made it out of sectionals for the last four years all courtesy of public school kids including one with what must been an amazingly-talented 300 570 Spartans Cadets holding the Hot Gates against onslaught of the divinely-endowed 623 Persians Lutherans. Incidentally, to save the time of lookups, Concordia, over 31 seasons: Only six seasons escaping a sectional 3 sectionals ... one courtesy of a short COVID sectional 2 regionals 1 state title 25 non-winning seasons ... losing or tied 24 seasons ended by public school opponents from 15 different programs Only one back-to-back season pairing where they got out of a sectional, 2019 and 2020, both resulting in terminal sectional wins The one state title in 2016 was flanked on either side by two seasons where they never made it out of sectionals and included three losing seasons out of the four games, the fourth was a 7-5 season. Interesting comparison ... West Lafayette over the same timeframe: 10 seasons escaping a sectional 4 sectionals 3 regionals 1 semi-state 2 state titles 10 non-winning seasons ... losing or tied Three back-to-back or more season pairing where they got out of a sectional including a four-year streak resulting in a state title, semi-state, and two sectionals and another three-year streak that resulted in a regional, sectional, and state title.

My point had nothing to do with public vs. private and size. What I was noting is that, even in a situation where public vs. private isn't the issue, there will still be complaints about "advantages." As noted in Texas, while you say you don't think size is an issue, I can tell you for the better part of a decade plus while I was down there, there was always a public-school debate about the large north Dallas districts that never split into multiple high schools. Similarly, in the Louisiana football environment there's plenty of grousing that goes on in the private ranks as well even though public and private are split. In essence, doesn't really matter whether there are multipliers, success factors, separate tourneys, there will always be reason to complain.

I would suspect that, if this happened, there would then be a constant drumbeat of inequities between public schools. In Texas, even though they have a public and private tourney, you still hear the grumblings every year about public schools where "they get the entire town" vs. other places where town's talent is "carved up" across schools. I remember back in the day, when I was in the Texas football scene in the 70s, Dallas basically had some massive districts that had never split into multiple schools like Plano, Richardson, Highland Park, and the emerging Mesquite district which tended to run roughshod over the Houston schools as the post-season progressed. At the time I was in Houston, our district has split into three 6A equivalent schools. There was no way to compete with Dallas-area monster district that had the same number of students in a single district except ever once in a while. There was ALWAYS grumbling in the post season amongst the public schools. In Louisiana, the have segregated football, in more ways than one, but separate public and private/parochial leagues. There's an underlying understanding/discussion about the differences between the "rich, white academy public schools" and some of the minority-heavy parochial schools which mirror the same type of arguments that we hear here in Indiana about public vs. private. There the grumbling is within the private schools.

Providence will likely be bumped next season as all they need is a regional. Mater Dei bumped up via SF equivalency, but then ended up at 3A enrollment the same year. Same kind of thing that happened with Scecina after 2012 season, Linton after the 2016 season, and now AC after the 2023 season.

The Knoys are associated with Harrison nowadays. Didn't Schornstein go on to bigger and better things with Delta House?

Would have been some real barn burners! IMO, that 2011 semi-state game was the state championship game that year.

Uphill? I remember in 2011, after LCC had beaten Sheridan in semi-state at LaRocca, I waited by the gate so my son, who was five at the time, and I could be close by to see Coach Wright exit the field. As he passed by, I pointed him out to my son. My son asked, "Who is that guy?" The only answer that came to my lips at that time was, "He's a legend."

Interesting take; however, the person that I responded to made a statement about students knowing about soccer and not football and wondering why the school had to be classified 6A for football.

Why is there an assumption that there has to be competitiveness in football to be correctly classified as a 6A sport school? It would seem to me that, if there's a huge population that's familiar with and, perhaps, proficient in soccer, then an astute AD would ride that wave. Not necessarily trying to bend the will of the gods to football, but instead to the arc of the school's talent. Harrison is roughly a couple of hundred kids smaller than Southport. It is 6A this season after being perpetually stuck toward the top of 5A enrollment for a long time. Since 1994, Harrison has seen three sectional titles in football in 5A, with a pair of back-to-backs coming in 2018 and 2019 as the school started to hope for further football post-season success. That's been kind of dashed with the new jump to 6A. With that said, what has Harrison done? In 2017 and 2024, it won a state title in boys' soccer. Boys' tennis was runner up in 2022, unified track and field was runner-up in 2017, and softball was runner-up in 2022. In 2020, 2021, and 2022 they had the state vault champion in gymnastics. In 2021, they had the state champ in 200-meter dash. In 2022, 2023, and 2024 they had a state champion in mixes of 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly. Also had a state champion individual in men's tennis in 2022. In terms of individual runner-ups, vault in 2019, 220 lb. wrestling in 2020, and women's tennis individual in 2024. Harrison's also had recent sectional wins in baseball in 2012, 2022, and 2023. Girls basketball sectional in 2023. Boys' XCountry sectionals in 2020, 2023, and 2024 with a regional in 2019. Boys' XCountry sectionals in 2021, 2023, and 2024 with a regional in 2021. Boys' golf sectionals in 2010-2019 with regional in 2016. Girls' golf sectionals in 2019, 2020, and 2024. Gymnastics with sectionals in 2020-2023. Girls' soccer sectionals in 2018, and 2020-2024. Sofball with sectionals in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023 and regionals in 2022 and 2023. Boys' swimming and diving sectional in 2024. Girls' track and field with sectionals in 2009-2012, 2014, and 2021-2024. Girls' volleyball sections 2007-2010, 2012, 2014, 2023, and 2024. Boys wresting with sectionals 2012-2024 and regionals in 2013-2021 and 2024. Realistically, will Harrison ever be competing beyond a section in football? Given that they share the sectional with Westfield, it's unlikely although we can hope that the IHSAA will entertain 7A football. There are, plenty of other areas to leverage in the school even though anything beyond a sectional right now, and even a section, is a long ways off. In essence find what the student body may be able to do.