privates have no advantage

[Indian]

If every year counts, how about the Class 2A results the last several years?

[TheEgoHasLanded]

Coach T or ELA...

 

I respect both of your opinions for many reasons

 

1-you don't personally attack people, like myself and other people do.

 

2-you do your homework and research and are seldom corrected.

 

3-you really believe what you write is correct, and I respect honesty.

 

I guess I never thought about this, but I think we should all try and get some private school coaches on this board. It would be interesting to hear their opinions about the private public debate...maybe they feel cheated? Do you even consult with private school coaches ELA? What is your opinion on them, and do you think they would want a split?

[pujo]

We are good, very good, as a matter of fact we beat South Pitt 44-6 in the play-offs last year. Traditionally they are very strong, but we are building a good tradition at Cloudland as well. If we had played in 1a the two years before that we may have beat them, but because of travel we moved up to 2a (and went undefeated regular season both years). I'm not taking anything away from South Pitt, they're a great team, my beef is with you privates. You consistently say you have no advantage, or your only advantage is the hard work you put into it, that's a crock. Of course there are some private schools that are not that great, but they just don't work that hard at getting the players. You'll say you have such a hard time getting students, but we have less enrollment then most of the privates, and we take who comes through the door. At last count we had 213 students 7-12, because our middle school is mixed in with our high school. Somebody said that Roan Mountain got to pick their students from the whole county, we're not a county, but a very very small community. There are five schools in this county, and we are the smallest, but we can compete with any school any size in the area. I am making these posts for us, and all the other public schools who year after year, sport after sport are being beaten by a private owned and operated team. Private schools have definite advantages and they are becoming quite obvious, you'll will be put into a different division and no amount of whimpering is going to stop it. It will become a lot more obvious in the next two years. We know these kids at the private schools work hard, but they wouldn't be there if they didn't because you'll can get who you want, another advantage. The first split of the private schools was done to seperate the publics from having to play schools that recruited. The ones that moved up where on the up and up, now we have you guys to contend with who don't recruit, you just "selectively enroll". You'll in my opinion, are just trying to look for ways to beat the system. Oh, we'll let Johnny work in the weight room to pay his tuition we need him on the football team, and Sally can work in the library because she's such a good softball player. Catch my drift, we all know it happens. It makes you look, less then bright, when you get on here and say stuff like it's all the hard work, and we deserve to be where we are, because it's not, and you don't. When these small rural 1a schools play teams like Ezell, unless we have been really blessed with a run of good luck, it's like watching college play a NFL team. The NFL has a much bigger pool than the the colleges, just as teh privates have a much bigger pool then the publics. I know you'll are smart, is it really that hard to see the difference, or are you just pretending so your schools don't look quite so bad.

[VolunteerGeneral]

QueenBee...Good mark for you! That was a simple post, straight from the heart. As a private school student and a public school father, I commend you and agree with you.

[panfan]

Queen,

 

I couldn't agree more (good mark for you).

 

Pujo,

 

Now I get it. You're a cloudland fan. You guys got beat and now all private schools cheat. I feel sorry for you. As far as picking kids, you are missing the point. The pool to draw from is so small that it really doesn't give any advantage. The pool of rich smart kids is pretty small. Sorry, maybe the 1000 on the SAT was just used to make a point, but the fact is that all private schools lose kids every year due to academics. Pujo, you keep looking for reasons to lose, and you will lose. The fact is this: there is no real arguement for a split. No one can come up with one. People say, "they have advatages" but they can't name any real advantages. Get over it.

[ELA]

EGO, I have talked to about four private school head coaches and at least a dozen assistant coaches about this issue. At least one head coach told me I was correct in most of my assumptions, but he assured me that his school was not one those schools that had the ability to reload quickly with new talent, and his record sort of backs up his statements. Others would tend to agree with Panfan and Vol Gen in their support of private schools.

 

EGO, it is great that your school and students can raise so much money but I would be fired if I ask students to try to raise that much money. We have to have fund raisers approved and our school board doesn't want us constantly begging for money from a population that has been under constant economic hardship since NAFTA took away thousands of jobs in the late 80's. This just points out how little we understand of each others situations.

 

QueenBee I respect you opinions and you are right, sometimes it may come off to some players as an excuse for losing, but I get so tired of hearing people say, "If you just worked harder you could win championships," because this is not always the case. Life is never that simplistic, and teenagers have changed so much in the last twenty years. Many coaches struggle with local politics, students on drugs, students with "huge" academic problems, and a variety of other issues that distract everyone or groups of people from football. We are not saying that my team, RBS, or Watertown should get an easy ride into the playoffs, but we are saying that the current system is not supported on an equal base. If it were, why would so many states have a multiplier system or separate publics and privates all together. Almost every state recognizes there is a difference, why can't we? I have put forward at least two different ideas that I can live with... we need to find a consensus on this issue and look for a real solution. If we can stop the name calling long enough to find a middle ground, we might be able to persuade the TSSAA to look at our ideas!

[Indian]

Class AA-In the last 15 years, private schools won 8 Class AA and 2A state titles. So what, you might ask, that's barely more than 50 percent. What stands out is that there have been and continue to be much fewer teams in the class than even Class A/1A and you still have those results. Currently there's two out of nearly 60 total. Before 1993 I'm guessing it was maybe 10 or 12 out of close to 100. Sure Brentwood Academy won some of those (I'm not even counting early 80s) but should their results be thrown out just because they're in Division II? If so, Trousdale's run in Class A shouldn't be counted in any argument on how public schools (mainly just 2 out of 40) were able to occasionally knock off the private schools in Class A and 1A.

[ELA]

Panfan... how many players did your team (notice I didn't say which team) have last year that ran better than a 4.85-40 last season? If you look at the top eight 1A teams from last season, see how many had speed! Now look at the bottom 8 teams and compare. Take any 1A team in the bottom half (50%) and give them one or two athletes with speed and see what happens! I'll do you one better, give me two kids with speed (4.6 or better) and even my team will finish in the top 20 (1A) teams in the state! Speed isn't everything, but it makes up for a lot of other things!

[VolunteerGeneral]

ie3....Good Mark for you. I enjoyed your post. However, I don`t lose sight on the things you talk about. My kids are in public school. Even in a town like Jackson, it isn`t any different. I can tell you stories of just plain stupidity by local politicians as well. Fundraising for sports is the way it is for public and private. You should see how under financed things are here. It`s a crying shame. That being said, it`s up to coaches and boosters and parents to share the load of raising money. I really wasn`t being sarcastic about the facemask, I was just joking. But, the point is that if your school is not being properly funded, then that is a sad testimony on your community. It only takes a few headstrong people to organize and come up with solutions to raise funds. I see it all the time here.

 

BTW....Good point about public schools recruiting in your area. I`ve been trying to tell a lot of people who want to whine about private schools, that public schools recruit.

[pujo]

That's what made Cloudland so good last year, and we'll be good again this year. We have a couple of players that are unusually fast, but we didn't compare with Ezell who had several players who where really fast. Our two boys couldn't cover them all. We would be on two of them, they'd just throw it to a third. The speed we have is pretty unusual for a small rural public school, the most we've ever had, and probably the most we'll have for a long time. When these two graduate we'll have average speed again, more then likely, and our shot at the state will be over until such a time as the good Lord blesses us with some more exceptional talent.

 

Panfan

You state you have really smart people and really work hard, and I'll agree with you 150%, that's an advantage. All our boys arn't that smart, and we can't threaten to kick them out of school if they don't hit the weights. The private schools arn't going to accept kids that won't work hard, and are relatively intelligent. You'll just send them back out to the public schools if you can't use them, and then tell us to beat you'll with them. We don't have any trouble with gettin your rejects because we have no private schools in this area, but some of them do. If we had a private school in this area that liked to do well in sports I'm sure they would try to get Mark Byrd to go there, because he's faasst, and smart. Some of our kids work hard, and some of them don't. We have already lost one of our starters from last year because he missed too many days of school this past year. I bet you'll don't have this kind of trouble. You have a lot more control over your players and what they do, and who they are.

[VolunteerGeneral]

Ok ELA..I give up!!! How many players in the top eight of 1A has 4.85 speed or better? Heck I don`t know. But since your such an expert, why don`t you just tell us all. I`m sure panfan, EGO, pujo, Caesar, Indian, sportsfan and a host of others would like to know. You come across like you know so why don`t you just give us those facts?

 

Now you say look at the bottom 8 teams and compare. Well ELA, I`m pretty stupid, so why don`t you first tell me who the bottom 8 teams are so I can make a rational decision? And while your at it, I didn`t catch their 40 times. Would you post them here so we all could be as acknowledgeable as you? We`d all like to make our own judgement, we just aren`t privey to the information that you are.

 

 

Thanks VG

[VolunteerGeneral]

hey pujo...This is a problem based thread. Why don`t you and ELA go over to the "merit base" thread and discuss solutions?