twinkles

Alright, I haven't posted in a long time but I have to say something here. People are under the assumption that all private schools are loaded with money and can buy everything they want. This is not true. I played for a private school that did very well in the A/AA division and is still doing very well. Still, every year we are one of the top teams in the state and we hope to have enough money to pay the refs to officiate our games (not pay them off) let alone our coaches (I'm pretty sure he was getting paid in crackers). That means there was definitely no money to go out and recruit players. When I was on the team, the entire team had gone to that private school since 7th grade or earlier, no one showed up just so they could play on a good team. The best players in the state still go to the big AAA schools or D2 schools to get the most exposure. Even the best A/AA teams are not as respected as those schools even though they can and have beaten them. And as far as 8th graders playing on A/AA teams...are you kidding me?!?!?! this is a joke! If I found out there was a 8th grader on the other team I would push him all over the place and make sure to give him a big warm welcome to the "big leagues". How can you complain about the other team having someone who is physically and mentally less mature than every other player out on the field? Let's go over some of your suggestions to "improve" A/AA. If you go to a merit based system in A/AA for the state tournament you will have an upper division that plays very good soccer with the same champion you would normally have. And all of the teams that are just not quite good enough to beat the private schools will still get lumped into this division because they are just that: almost good enough. Still, they will be miles ahead of being in the lower division which will be filled with teams who are just mediocre, and what you will have then is some teams that are state champions who really aren't good enough to be called that and many teams that are better than them who still didn't get to go to the state tournament. So the only winners there are the mediocre teams. If you moved all private schools into one division this would place too much of a burden on these schools for one reason or another, as they don't have quite the financial backing of the other D2 schools to travel. And as stated earlier, this would greatly increase the number of schools that could recruit and you would see alot more of the best athletes leaving the public school systems. But, you would finally be able to crown a public school state champion in the A/AA division (and everyone would know the only reason why they won was because schools like cak and catholic and ccs were pushed out of the division). Then theres the suggestion that you have only 2 private schools make it to state since only 20% of A/AA is private school. Well this is just hypocritical. You are offering a solution to the problem but your solution is the same as the problem, its just aimed at the other schools. You say the "problem" is the private schools are too good and because they are too good they are "unfairly" beating the public schools and thus the public schools cannot compete in the state tournament. So your solution is to restrict the private schools from competing in the state tournament. This is like affirmative action applied to high school sports! And even if you did this, the private schools still win because of the last six years, the state finals in A/AA has been between two private schools 4 times (thats 67% of the time) and a private school has one all 6 of those. The system is not unfair. It has rules, and the rules must be followed. Let's look at this complaint in a different way. The complaint is that public schools don't get to go to the state tournament because private schools keep beating them, and that this is unfair. Lets just tweek the argument a little bit and say that the other teams in the CAK and Catholic sectional never get to go to state because CAK and Catholic always beat them (ignoring the fact that they are private schools). I know for a fact that there are teams in CAK's and Catholic's district, region, and sectional that are better teams than the ones that DO make to state from different regions, but the rules are that you must win or be runner up in your own district, region, and sectional to advance. So the teams have to beat the best to be the best! And guess what? Alcoa beat Catholic this year! So it can be done and when you do it you will know that you didn't cut any corners and you will feel much better about what you have accomplished. Because the bottom line of the state tournament is not to give as many good teams into the state tournament as possible, but to crown a state champion, or find out who is the very best team. Obviously bigger schools have a better chance of being better so they are in an upper division. Schools who give scholarships have a better chance than those who do not. Private schools (who already have their student population multiplied by 1.85, do not recruit, have more money for coaches/facilities) do not have an advantage over public schools. This post is not meant to disrespect anybody although I'm sure people disagree with my opinion and that is fine. I just wanted to say something about this. These private schools are just victims of their own success.

I just have a few comments. Although CAK has won 3 state championships which is alot, it is far from several so Catholic could not have beaten CAK in several of their state championship years. In those three years, CAK beat Catholic in two of them, both of those games at Catholic. These are both quality teams, year in and year out, so these games always come down to who makes the big play. Also, a reason why you may not have been impressed by either team was because they are both great teams. It is really hard to look impressive against a great team. Still, I thought it was a tense game that swung back and forth all night. Hopefully, there will be plenty of rematches this year.

The player's job is to win games and championships through this form of competition. Just like people and businesses compete against eachother in their workplace. Yes, their salary is paid by the endorsements the clubs make and also the sale of tickets but they do not get paid so that the fans are entertained. If entertainment was the goal of a professional athlete then the AND 1 bball players would be the athletes make the big bucks but they aren't. Sports are a form of entertainment but that is not the goal of the athlete.

Kingston is not at the level of winning a state championship. They have not had that kind of talent in the last few years. They are a good team but not in the top 10 of the state. CAK probably has their deepest team since they won state in 2003. (the first one) They return all but 1 of their key players and pick up some very good freshman to increase this depth. This should serve them well since they face a strengthened A/AA bracket with Catholic and Notre Dame being added. There is always FRA and I am not sure how good CCS is but it was a Cinderella run last year for them to make it to the finals. Sheffield is about the only team I know about in west tennessee that I could see making a run for the title. Hume Fogg could also make some noise.

OK, FRA needs to just quit complaining because if they are trying to prove to people they are a class act then they shouldn't be doing it on a websites forum but on the field. If you are a class act then people will notice. (you don't hear people call CAK a classless act do you?) Also, FRA needs to quit imploding on themselves at the state tournament. The last two years they have come in as the #1 ranked team and not made it to the final match. If you ask me, I think they come into the tournament overconfident and unprepared for a tough game. That's my opinion and I don't want to hear any lip about it. FRA was the better skilled team but they LOST, end of story!

I think saying CAK will win 6 in a row is going out on a very thin limb indeed. It is possible yes but talent doesnt always equal championships. G runs a very tight ship there but you never know what might happen with injuries and such. But next year I would agree that CAK may be the best team in the state. They have a good freshman class to bolster there already impressive team.

Yes, CAK and Grace were both region winners but you can't control wether a region winner and region loser meet at state because everyone has to play in the sectional game and advance past that. The one thing that matters is if you win all the games. If you do that then you don't have to worry about "seedings" or "draws" although I would very much like to see some kind of system that gave seedings so the two best teams might not meet in the quarterfinals.

It would be awesome for CAK to take this one and I think they can but it will be tough against this CCS team. I think they can do it. If they won then they will tie the record for consecutive state championships in any division with Christian Brothers at 3 in a row. Good luck to both but I have to pull for CAK.

To put CAK ranked 4th (and with nothing to back it up too) is crazy! What do you have to base it on? If its losing to Webb and Farragut then you obviously don't understand how good those teams are. They were undefeated until this week and they missed their leading scorer this week due to his NATIONAL TEAM obligations. I have seen many A-AA teams this year and none of them compare to CAK and FRA, LC would follow closely behind. I know that the LC players are going to disagree with me on that but I don't want to hear it. Every player should believe in their own team so don't tell me about it. As for Big G saying he'd rather CAK go into the state tournament "under the radar" than with a target on your back I don't think that it is possible for a back to back state champion to go back to the state tournament without a target on your back. Even if your ranked 10th (like Farragut is in AAA) you would have a target on your back. Sorry for rambling but I just thought there needed to reasons for putting CAK at 4th.

Tarr is in Holland on National team duty for awhile but as for CAK's scoring options they have plenty of guys who can score, just maybe not as consistently. Should be a great game. I call a 1-1 tie or a 1-0 win for CAK.

The first half was pretty even with Webb finishing on a well placed cross that slipped past the CAK defense. In the second half though CAK stepped up big time and totally dominated the game. Webb didn't have a single shot on goal that I can remember and only attacked maybe 3 or 4 times. Some great saves by Webb's keep saved the game for them. It was an exciting game.

As an outside observer of last years LC v CA game last year I would like to say that LC did put a "whooping" on CA last year but they were not 5 goals better than them. I know players from both sides and knew the teams very well.

I agree with Hoya that McCallie deserves to be in the top 11. I also would like to agree with his placement on CAK at #3. Everyone doesnt give them enough credit because they are A/AA but people tend to forget that they are B2B state champs. They are also playing the best soccer they have ever been playing; yes even better than last years team that played #1 nationally ranked Farragut to a 1-0 loss.

CAK broke the curse last year so I'm gonna go with them. 2-0.

I may have a bit of a biased opinion here but I believe that the CAK v. LC rivalry is the best in A/AA soccer across the state. The last five games have been decided by 1 goal with a great chance coming to the losing team in the last few minutes to keep it exciting. The last two region championships were some of the most exciting that I played in, in my high school career. They always have great players and great coaches to get the best out of them. I know LC lost alot of talent and CAK lost 7 starters but they have both rebounded nicely. I think CAK has too much to handle though and takes it 2-0.