77statman

This thread is getting embarrassing, especially since Rebels are turning against Rebels, and our friend Bladerunner is enjoying his usual role of stirring the pot. This old Rebel suggests that it's time to quit posting on this thread and turn our eyes forward to the Wm Blount game. Surely we have some football to discuss.

It was absolutely the best game, but I believe the final score was 7-6 in favor of Maryville. The Melrose kicker (Graig Cooper, later a tailback at Miami), missed the PAT.

Maryville center Jay Guillermo

The best player on the best team - Patton Robinette, Maryville QB

Here's another question for those who advocate letting non-students at public schools participate in school sports. Let's take the case of a student at a private school who tries out for the soccer team at his private school and gets cut. Should he then be able to go try out for the soccer team at the public school in his district? If not, why not? His Mom and Dad pay taxes, don't they? If we are going to let homeschoolers play on public school teams, we can't prohibit a private school student from doing the same thing, can we? Do we really want to go down this road?

Excellent point regarding who gets cut. This will be the same dilemma when a homeschooler gets picked to be the soloist in the school chorus or star in the school play. Also, the argument made by an earlier poster that "I pay my taxes, therefore my kid should get to play" is a bit specious. I can spend my entire life without setting foot in the Nashville Public Library or LP Field, but if I own property and live in Davidson County, I can't reduce my property tax payment because I choose not to frequent the library or the stadium. Taxes, especially education taxes, are raised and spent (at least in theory) for the common good of all of us.

The issue of allowing home school students to participate on an a la carte basis in public school educational and extra-curricular offerings has been around for a while. I know there are families in Williamson County and elsewhere who have wanted to be able to use the public schools for art and music classes for their home school children, and I am sure athletics, drama, marching band and other extra-curricular activities are on their radar screens as well. To use a health-care analogy, my position is that the public schools are not set up to be a cafeteria plan, and those who have chosen to home educate their children should accept the limitations as well as the advantages of that freely-made choice. My son plays club soccer with several of the guys on the Fire, and I know their families pretty well. They are go-getters and very organized people. Within their home school organizations, they have the parental talent to pull together their own out-of-school activities and do it very well. In my opinion, allowing organized teams of home-schoolers to compete with TSSAA school teams is fine, but allowing individual home-schoolers to participate on school teams is a slippery slope. I am opposed to this proposed legislation.

ML King 7-0 East Literature ML King now 4-0 in district games. Two big non-district tests this week with JPII on Wednesday and Home School Fire on Friday.

ML King over Hume Fogg 2-0 on Friday night. Game was played at MLK on a soft field. Both MLK goals were scored late, one by Simon Johnson and the second by Will Cross. The game was well played by both teams, especially considering the field conditions. Great rivalry win for MLK, now 3-0 in district games.

ML King over Ezell Harding 6-1. 5 of 6 MLK goals scored by sophomores. ML King has a big district game Friday at home against Hume-Fogg.

Gerry, given that both MTSU and TTU are TN Board of Regents schools, do you think that the TSSAA can get a better financial deal at TTU?

You can forget about Vanderbilt Stadium or LP Field. No natural grass facility can handle a five or six game football weekend. Just think about the field conditions if we had an all-day rain during the event. Vanderbilt wouldn't agree to it, even if their home season was over, because of the cost of repairing the field. The Titans wouldn't agree to it, because they would have two or three regular season games, plus potential playoff games, still to play, and wouldn't want to risk their field being ruined. Any field that will host the state championships must have an artificial surface. MTSU, Tennessee Tech, and Austin Peay (I believe they have artificial turf) are the best options in the midstate.

Not true. Vandy reverted back to natural grass several years ago. They no longer make their field available for high school and TSU games as they did when they had turf. This is why the TSSAA championship games left Vandy several years ago.

FactsOnly - I am a long-time reader of this site, and finally decided to sign up today to respond to your line of questioning. I graduated from Maryville in 1977 and have lived in Nashville for many years. I see the situation in Blount County as very similar to what is happening in Franklin, Brentwood, Hendersonville, and other suburban communities around Nashville. The area is growing, and both new families, and those who want to move out of Nashville/Davidson County for whatever reason, are pushing the population of the suburban counties through the roof. I believe the same thing is happening in Blount County as transplants to the Knoxville area choose to live in Maryville or Alcoa. The city fathers of Maryville (and Alcoa) have no control over that situation - they are responsible for the education of every young person who presents him or herself at the schoolhouse door. I may be wrong, but I assume that you live a bit farther from a large urban area than Maryville is from Knoxville (16 miles). In your case, a more stable and unchanging enrollment is probably to be expected in your school system. If the TSSAA recounted the enrollments every year, no one would ever get their nose out of joint about having to play a school they felt was too big for their classification, but we all know the chaos that would result if they realigned more often than every four years, don't we?