foxbat

I'm not familiar with that part of Indy or Johnson County, so I'm just asking ... nothing implied here. Is there a pent-up demand for a private school environment that has an athletic bent in that part of the city? The reason that I'm asking is that Lafayette-West Lafayette has some private school options available, but only one, so far, LCC, has been competitive or viable enough to get to the high school level with IHSAA for football. Faith Christian just announced about 5-6 years ago that they would be competing in IHSAA, but they don't compete in football ... just baseball, soccer, basketball, volleyball, etc. They have an enrollment of around 220 and have a K-8 school as well as the high school. I think they purposely decided not to field a football team. St. James Lutheran has K-8, but no high school. Lafayette Christian also has K-8, but no direct-from-LCS high school. A couple of other Christian Elementary schools in the area have folded in the past decade or so. Faith's been around since 1997 and LCC's been around since 1956. The vast majority of kids who attend Faith, if not all, are non-Catholic, and the vast majority of kids that attend LCC are Catholic kids that came up through the Catholic elementaries ... kind of like you see with the Indy diocesan schools. In both Faith and LCC, there's been more of a community of students as opposed to the high school being an option for the community as a whole. Is there an elementary school or set of schools that feed into Greenwood Christian or is it more of an option for the community?

TPA has less than that; they were around 128 last classification. Prior to last season ... they had to bow out due to COVID ... they'd been to a pair of sectional championships back-to-back and were heading to their third. They also beat Covenant Christian back in 2019.

Just curious if you got a chance to see Roncalli against Harrison last season and your thoughts? I didn't get to see the game in person, but in the game recap, it looks like it was a back and forth game with several lead changes between the teams and Roncalli getting the best of the back and forth before time expired. Harrison's got some growing to do, but am encouraged by the size of the freshman class and their competitiveness. They've typically been comfortably handled by Westfield in previous years, but this Westfield's freshman squad only beat Harrison by 7. Unfortunately for Harrison, I think that by the time that freshman squad hits varsity, Harrison's going to probably be big enough to classify as 6A.

I agree with your stance that the issue tends to be quality as opposed to the quantity issue. To an extent, it's kind of like I explain to high school / freshman when they are putting together their references for their resume. I get so many kinds that will put six or seven references on the reference sheet and then tell me they have a strong list of references because they have so many. To drive the point home, I ask them, what would happen if I call the first six people on their list and the line is busy and I get to the seventh and they answer and that's the only reference that I use ... how will it compare to the first one on their list? The look on their face often tells me that Reference 7 isn't the one they want to hang their hat on and they trim that list. I like the idea of the compact 6-team conference that you mentioned and then a "power" sub-schedule. Preferably those in that power sub-schedule are something that you don't see in the others on a regular basis ... air raid vs. pound-and-ground vs. Swiss Army knife, OH Catholics, etc. Of course, it can also be a traditional rivalry game too.

Earlier in the thread when someone pointed out that adding Penn to your new system doesn't help Penn, you basically said that it wasn't really about helping Penn, but about helping your new conference. Similarly, adding P/P wouldn't be about helping the P/P, it would be about adding to the competition. I'm just in line with what you were saying earlier. Of course, if you don't want to talk about competition ...

What strikes em as odd as how quickly you write off P/P inputs as monolithic and somehow not able to "understand" public school challenges. I went to Catholic school as a kid ... then attended public school from junior high through high school in Texas which knows a bit about football. The school that I attended currently eclipses most of the schools in Indiana at around 3,200 - 3,300 students. My kids have been in Catholic school and public schools. The kids that I've coached have gone on to play at Catholic schools and also at many of the public schools in the area including McCutcheon, Harrison, Jeff, West Lafayette, Frontier, and Benton Central. As an educator and a citizen and a father with kids at two different public schools in the area, I'm quite attune to public school challenges. If we are discussing issues, then let's discuss the issues.

If the idea is about being competitive and getting better, pretty much really shouldn't matter whether there's a P or P/P behind the school name.

About a decade ago, LCC and Scecina met in LOS two years in a row representing the North and South, respectively, in 1A. Now it appears they'll possibly have a chance to do so in regionals in 2A. Similarly, LCC met Linton a couple of years later in a North/South meeting in 1A too. Could meet up in South semi-state if the stars align. Definitely a long shot, but it'd be something to see LCC and Pioneer play each other at LOS which would never happen with both in 1A pre-COVID.

LCC and Pioneer had to go to 2A to escape the potential for knocking the other out early in the tournament. In the past 20 years, LCC and Pioneer have met like 13 times in post-season with 11 of those resulting in one or the other being knocked out in sectionals. In at least a couple of those cases it was #1 vs. #2 and in a couple of cases it was the very first game of sectionals where #1 eliminated #2.

Yeah, I was going to add the caveats of the fact that the teams that make it to LOS represent eight out of a pool of around 32 ... a bit more due to the Success Factor issue. Also a couple of items in there on the small number side as well including the fact that it's only 6A ... although that seems to be most applicable to the topic teams. Then again, given that I've seen some "analysis" done with a datapoint of one, policy dictated by an outlier, and argument against policy also done with an outlier, I figured eight was a treasure trove of data. 😀 Like you said though, you work with what the data gods provide.

This is the issue that I've seen with the arguments so far and also, to a degree also speaks to the issue of correlation and causality. Just because enrollment CAN have an impact and just because it does for the one outlier school in the state, doesn't mean that it does for everyone in the state nor that it happens on some type of sliding scale such that for every 100 kids you add over your opponent's enrollment your chances of reaching LOS increase by 2%. Carmel is a singular datapoint and it's hard to determine trend lines with a single datapoint ... much less policy. Regarding SES, I also think that there's a very non-linear impact that may exist. I haven't done the detailed analysis, but given that the new rules on FRL allow schools with 40% of more of their students to provide free lunch to ALL students to avoid the need for paperwork collection, it would seem that 40% is a good starting point for considering a school to be in a category of SES impact. We can certainly argue whether that number should be 35% or 40% or 45% or 31.5%, but again, I'll use 40% ... we can probably mostly agree that it's probably not an item that should be higher than 50%. In looking at 6A, eight programs have represented the class at LOS in the last decade. Of those, half of the teams have a FRL percentage of more than 40% ... FW Snider, Warren Central, Ben Davis, and Lawrence Central. The others represent teams with roughly 20% or less ... Carmel, Westfield, Center Grove, and Penn. I then analyzed the results and asked the question, "Did the team with lower FRL percentage beat a team with higher FRL percentage?" In this analysis, I didn't look at degree or classification of the FRL, just whether it was higher or lower in absolute terms. In other words, when Westfield and Center Grove play, they are both below 20% FRL and only 3.5% separate them, which really isn't statistically significant in this case, but Westfield is considered a lower FRL program than Center Grove. The results? In 10 meetings, four times the team with a lower FRL percentage won while in six of the meetings, the team with the higher FRL percentage won. I then looked at it in terms of categorization ... that is, teams with 40% or more in the "low-SES" group and those with under 40% in the "high SES" group. Note that, because of the huge discrepancy in represented teams, the "high SES" group actually ends up being folks with roughly 20% FRL or less vs. all of the other teams with 40% or more ... the "low SES" group ... and this allows for even clearer delineation of the low/high SES argument. The findings? In ten matchups: A high SES team, one with FRL at 20% or lower, played a low SES team, one with 40% or more FRL, in four of ten matches. In the other six, the matchup was either two low SES teams playing each other or two high SES teams playing each other. In the four matchups where a high SES team played a low SES team, which was four matchups, the low SES team won all four times. In general categorization terms, regardless of who played who, teams in the low SES group won five matchups while teams in the high SES won five too. Again, as presented earlier, in absolute terms, not looking at categorization, just absolute FRL percentages, the lower FRL percentage team only won against a higher FRL percentage team 40% of the time. Given the two bulletpoints above as well as this one, it would point to the idea that SES is a driving factor for blue ring success doesn't lie in SES.

I would agree to an extent; however, sometimes conference schedules kind of lock you in on what you can work with and sometimes continuity helps for the other "extra games." In the Hoosier Conference, some of the teams only play other HC teams for the whole season, while others have the standard 7-game ... four in-division, two cross-division, and end-of-season crossover championship game ... plus two "open dates." West Lafayette, for their open dates have often consistently scheduled cross-river 5A opponent McCutcheon for the last seven years and has, for the other date had a combination of Tri-West or Jeff for other other open date for the past decade or so. LCC has also been in a similar mode of doing the standard HC 7-game routine and has scheduled Guerin, their sister school, for the past decade and a half in one of the open dates. In line with what you are saying though, the teams of the HC see a fairly decent mix of teams and offenses/defenses in the course of the season, so they may well be getting that diversity and "shake up" that you are referencing as getting ready for the tourney through the conference play. The HC has had four different teams represented at LOS in the past decade across three different classes.

Gave me a giggle. The kind of thing one of the priests at my elementary school would say and never bat an eye.

Except my boy plays for Harrison. And my girls went/go to Jeff. You know what I've never heard from either of those schools or any school in the Lafayette area for that matter? "We're worried about getting hurt when we play a school that's a lot bigger than us." Not McCutcheon, not Harrison, not Jeff, not West Lafayette, not LCC. Matter of fact, I haven't heard any school regardless of area complain about it. Just tend to hear it from folks on online message boards that aren't coaching and aren't playing.

Only if WC adds an additional 400 students.

What's of interest is that, when the HCC was starting, it's rumored that Brownsburg indicated that it would attend an invitation meeting only if Harrison and McCutcheon were invited. How times changed.

On display.

There is one ... a whole section of the site ... it's called OOB. And it's about what you would expect it to be.

Jeff, Harrison, and McCutcheon ended up in the NCC due to this when they were bumped out of the HCC. Harrison and McCutcheon were actually original members in the HCC and Jeff left the NCC back after some 70 years in the early 2000s and joined them. All three were ousted from the HCCand headed back to the NCC around 2014/2015. Sometimes you get to chose and sometimes circumstances dictate the options.

This seems to be somewhat off given that you have provided the fourth largest number of posts to the site. I can't imagine that you are visiting/posting so often just to come and take in the name.

Like the Sectional of Death in 3A?

I actually posted on this in a different thread. Logically, it would seem like making 1A the smallest 32 schools would make it easier for smaller teams to have more opportunities. If we are looking at a big/small school opportunity for heading to LOS, small schools, those in the bottom 32 of 1A, have actually had more appearances in LOS, and the little guy has also won more. Matter of fact, in the last decade, the big guy has only won state twice and only one of those is against a small school ... assuming you count Pioneer as a small school. You'll see from my post that Pioneer's right on the cusp. I argue that they are closer to small school than large school both in terms of size and location, but if someone classifies them as big school 1A, then big schools have won four times out of ten, and because Linton beat Pioneer, Pioneer's win over North Vermillion would then be the only one classified as a big school beating a smaller 32 school. In essence, the bottom 32 do fairly well than there bigger brothers in picking up blue rings in 1A ... and least in the last decade.

The school enrollment ratios are less important in 1A than the team ratios. In 1A, there are teams with 30+ on the sideline against teams that are sometimes barely able to cobble together 11. It's pretty much the law of large numbers situation when we get to 6A and I would contend that a couple thousand is a decent starting number to get to similar quality levels from a random sampling of kids when looking at the top 11. In 6A, the difference between the top 30 kids on the team is thin whereas, in 1A, the difference between the top 10 has pretty decent variance. Incidentally, the FBS/FCS argument doesn't really apply here. It's kind of like comparing the finalists for the NCAA March Madness grouping vs. the NIT. There's a selection/placement bias in place for FBS/FCS and NCAA/NIT whereas, while there can be a "selection bias" in high school football, the impact is less in 6A ball.

I'd venture a guess that, if we are talking safety, it's more dangerous with the differentials in 1A than the differentials in 6A. In 6A, you still only get to put 11 on the field at a time out of the 100 or so that end up on your team. In 1A, that 11 may include the guy that was the team manager at the start of the season. Incidentally, for perspective, when Cathedral was playing 6A with 1,000 enrollment, even using a 2.5 multiplier, that would have put them around that 2,400 number.

Already got the ping pong balls out at that point. Might as well use them for that too and knock down the per use cost.