Southern Wells

[TheStatGuy]

Only playing a jv schedule? What happened there? They used to be pretty good..

[Thor77]

That school is probably a few years from closing, overall numbers are down for the school. They had less than 20 kids come out, and most of them are under developed freshmen. 

[foxbat]

17 minutes ago, Thor77 said:

That school is probably a few years from closing, overall numbers are down for the school. They had less than 20 kids come out, and most of them are under developed freshmen. 

In 2016 they had about 35 or so players on the team and in 2017 they had around 49 according to MaxPreps.  In 2018, it dropped down to 27 and last year it looks like 25.  Major drop-off in just a couple of years.  Was there something that happened in the area that would correlate with that kind of quick drop-off like a plant closure or similar?

[Thor77]

10 minutes ago, foxbat said:

In 2016 they had about 35 or so players on the team and in 2017 they had around 49 according to MaxPreps.  In 2018, it dropped down to 27 and last year it looks like 25.  Major drop-off in just a couple of years.  Was there something that happened in the area that would correlate with that kind of quick drop-off like a plant closure or similar?

Those maxpreps numbers are off, it was around 30 in 2017. Part of the reason is there hasn’t been much success lately, and that’s leading to upperclassmen not wanting to play, them having to play too many underclassmen that then get beat up and not want to come back. I’ve also heard some rumors about the coaching being subpar for those years. All of this, plus a declining school size, leads to where they are now. 

[Basementbias]

Sad to see it happening. I really hope they can get some larger classes to start coming up. I was hoping some of the Pennville area kids were going to head north after their dispute about the elementary school. Jay County is pretty large, so it wouldn't hurt them to lose some of those kids (maybe drop them down a class to help compete in more sports). I'm wondering if a similar announcement is going to happen at Blackford since that is the reason South Adams had to change it to Eastbrook. Maybe some Muncie/Anderson folks can move to the NW and help these schools out a bit? Southern Wells should probably be a 2x back to back state champion instead of just a 2001 State Champ. Now they're playing JV only 19 years later.

[MarshallCounty]

School enrollment in a lot of places are going to suffer and this was expected prior to covid. Family sizes are down and deomographic studies by several schools have shown that the younger grades are down in class size compared to the upper grades, as the older kids leave, the younger numbers are not replacing them.  I heard in my area 7 of the 8 schools studies are facing enrollment declines.

[TheStatGuy]

2 hours ago, Basementbias said:

Sad to see it happening. I really hope they can get some larger classes to start coming up. I was hoping some of the Pennville area kids were going to head north after their dispute about the elementary school. Jay County is pretty large, so it wouldn't hurt them to lose some of those kids (maybe drop them down a class to help compete in more sports). I'm wondering if a similar announcement is going to happen at Blackford since that is the reason South Adams had to change it to Eastbrook. Maybe some Muncie/Anderson folks can move to the NW and help these schools out a bit? Southern Wells should probably be a 2x back to back state champion instead of just a 2001 State Champ. Now they're playing JV only 19 years later.

I saw Blackford had 8 seniors, 5 juniors and 5 sophomores and 10 freshman...not great numbers for a 2A/3a but at least they have 13 jr and sr.