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This post for some reason reminds me of the adage that if we judge a fish by its ability to walk, the fish will always be a failure. Not every male will have the talent or drive to play sports, and that’s the way it should be.

My wife’s parents cannot relate to my daughter. They see her as lazy, distant and ungrateful. They have taken to calling her “Daria” and wonder why she is so distant with them. At 14, she has been to some pretty prestigious “invitation only” STEM camps. As a 7th grader last year, she wrote the entire code for the Galax high school robotics team. She plays 6 instruments fluently and is featured on the current FloydFest lineup poster. Where her band of misfit teenagers will be performing next weekend. Because someone uses technology as a tool to a better life doesn’t necessarily make them lazy. It often makes the highly intelligent. Much more so than the previous generations that don’t understand them!

Given my age, I fall square between Generation X and the Millennials (though technically I fall in the latter category, I have little in common with 1990s babies). When I was 5, I had 13 channels on TV. When I was 17, I could download 1000 songs per week off the Internet. This is a prelude for what I’m about to say. There’s a constant pining on this board for the good old days, when men were men; when every single boy played football; and when a succession of presidents with dreadful foreign policy had the U.S. embroiled in unwinnable wars. In case y’all haven’t noticed, our population is on average roughly 25% less than what it was back then. Since fewer of the remaining 75% are having babies than their ancestors (mostly because the young ones fled the region leaving the old ones behind), our schools are roughly 40% smaller than in the era of LSD and 8-tracks. For schools like Pocahontas, that means closure. For schools like Garden and Whitewood, that means consolidation. For every 10 linemen you had in 1974, you have about 6 now. What used to be depth now is simply having enough to play iron-man. In addition, what most of the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers bemoan as “picking up a controller” is in reality becoming more oriented in STEM and electronics. I hate to break this to anyone, but coal will never again be what it was in 1973. Information technology (IT) is the backbone of our future economy. The boys that used to bale hay and dig ditches in the summer, which lends itself to a sport like football, are now learning to code and program, which doesn’t lend itself. Every generation has its lazy kids, and this generation has it in the exact same proportion as did the Baby Boomers and Generation X. The kids who lay around smoking dope and play Fortnite today are the same kids who laid around smoking dope and playing guitar terribly in 1975. There were probably more of them in 1975, because there were more people in general. Far be it from me, though, to criticize the generations who gave us the pet rock and pension systems that irreparably leach the retirement funds of the younger generations to subsidize themselves. It’s ALL because the kids of today are lazy and worthless. The kids of today will be responsible for repairing the mess left behind by the generations who are criticizing their work ethic. And I, for one, am not going to ride them like Seattle Slew, even if it means that we have fewer kids playing football. Rant over.

Because my daughter isn’t in the park, gym or playing field doesn’t mean she is somehow lazy. Learning to play guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, ukulele and saxophone at a concert level while maintaining an advanced classroom schedule and the extra work required for her to be invited to STEM camps involves as much or more dedication, sacrifice and practice as any sport! I would challenge anyone here to maintain my daughters schedule for a week! After letting her read through the last page, she says this thread is one big reason she despises sports.

i just the numbers for Gate City since 1970, using his formula Gate City has 531 points his top 5 has a total of 534! My head would explode trying to do them all for Southwest Virginia! Appy, Powell Valley, Clintwood, Graham would have massive numbers in this equation.

That’s, uhhhhh, interesting.

This would be an interesting exercise. I can think of at least 8 SWVA schools that would almost certainly outpoint Elizabethton in that same time period. Gate City, Giles, Powell Valley, Graham, Appalachia, Richlands, Clintwood, and George Wythe are locks. Pulaski County and Radford would be close.

The facts of the matter are still the same, not enough kids for whatever reason! If you want to take a look at what is coming to Southwest Virginia, go to Bluefield and drive 52 to Welch, and in 10 or so years it will be the same from Claypool Hill to Grundy on 460 or 58A form Hansonville to Big Stone!

Times News Sports‏ @tnsportslive What NE Tennessee school has enjoyed the most football playoff success? Douglas Fritz • Today at 6:24 PM Fifty years ago, the TSSAA held its first football playoffs. Since then, area teams have won their share of postseason football contests. But how do area schools rank against each other? http://www.timesnews.net/Football/2019/07/15/What-school-has-enjoyed-the-most-football-playoff-success.html?ci=stream&lp=1&p=1 great state

One of the best football players in SWVA that very, very few will talk about is the Moss kid from Marion. Very few will talk about him because he doesn’t touch the football (unless he destroys the ballcarrier and causes and recovers a fumble). The Bearcats have played Marion 3 times in the last 2 seasons, and every time I’ve watched him, he has impressed me very much. If I’m not mistaken, he has already been voted All-Region twice in football, and he is an absolute stud in the heavyweight division on the wrestling mat. My son graduated VHS this spring with multiple scholarship offers in two sports. He has been mentioned by many associated with VHS football over the years(not me) as one of the best two-way football players from VHS in a long time. He played against the likes of James Mitchell, Taymon Cooke, Cam Allen, John-Luke Asbury, Jake Sturgill, Matthew Fulton, Javon Scruggs, DeVon Graves, Landon Lowe, Seth Johnson, Jeb Stidham, Cody Howie, Hunter Collier, Greg Sanchez, Logan Branson, Courtland Carter, Ryan Gibson, Lane Scarborough, and many others, and he says that Moss is one of the baddest MFers he’s ever lined up against. Film proves that to be true. Just like my kid and the Stanley kid from Lebanon last year, Moss plays at a school that is mostly an afterthought in football in our region. This usually means that the standout players get very little recognition by the casual fan. A big difference between the first set of names I mentioned and kids like Moss, are that the first group of kids played on really good teams. All of those kids in the first group were/are uber talented, but nearly all of those kids did not have to shoulder a huge majority of the load of responsibility for their respective teams, except for maybe Scarborough at Battle and Collier at Gate City. Hell, just about all of the guys in the first group have a teammate mentioned in that group. Those kids in the first group also had other really, really good teammates that I didn’t even mention, and most had top notch coaches as well.