PRIVATE SCHOOL DOMINANCE

[SoccerSwami]

Greeneville would have played 3 cupcake games for the state championship if there were no private schools in A-AA??? What??? Are you kidding Coniglio?

 

Okay, they would have played 2 easy matches, but they would have eventually faced Page. Did you notice that Page took eventual state champion Notre Dame to the final minute of their semifinal match 0-0 before the Fighting Irish scored? Page vs. Greeneville would have been a respectable public school championship.

 

Doesn't this prove our point? If there are only 2 worthy public schools in Tennessee who would be battling for the A-AA state championship each year and 10-15 competitive private schools in A-AA (even though A-AA is 83% public, 17% private) doesn't that tell you that private schools with no school zones have a distinct advantage?

 

Will Notre Dame be a great team next year? Sure. Great middle school soccer players all over Chattanooga see that championship and want to come play for Notre Dame. Winning attracts winners who want to play for you.

 

Will Greeneville or Page be a great team next year? It depends on what families happen to be living in their school zone. No matter how successful these public school programs, talented players from the area can't just choose to come play for your team. They have to reside in your school zone. Distinct disadvantage. And Page's school zone is about to get cut in half by some new high school opening up in that area.

 

If the Tennessee Titans could only draft players from Tennessee, Memphis, Vanderbilt, TSU, MTSU, exclusively colleges within the state of Tennessee, while the Dallas Cowboys were allowed to recruit players from Auburn, Oregon, Alabama, TCU, all 50 states including Tennessee, is it really fair for them to compete in the same league?

Edited November 7, 2010 by SoccerSwami

[Elmer]

So let me get this straight.

 

Privates win, so they need to get out of the divison. Better get rid of Alcoa football while your at it. (and Maryville for that matter)

 

Privates have open zones. Alcoa has open zones. (again Maryville as well)

 

Private schools have good facilities. Alcoa certainly has good facilities.

 

Private schools have good coaches. I believe that coach Rankin seems to know what he is doing. (as does Maryville's coach)

 

It just does not add up to me. For every reason to get rid of private schools, there is a public school that fits that description. In this case, Alcoa football fits almost all of those descriptions. Perhaps they are screaming for them to be kicked out on the football boards; i don't know.

[ChattanoogaCannon]

Will Notre Dame be a great team next year? Sure. Great middle school soccer players all over Chattanooga see that championship and want to come play for Notre Dame. Winning attracts winners who want to play for you.

 

 

Please leave Notre Dame out of your pathetic arguments since you obviously have no idea how this program works. Two K-8 schools feed Notre Dame - Our Lady of Perpetual Help and St. Jude. Each school has about 350 total students each. Girls and boys at each school certainly want to carry on the winning tradition of Notre Dame soccer, but first and foremost they will attend Notre Dame to carry on their Catholic education. Notre Dame did get one player this year not from these schools. Her family moved from Michigan. Bottom line is that Notre Dame is a great place to send your child, but going to the state tournament in girls soccer every year is not the reason.

Edited November 8, 2010 by ChattanoogaCannon

[Coniglio]

Greeneville would have played 3 cupcake games for the state championship if there were no private schools in A-AA??? What??? Are you kidding Coniglio?

 

Okay, they would have played 2 easy matches, but they would have eventually faced Page. Did you notice that Page took eventual state champion Notre Dame to the final minute of their semifinal match 0-0 before the Fighting Irish scored? Page vs. Greeneville would have been a respectable public school championship.

 

Doesn't this prove our point? If there are only 2 worthy public schools in Tennessee who would be battling for the A-AA state championship each year and 10-15 competitive private schools in A-AA (even though A-AA is 83% public, 17% private) doesn't that tell you that private schools with no school zones have a distinct advantage?

Okay, I'll contend that the final may not be a cupcake. If you haven't paid any attention to things on this board, I don't exactly live here anymore nor have I paid attention all year. Page has been pretty traditionally awful in the grand scheme of things. But who's to say with the random draw that Greenville might get Page first, and then the winner of that game would go on to win the state title by a nice 8 goal showing? The point is that three-quarters of the teams in the state round will be very bad. And that isn't acceptable by any strand of my imagination.

 

It sounds like some of you have a dog in the fight, and you want to see success in the form of a watered down state championship, or even state tournament berth. Now that I'm a little detached I can see what needs to be done for the good of the sport as a whole.

 

And for your stats, there aren't 10-15 good private schools currently in A/AA. There were 5 that qualified this year, and only a couple more might have been good enough. Signal Mntn will be there soon enough as well on the public side.

 

What exactly are you looking for in terms of what is fair? When will the complaining and the divisions end? Public/private? Club/non club? Urban/rural/suburban? Can we play a race card? East/Middle TN vs East Arkansas? The divides will never end and there is only one way to make things as fair as they can be. But I'm sure you can guess what that might be by now.

[Canesoverhere]

The solution is simple. One State Champion. The more divisions that are created, the more fragmented and watered down this has all become. What do we have now, four state champions? Seriously?

[CHAMPDDS]

Please leave Notre Dame out of your pathetic arguments since you obviously have no idea how this program works. Two K-8 schools feed Notre Dame - Our Lady of Perpetual Help and St. Jude. Each school has about 350 total students each. Girls and boys at each school certainly want to carry on the winning tradition of Notre Dame soccer, but first and foremost they will attend Notre Dame to carry on their Catholic education. Notre Dame did get one player this year not from these schools. Her family moved from Michigan. Bottom line is that Notre Dame is a great place to send your child, but going to the state tournament in girls soccer every year is not the reason.

 

Great Point CC-

 

If I may add some thoughts:

 

1)If the argument from others is that the public schools are limited to a specific area,and privates can pull from all over, I would counter that Notre Dame too is limited, in that it is predominately a Catholic student population from a very small Chattanooga population (Although ND has probably every religion represented in its student demographics, from Hindu to Baptist), and so the majority of the team is Catholic...so unless you want to argue that Catholics are a superior athlete religion, one must recognize that, at least in ND's case, they are too 'limited', yet somehow are able to succeed, and succeed consistently.

 

2)Let's look at Signal Mountain, a small public school---in just a couple of years they have emerged as a very strong program (not only in soccer but other sports)..and yet they are limited by the PUBLIC SCHOOL BIAS of students from a defined area, and even more so, if one looks at their geographic location, they are a very small community, somewhat isolated, from the main part of Chattanooga....but they are succeeding quite well.

 

So to generalize the issue does not work, so to generalize the need to revamp the system will not necessarily create a clean slate..

 

I proposed this question earlier in this thread....I would love to hear from any player/parent/coach who continues to belly ache this argument of unfair advantage...What was your team doing all summer, every week day (and I mean all summer except the dead period) when it was so hot? and what was your team doing when it was raining ? And what was your team doing every single day after school for 2 1/2 hours + ...I can tell you what Notre Dame and Signal Mountain,etc. were doing...they were practicing....Can the schools that can't seem to compete say the same ? (I would now refer you to my signature belows quote)

Edited November 8, 2010 by CHAMPDDS

[CHAMPDDS]

The solution is simple. One State Champion. The more divisions that are created, the more fragmented and watered down this has all become. What do we have now, four state champions? Seriously?

 

 

Canes-

 

Not to be too argumentative, but I cannot possibly see the logistics of ONE STATE CHAMPION ever working out...Too many teams, too much distance,...

 

D

[ChattanoogaCannon]

Canes-

 

Not to be too argumentative, but I cannot possibly see the logistics of ONE STATE CHAMPION ever working out...Too many teams, too much distance,...

 

D

 

 

Indiana does it in basketball. The logistics would be the same as they are, just with a longer playoff period.

Edited November 8, 2010 by ChattanoogaCannon

[Rabble Rouser]

Indiana does it in basketball. The logistics would be the same as they are, just with a longer playoff period.

I seem to remember Indiana went away from that format a few years ago. (Edit: they did away with it in 1997, much to the chagrine of Hoosiers like me).

 

To Champs point above, Chattanooga has about a 2.8 Catholic population percentage-wise.

Edited November 8, 2010 by Rabble Rouser

[Coniglio]

It wouldn't be a logistical nightmare to create one classification. Everyone gets re-districted into 32 districts. That's double what we have now to account for the A-AA and DII schools joining up with AAA. If they are still too big, then create divisions within the district.

 

Now, to advance to the playoffs, there needs to be 2 teams from each district. The way of determining the top 2 can be left to the district to decide, whether they want to take the top 2 from regular season play, or have a little tournament with the top 4 teams.... whatever.

 

Set up the bracket in the same way that the NCAA basketball bracket is set with 64 teams. It's all madness.

Districts next to each other (1,2; 3,4; 15,16; 31,32; etc) play each other in a SINGLE ELIMINATION playoff (2nd team in one district verses 1st in another).

Move down the line until you hit 8 teams. Those 8 advance to the finals.

 

Now, in order to make sure that teams from the same district don't meet in that second round, is to move one set of teams to the other side of the bracket.

 

The bracket would look like this:

East ------- West

West ------- East

 

It could work.

[CHAMPDDS]

As long as they still play the final rounds in Chattanooga..

 

D

[soccerer]

It wouldn't be a logistical nightmare to create one classification. Everyone gets re-districted into 32 districts. That's double what we have now to account for the A-AA and DII schools joining up with AAA. If they are still too big, then create divisions within the district.

 

Now, to advance to the playoffs, there needs to be 2 teams from each district. The way of determining the top 2 can be left to the district to decide, whether they want to take the top 2 from regular season play, or have a little tournament with the top 4 teams.... whatever.

 

Set up the bracket in the same way that the NCAA basketball bracket is set with 64 teams. It's all madness.

Districts next to each other (1,2; 3,4; 15,16; 31,32; etc) play each other in a SINGLE ELIMINATION playoff (2nd team in one district verses 1st in another).

Move down the line until you hit 8 teams. Those 8 advance to the finals.

 

Now, in order to make sure that teams from the same district don't meet in that second round, is to move one set of teams to the other side of the bracket.

 

The bracket would look like this:

East ------- West

West ------- East

 

It could work.

How about just a national champion? or global? and dont just limit it to high school or girls. The one soccer trophy given every year should go to the special one all others are watered down victories.