IanMackaye

Because the only thing that matters is a gold ball, it doesn't matter what classification or how good you are?

Not yet--but will be. Far better start and drive phase. Doesn't have the lift yet.

Along with Kevin Yeager (Farragut), McAddley was the best all-around athlete I've ever seen in high school.

That's the way athletics has developed: to be really good in one sport--baseball, basketball, or track, say--you train year-round in that sport. That means camps in the summer, travel teams in the off-season, strength and conditioning that's sport specific, and so on. Few of the really good athletes "play" sports any longer if they want to get better. I can see many pluses with that shift in practices: athletes are better prepared to compete in their primary sport, are less likely to get hurt, are stronger and better conditioned, and learn the lesson that diligence and persistence are valuable and practical habits. On the other hand, it seems that sport is a lot less about fun and "team" than it is about performance and getting to the next level. There are always trade-offs. Short was an excellent athlete who worked at track in the off-season with the track club and his sprint and jumps coaches, as I understand it. Had he played football in the summer and fall he might not have been as good as he was--the best track and field athlete OR has ever had, if you asked some people who know. I can't see any good reason for him to play football unless he just wanted to play, like Moore, who's pretty fast also. Every school should have kids in the hallways who could participate in a sport and contribute to a team. Every one of them. For a variety of reasons a lot of them seem to sit it out. Take Campbell County: you can't tell me there aren't some terrific athletes up there, because Jacksboro and LaFollette Middle Schools always field good teams in most sports. What happens to those athletes when they get to CCHS? They get jobs and can't compete any more. I've heard that over and over from that area. Bet the same thing happens in many other high schools: kids get to the school and find other priorities. That's too bad, because I think that sports can be a positive experience for nearly every kid, a lot more positive than having a job can. The coaches who get the numbers to come out are doing something right.

Fan support? I saw a couple of games this year, and the stadium was not full.

What's buzzing over at West, then?

The same is true in any sport. I'd like to see more kids participating in team sports at the high school level, but I don't agree that every good athlete ought to end up playing football. Some of them are born to run track, such as a couple of the kids someone mentioned earlier. Some are basketball players who spend their time developing their basketball skills, such as one of the other guys someone mentioned earlier. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

I don't know. I'm not very familiar with either basketball team.

Not really. In Oak Ridge, the king has always been academics, never football nor any other sport. If you think otherwise, I think you must not have been paying attention. Now, in terms of sports, yes, football has always been at the top of the heap, even though other sports programs have been at least as successful. I don't see any change in that status.

Good news: cross country and math keep on winning. At least they've gotten behind winners, huh. I sincerely hope that your post is facetious.

Jadon Short was an outstanding sprinter and jumper who should not have played football because he was too busy making himself into an outstanding sprinter and jumper. Some kids do that--choose a sport and stick with it. I don't think that having great athletes walking the halls is a football-only problem. I think that there's a trend away from the kind of discipline, commitment, and focus that high school athletics requires. Plenty of kids are rowing, playing AYSO, and joining rec league basketball teams, which require none of the above. (Well, rowing may.)

Just in the 2000's I see 3 titles for boys and 3 for girls. No other titles in any sport but a few runner-up in girls soccer, football, and cross country. I drove through OR yesterday morning and saw a lot of kids suited up and practicing football. It looked real organized.

I don't know about Ben Martin, but boys track has won 7 titles according to TSSAA. Boys cross country has won 8 and girls cross country 6. I think I was confusing track and cross country because TSSAA doesn't list an OR track championship since the 1960s but it lists a bunch of cross country titles. Of course football has 7.

I thought that the school board was paying some of the money, along with the boosters, plus a huge grant of some kind. Winning big again might make Oak Ridge into a football school again. It's been a while since anyone other than track won anything, I think, and that includes soccer.

Even worse, the track teams are the ones who are winning.

Funny thing: story in there today. http://www.oakridger.com/sports/x1495153570/-Cats-pads-popping-harder-this-spring

The new sports editor appears to be all about the Cats. I have read stories recently about the baseball team's district and region playoff run, about the soccer team's difficulities, and about the track team's win at their sectional. He seems to be doing a great job of covering in-season sports in person. Why would you want a story about spring football? Why wouldn't you want to stay under the radar at this time of year?

Do students at OR support any sports at all? I've never seen a crowd of students at any ORHS sporting event.

Turned around? Lady Wildcat basketball has not been down yet. No, they've not won a state title since 1998, but they've not been down, either, since they have made it to the state tournament most years since then.

Large interstate tournaments and games spark new rivalries every year. We see that in the big corporation basketball tournaments, interstate football games televised on ESPN, large cross country and track meets that draw teams from all over the nation, baseball and softball tournaments that do the same. The next logical step is to sanction a national championship that NFHS can control, police, and make live up to the academic standards the NFHS believes in. Local rivalries may be fun and generate interest and money, but they don't often produce the kind of excellence that a great interstate rivalry can produce. Yes, occasionally a couple of local teams can be so good that their game is national caliber (MBA-BA in football, lots of Memphis basketball games, for example). But if we are looking to promote athletes and teams being as good as they can be, then a national championship can help generate that. If you have followed the Nike cross country meet any, you know that the meet has helped inspire numerous teams around the nation to be a lot better than they would otherwise have been, pulling more athletes into college running than otherwise may have happened. The same thing has been happening individually with Footlocker for a longer time. Nothing regulates these meets right now--nothing. They set the rules, they give the swag. NFHS is a little short-sighted, in my view, for staying away from being involved in that. Honestly, I think it's more about the money than anything else. If they sanction a national championship in one sport, why not in all sports? And where will they come up with the money to make that happen?

Nobody cares about cross country. I doubt TSSAA even knows they do that. The real point is to keep the big money companies from having football and basketball championships.

As I understand it, there's a lot of political hokey-pokey among the coaches to select the all-state players, so it's not like the most deserving at each position necessarily made the list anyway. (Not that anyone was left off, I guess. Did any Tennessee player NOT make all-state?) Why in the world are there all-state selections from BOTH DII divisions?

There you go with the tradition talk again, SS. In all seriousness, the boys on your team have done exactly what they ought to have done to warrant talk of "tradition": work hard and win. In my estimation, by making it to the semis (after three road wins) they have re-connected with all of that long-ago "tradition" you speak of and, more importantly, begun some of their own.

Does either of these teams have any tradition?

OK, well maybe just a little bit, then.