ThePunisher

Catholic does have one of the best looking playing surfaces I have seen. Also, you can feel the electricity in the air during a game. Wait, maybe that is coming from the TVA transmission lines that run through the outfield.

1. Farragut 2. The next 6 8. Lenoir City

Going undefeated over an entire high school baseball season will be very hard. I've seen 400 foot rockets be an out, and a missed 3rd strike by the catcher turn into a complete trip around the bases. Pitchers have thrown no-hitters, and still lost. In baseball more so than any other sport, the better team can lose on any given day.

I don't think it will matter if you have 50 or 500 out for the team. The majority of AE kids have played very little if any baseball growing up, and have little chance against kids who have played 50 games a year since they were 6 years old. Having good athletes is great, but you can't steal first base.

Tim Mapes-South High School (1970-74) He shot from everywhere, and averaged close to 40 his senior year. Dropped 70+ one night, and only played 3 quarters.

I can't argue with the overall academic rankings as reported. However, I think that has more to do with the demographics of where the students come from than anything else. A significant percentage of students in the county system come from homes where the parents can't pass a 5th grade TCAP test, and don't really care if their kids can either. If Alcoa is one of the top ranked systems in the State, why do so many of their top athletes have trouble getting into college?

The unique circumstance that got this through was probably the fact that the appeal came in on Maryville letterhead. If he had stayed at Heritage and tried this appeal, they would have been laughed out of Nashville. If he wanted to go to Maryville after his 8th grade year, that is totally within the TSSAA rules. If he wanted to delay high school a year after passing 7th and 8th grade, the price per TSSAA rules is freshman eligibility. This rule was put in place to keep schools and parents from staging their players for sports , just like colleges do with redshirt years. The only legitimate reason I see to grant an appeal of this rule would be if the student just barely passed, and was a really marginal student. Another year of 8th grade would help the student academically, and could be justified. However, I don't see how you can justify that an honor student with the highest ACT score of any 8th grader in the state, needs to delay starting high school for academic reasons.

I have heard that since the NFL thing didn't work out for Carl Stewart, Maryville is appealing the age and eligibility rule to the TSSAA. He should be cleared to play by mid-season.

Evidently, we are interpreting the rule correctly. However, Maryville and/or the family filed an appeal with the TSSAA, and Patton has been ruled a freshman and eligible to play as a freshman. He will have 4 years of eligibility at Maryville. Therefore, STARSNBARS was right, he redshirted. So an honor student dumps Heritage for Maryville, repeats 8th grade and gets 4 years of eligibility. All this with the full approval of the TSSAA. I thought the purpose of the TSSAA rule was to keep people from making these moves for purely athletic reasons. Is it any wonder why people hate Maryville so much?

I think you would be correct if he failed 8th grade, but that is not the case. From what I have heard, he is extremely intelligent and actually took math classes at HHS while in middle school at HMS.

Now that I know the situation, this is exactly my question. Here is the rule as stated on the TSSAA website: Any student repeating the 7th grade after having passed the 7th grade or repeating the 8th grade after passing the 8th grade shall not be eligible to participate in athletics during their 9th grade year. I believe the "home school" year would have to count as either repeating 8th grade, or his freshman year in high school. Therefore, he is either a freshman that is not eligible to compete in athletics, or he is a sophomore. Either way, he should not be on the freshman team, and should only have 3 years of high school eligibility.

My main question was not why is he playing at Maryville. Everyone knows that where you live is not a valid question when it comes to playing football at Maryville or Alcoa. My main question is if he was in 8th grade at Heritage Middle in the 2006 season, and he is now on the Maryville freshman team in the 2008 season, what happened to the 2007 season?

Why is Patton Robinette playing on the Maryville freshman team? Wasn't he an 8th grader at Heritage Middle year before last?

I put the actual way the team has been picked in the east for the last 2 years, and the powers that be deemed that as bashing. If you are wondering whether your son made it, I would say if you haven't heard anything by now, the answer is no. The coach and his assistants have all but 4 or 5 slots picked before the tryouts even start. They use the tryouts mostly to find some pitching to help out the kids they have already picked. This is not bashing, it is the plain simple truth. As long as you have the HS coaches involved, they will favor their kids. However, this has risen to a new level in the east over the last couple of years. The word is getting around on how fixed this really is, and people will stop wasting their time trying out. Rising Seniors are the ones who need to be seen, and there are more than enough to make a team from regions 1 & 2. Keeping younger players from the coach's HS teams is a joke.

Walker, Texas Ranger. You know, the Chuck Norris guy. He hits a homerun every at bat, even if you throw it behind his head. You better not throw at him though, he will whoop your whole team and all your fans one person at a time. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

I heard that too. I also heard that he is going to open up Green Acres Flea Market West in the old KMart building across from the ballfield. The increased fuel prices have hit the Farragut Baseball budget hard, so I think he has also agreed to pasture his goats at the field to cut down on mowing.

You may be a "writter" but you are not a very good speller. I guess if he can hit a bomb off ACs #2 pitcher, then he could hit 18 bombs in MLB? Face the facts, some of those bombs came off kids that throw about 70, and would never see the field in AA or AAA. I'm not saying he can't hit bombs, it would just be harder to hit as many while facing better pitching.

I don't think he would have had 18 blasts if he played in a higher class. The overall pitching gets much better as you go from A to AA to AAA.

I have also heard that Farragut has been working really hard since school started. They held tryouts and cut some kids, then brought them back. They also held scrimmages at Farragut with real umpires, and various other things. I thought that these activities would violate some of the new "no open facilities" or "only 5 on a fall team from one school after school is in session" rules. Am I misreading the rules?

I always thought Heritage had a pretty good field. A little small, but it always looked like it was in great condition. There is no paved or gravel parking, but you can park on the hill and watch from your car. If you want to see a bad field, go to Lenoir City. I have seen t-ball fields with more foul ground, and the infield has humps all over.