Livingthedream

I believe it was either '98-'99 or '97-'98. The last year of either scenario, Meadows and Sequoyah played Whitehouse at Sequoyah for I believe the 3rd round. May have been the 2nd. Not for sure.

I will have to agree that Madisonville Juniors are struggling this year but so are other normally competitive teams such as Polk. My statement from earlier was due to the winning seasons that Madisonville has had over the last few years. For instance, the 8th grade group from last year (minus the championship) lost 4 games in 2 years by a total of 8 points. Pretty impressive considering that team was 3-8 on their 2nd year of cutters. Then to make things better we will add the kids from Vonore at the high school level that have game expierence which will only add depth to our program. As I stated in an earlier post on this thread, I believe we have other issues we need to take care of first before we complicate things worse. By the way, I believe we won the region and went to the semi-finals in the playoffs (back to back)with the infamous Coach Meadows with the current system we have in place.

As of now their "JV" team consist of mostly Freshman. As I discussed earlier in most established programs a Freshman team is just that, a Freshman Team. There own Coaching Staff, locker room, etc. A JV team is Sophmores and Juniors that are not good enough for Varsity on Friday night. Not so much in our case where we have mostly Sophmores and Juniors starting on Friday night. This would be due to a lack of interest in our struggling program from the student body and our revolving coaches door over the last few years to name a few. To say the least, if our little league programs are any indication, the next couple of years prove to be exciting for Sequoyah Football. This being done without Middle School Football.

O.K. A few things we need to understand about Middle School Football in Monore County. First off when we talk about LC being State Champions last year that is not exactly true. Has anyone looked at their schedule? They played a regular league schedule and played the same teams in the play offs and they won their league. They did not travel outside this area such as to Nashville to play a middle school team there. They played teams such as Jacksboro, LaFollette, and Norris. This is posted on their Gym wall and in the trophy case with their "state" championship trophy. Its a league team. Next, to compare us to our neighbors in Blount County is not fair. They have not been through a coaching carousel that we have here. They have established coaches that are paid (and paid well) to do a job. Not like we do here. We can't run the same schemes that the high school because we don't know from one year to the next if a coach is going to change. And then lets talk about the physical education in our schools compared to others in McMinn and our neighbors to the North. The majority of kids at the primary, intermediate, and middle school levels receive PE 1 day a week for an average of 30-40 minutes. Our neighbors to the south in McMinn receive it in a block schedule. If you receive it 2 days a week this semester, next semester you will receive it 3 times a week. Our neighbors to the north that we want to be so much like receive just as much. This is where our talent level comes in. Kids being physically active and learning their motor skills. If we truly want to help our athletic programs we need to start at the beginning when our kids are young. Encourage kids to play and exercise at an early age to develop their own talent. As far as I am concerned, having two teams develop two sets of kids for the high school is a bonus. The coaches have two of everything with substantial playing time. This is not the case at LC. Their Middle school team took 60 kids this year from LCYFO. How many kids do you actually think play on game night? I believe as long as the youth leagues are teaching the fundamental basics, blocking, tackling, passing patterns, QB movement, and most of all a desire to win, the high school coach will have at least 4 years (in a normal situation) to devlop and teach his philosphy. I mean lets face it, the football programs for our neighbors to the north, a freshman or sophomore does not step on the playing field until his junior year unless its in a runaway game from whence the JV will get to play. This usually conssit of juniors that are not good enough for varsity and sophomores, not freshman. The only exception is an exceptional athelete. In closing, I can truly say I know what is wrong with our program because I have lived it. By saying this, most people will know who I am. I graduated from Campbell County High School, which has two established middle school programs and has for years. Things got so bad between the schools that they stopped playing each other for years due to a brawl that broke out at one of the games. It wasn't until the last 10 years they started playing each other again. The high school has started doing good over the last 3-4 years and is competitive. I believe the main reason for this is that people have accepted the fact they have to come together to play as one. All the older generation people that had kids playing did not believe they should be playing together at CCHS. It wasn't until the kids that graduated from CCHS, grew up and had their own kids going their things changed. You can go to our games and still see the divide in our stands and its sad. If a Vonore kid does something good, one side cheers and the same happens when a Madisonville kid does good. We should cheer when the team does well. If a kid doesn't win a starting position, its typically blamed on the town he is from and not the fact that he just did not earn it. Last year when the new jerseys came out, the people from Vonore had a fit due to the color scheme. This had nothing to do with the kids, it was the parents on both sides stirring it up which fed down to the kids. So the bottom line, until the parents come together we will have turmoil or until the "Sequoyah" graduates have kids go through that program and run all us old folks off. By then we will have another high school in our area and the middle school program will have to be split up. We have several things we need to work on BEFORE we discuss middle school football and make things more complicated. Just my humble opinion and thanks for reading.