High School Sports

#4      
Curbelo Fanboy
Season will be 3 weeks deep by Labor Day weekend due to the IHSA adding a week to the playoffs so 3-6 or 2-7 teams can qualify. In the pantheon of IHSA dumb decisions this is in the team photo along with 4 class basketball. Old guy will now step down from his soap box.
 
#5      
Mr. Tibbs
Curbelo Fanboy said:
Season will be 3 weeks deep by Labor Day weekend due to the IHSA adding a week to the playoffs so 3-6 or 2-7 teams can qualify. In the pantheon of IHSA dumb decisions this is in the team photo along with 4 class basketball. Old guy will now step down from his soap box.
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Grampa Simpson Grandpa GIF by MOODMAN
 
#8      
Second place is 1st loser
IlliniFaninHoosierLand said:
Just because there's that many kids in the school doesn't mean they can get enough to go out for football. Tough to get players to come out when you've had 0 or 1 win in every season since they last made the playoffs a decade ago.
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Football isn't just a sport where you sign up your freshman year and give it a shot. Guys at the freshmen level have, for the most part, played multiple years prior. Nor is it a sport where you get to your freshman year and just stop playing because the varsity is historically bad.

You have the chicken/egg argument going on when you say it's hard to get kids to come out when you're winning 1 game or less every year. If the youth programs were run properly, you'd have a better caliber of players, in larger numbers and you'd be winning more games.

The problem starts at the pee wee level and it filters right up through the feeder programs. That's where the failure (for the lack of a better term) is at. Something isn't working at the ground level. It's either a decreasing interest in football for another sport perhaps (?) or a lack on community support for the programs. With a 1,000 kid enrollment, you should have enough kids to field a team at all levels.

Much, much bigger problem there than the varsity team. That's just the obvious and unfortunate result.
 
#9      
TentakilRex
Yeah Eisenhower is a program where the new playoff system was supposed to save.
 
#10      
AnnoyedWithGarza
Second place is 1st loser said:
Football isn't just a sport where you sign up your freshman year and give it a shot. Guys at the freshmen level have, for the most part, played multiple years prior. Nor is it a sport where you get to your freshman year and just stop playing because the varsity is historically bad.

You have the chicken/egg argument going on when you say it's hard to get kids to come out when you're winning 1 game or less every year. If the youth programs were run properly, you'd have a better caliber of players, in larger numbers and you'd be winning more games.

The problem starts at the pee wee level and it filters right up through the feeder programs. That's where the failure (for the lack of a better term) is at. Something isn't working at the ground level. It's either a decreasing interest in football for another sport perhaps (?) or a lack on community support for the programs. With a 1,000 kid enrollment, you should have enough kids to field a team at all levels.

Much, much bigger problem there than the varsity team. That's just the obvious and unfortunate result.
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There is another alternative. The feeder programs were being run well, and the numbers were there. Kids go through the entire feeder program, see that the high school teams aren't doing so well, and transfer.

That is a real thing that happens. I know of one school where kids played in their feeder programs all the way until high school and transferred to other schools in the conference for freshman year. One season, of the 22 players on their conference's all-conference team, 17 who were originally from that school had transferred to other schools in the conference, and only 2 were left at the original school.

I'm sure some of those kids transferred for legitimate reasons (parents got new jobs and moved or just moved in general), while some were recruited to go to other schools, and some just saw greener pastures and left. You can't build a winning program or even a successful program in that scenario.
 
#11      
IlliniFaninHoosierLand
Second place is 1st loser said:
Football isn't just a sport where you sign up your freshman year and give it a shot. Guys at the freshmen level have, for the most part, played multiple years prior. Nor is it a sport where you get to your freshman year and just stop playing because the varsity is historically bad.

You have the chicken/egg argument going on when you say it's hard to get kids to come out when you're winning 1 game or less every year. If the youth programs were run properly, you'd have a better caliber of players, in larger numbers and you'd be winning more games.

The problem starts at the pee wee level and it filters right up through the feeder programs. That's where the failure (for the lack of a better term) is at. Something isn't working at the ground level. It's either a decreasing interest in football for another sport perhaps (?) or a lack on community support for the programs. With a 1,000 kid enrollment, you should have enough kids to field a team at all levels.

Much, much bigger problem there than the varsity team. That's just the obvious and unfortunate result.
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Success helps your numbers grow. Yeah the youth programs help quite a bit but if your program has not shown that it can win consistently over a year-to-year basis, it's gonna be tough to convince any of the kids at the school to go out for the team.
 
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