Frozen Tundra

The last time enrollments and classifications for fall sports were released was on February 28, 2019. Sectional assignments for football, soccer, volleyball, and basketball were released two months later on April 29, 2019. My assumption is that these dates will be similar to this year’s enrollments/classifications and sectional alignments announcements.

I just hope he sticks it out for more than a year this time. I don’t know what happened at Jeffersonville or Paoli, and I won’t assume anything, but I hope he and Shelbyville are a good match. It’ll be interesting to see if Vince Lidy is able to maintain what Mike Kirschner built up at Mount Vernon. If so, Shelbyville’s ceiling in the Hoosier Heritage Conference will be third place. If not, Shelbyville’s ceiling will be second place behind New Palestine.

If he can turn them around in only three years I’ll be extremely impressed. That program went backwards like 100 years when Patrick Parks retired after the 2017 season. They’re 1-29 since then. They squeaked out a one point win against Greenfield-Central in 2018. Other than that, they’ve lost every game by 23 or more. They scored 21 points total in 2019 and 51 points total last year. Their average loss the last three years has been by 52 points.

Looks like Brian Glesing took the job at Shelbyville. Boy, he’s got a lot of work to do there. @Fkfootball

Looks like Weber has resigned from BNL. http://www.wbiw.com/2021/01/25/weber-resigns-as-head-coach-of-stars-after-8-seasons/?fbclid=IwAR2OZqYVOVJnQq3X1I-e3moYTP60v7moh_g25rt2sIbIWuNQxuBpV_cjz5s

That’s for the best. Shelbyville fell off big time from what they used to be.

That’s besides the point. The East and North game is already on the schedule. Moving it will affect other teams. They’re happy with it being a week 2 game. East will have to find someone. If not then I guess they’ll just have to take a bye. Wouldn’t be cool but it won’t be the end of the world. Looks like South Bend Clay has week 7 open. Not ideal by any means but East might have to take it if nothing else becomes available. If Pickerington Central and Elkhart travelled 3+ hours to our place the last two years then we probably need to do something similar for someone else if need be.

Can’t because that would affect New Albany too. The HHC won’t alter the schedule.

They’ll find an opponent. They struggled mightily to find a week 3 opponent for 2019 and ended up getting an Ohio team to come play them. If needed, they can just find another out of state opponent.

The Columbus schools like their week 2 matchup. I’d be shocked if they changed it at all, but moving the game to that late in the season is definitely not going to happen.

Well I can tell you Columbus North would want the open week in order to play Columbus East. I highly doubt they’d join a conference where that isn’t an option.

Columbus East - Stafford Field. Named after John Stafford who was the head coach for the first 29 years of East’s existence (1972-2000). Led the Olympians to the 3A state title in 1979 when 3A was the largest class. Columbus North - Max Andress Field. Named after the final head coach of Columbus High School before it split and became Columbus North. Coached 21 years from 1951-1971 and had the only undefeated team in school history (10-0 in 1959).

Yeah Chuck is highly revered within the community. He was a feared, yet highly respected man. I’ve never heard one bad thing said about him despite all the stories I’ve heard of him roughing up misbehaving students. Doubt that stuff would’ve flown in this day and age but rarely did anyone seem to have a problem with it back then. As for JC and the EIAC, I apologize for misunderstanding you and making my response football-centric. I don’t have a great knowledge of the EIAC outside of football and boys basketball. I’ll take your word for it, though, that it would likely be a lateral move.

Good old Chuck Hurley. Never met the guy but I’ve heard so many stories about him from my dad and my father-in-law. Just talked about him last week actually. Honestly, I do think Jennings County would fare better in the EIAC than in the HHC. Outside of East Central, Lawrenceburg, and maybe Batesville I think they would be much more competitive overall. Maybe not record-wise but I think games would be closer. They swept their three game series with Connersville from 2018-2020. The last ten years (2008-2017) of their annual week 2 game with Greensburg was tied 5-5 (JC leads 15-14 overall). I don’t think Rushville would be much competition. Franklin County and South Dearborn may get more wins on Jennings County than vice versa but I could see those games being one to two possession games on average.

Would’ve been wise 45 years ago. Small community with major politics.

There’s a split in the community about whether downgrading from an HHC schedule is the right thing to do. Some feel the HHC has passed up the rural/small town makeup it used to have and is becoming too big for a small community like Jennings County. The fear is that they won’t be able to compete and will continue to lose athletes and fan support. The other school of thought is that leaving is the easy way out and admitting failure. These folks also believe they should stay in the HHC because they helped found it. They also believe there is potential to compete in the HHC. If Jennings County were to leave the HHC, the EIAC would be the preferred destination. The communities are small and/or rural. The schools are in the 3A/4A range which is closer in size to JC. Madison would prefer to wind up there as well but there aren’t any spots available at the moment. The EIAC doesn’t have any departing members to replace and doesn’t seem to be intending to expand. Jennings County would prefer to join along with Madison as part of a package deal. The official debate of leaving or staying in the HHC took place 2-3 years ago now. My understanding is that they decided to stay because a door wasn’t open elsewhere, but that the debate could resume if a door did eventually open up. It’ll be interesting to see if the football coach and athletic director have any say in the matter. Both are newer. The football coach was raised in JC and played football there but had left for awhile for college, the military, and being an assistant coach for a few schools in the Indy area. The AD is from the Chicago area and has no ties to JC. Maybe the outside influences these two have sway the decision and maybe they don’t. Time will tell.

It’s more than a football issue. Kids have left to play basketball, baseball, volleyball, soccer, and wrestling at other schools. Could be more than that but those are just the ones I know about for sure.

Not sure JC will have a place in the HHC in the future. Like Madison, the student population is shrinking. Obviously they had more students to begin with so it’ll be a little while before they hit 3A levels. Nevertheless, there is concern within the school corporation about not just the general shrinking of the student population, but the reasons for why it’s happening. It is no secret that a lot of gifted athletes have taken their talents to Columbus, Westport, Greensburg, Brownstown, etc. There is an emphasis on keeping this homegrown talent, but we’ll have to see if it pays off down the road.

Yeah they opened with Batesville from 1997-2019. Last year they opened with Covenant Christian.

I agree. Not saying I want the HHC to take them right now or even in the future, but I also wouldn’t be opposed if they ever decided to. I think there’s a lot of value in that school and I believe it’ll continue to rise.

I don’t know what goes on there or what their thinking is. From my perspective, they’d be a great addition to the HHC (if the HHC decided to return to an eight school league). Why? -Already in the HHC’s geographical area -The student population seems to be growing -Sellersburg’s population seems to be growing -My understanding is that they’re wealthier and have more money to invest in education and athletics as a result -The football team is on the rise -The boys basketball team is consistently solid and has been one of the top 3A teams in the state as of late -They play six of the seven HHC schools annually already in boys basketball. They played Jennings County several years in a row before that series was dropped and one began with Floyd Central.

How could it be worse?

I was just wondering that. I forgot the Mid-Southern plays an eight game conference schedule. Not sure how Silver Creek got two non-conference games. Either Harrell has an error or the Mid-Southern is allowing teams (specifically Silver Creek) to flirt with having another non-conference opponent in the same way the HHC did with some teams back in 2018.

Based on what I’m seeing from the schedules on John Harrell’s website, it looks like the HHC has the teams reverted back to the conference schedule they used from 1997-2018. Seems everyone is playing the same teams in the same order as they did in that 22 year stretch. The only difference is the week you played Madison is now your week to pick up a non-conference game. As we learned from @boilerfan87, Jennings County (week 5), BNL (week 8), and Seymour (week 9) have to decided to keep Madison in that spot on their schedules. New Albany’s week 6 game with Madison has already been filled with Bloomington North the last three years and that will continue again next year. Floyd Central’s week 3 game with Madison has been filled with Silver Creek. That leaves Jeffersonville (week 4) and Columbus East (week 7) as the only teams that haven’t yet found a replacement for Madison. As for HHC teams with brand new non-conference opponents, @DanteEstonia pointed out that Jennings County will play at Norwell in week 1 (quite a shock). Also, it looks like Jeffersonville finally found a week 6 replacement for Cathedral (which they weren’t able to fill last year). Looks like they’ll play Silver Creek that week. And New Albany has replaced their week 2 opponent from last year (Eastern Hancock) with Gibson Southern.

Well-deserved. Really glad we kept it in-house.