tulsaunion

Govman, I went to WB, in fact I played on the first 3 varsity teams there and received 3 letters in football (6 if you count the W and the B as 2 letters each) and now my kids are in Maryville City Schools. We didn't want to wait until the end of eighth grade to put them in Maryville Schools. I hope you know that I am just kidding with you. I see you graduated in '80 - were you on that first team? An Original Governor

I am a Maryville native that spent 6 years in Oklahoma. I've been back in Maryville for 1 year now. I went to a couple of 6A State Championship Games while I was in Oklahoma. One year we (the school system my kids attended) had around 37,000 for the championship game at the University of Tulsa. TU's stadium holds around 44,000. Both teams were from Metro Tulsa and both are very large schools. What also contributes to the attendance is the fact the OSSAA uses cross bracketing. The 6A game was the only show in town that night. The OSSAA will move the championship to a location that is close to both schools if they are in close proximity to each other. This years 6A game was in Norman at OU. They also play the semifinals at neutral sites. It would have been nice to play MO West in Neyland. Cross bracketing would be hard to do in TN as far as the whole state but they could do and East cross bracket and a West cross bracket. Another factor is Oklahoma has fewer schools in each classification. The OSSAA states that the largest 32 football schools will be in 6A the next 32 5A the next 32 4A then it gets tricky. 3A and 2A have 64 schools each and an extra week of playoffs. In 6A they have 4 districts (we call them regions) with 8 teams. The problem with this is that 6A is dominated by a few "Super Schools" at the top end of the enrollment. I am talking over 4,000 for Broken Arrow High School, over 3,200 for Union High School and the high 2,000's for Jenks High School. The 6A title has only been won by UNION or JENKS for the last 10 years. My point-I think cross bracketing would help.

Wasn't there a Van Guilder or something like that in Knoxville also?

Everett, Townsend and Walland closed when Heritage opened in 1977. Porter, Friendsville, and Lanier closed when William Blount opened in 1979. What was strange is that when Porter closed those students went to Heritage and some of the Heritage students that came from the Fairview area went to William Blount. Madisonville and Vonore were merged into Sequoyah. I think the Knox City/County schools closed when the school systems merged.

Maryville has a tradition of collecting Gold Balls. Unlike Riverdale's which started in the '90's, Maryville's started in 1964 then 1970, 1976, 1978, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004. We also collected a few Silver Balls-but we don't like to talk about that. As for tradition Maryville VS. Alcoa and the total number of Football Championships won by Blount County Teams. Thats Tradition.