Leaderboard

Can someone change the title of this thread to “why your favorite team will have success this year”

I am IT for profession and hobby. I love gaming but that doesn't stop me from wanting to love football just as much. I fully support the STEM and more nerdy things as I myself like it and my daughter has taken an interest as well. My boy loves football with me and would like to play but as Ryan later said, with all the CTE things, we just haven't given in on that yet. Still much debate there. With all that said there is no reason that you can't be dedicated to multiple things. You can be a IT pro and still have the passion for football if you want to that is...

The whole state exhibits a "lack of respect" toward baseball. Virginia is one of the only states still playing a 20 game regular season. Every other state has mastered the 30 game schedule. North Carolina even plays the entire Final Four as a best of 3 game series!

I think the Blues are gonna be a lot better team then what there record may show at the end of the season..looking at there schedule they could go 5 and 5 easy but I think they will finish 7 -3 or 8-2.but they will be battle tested and ready for they playoffs....if they can stay healthy... ..

The TSSAA has actually made schools dial back there schedules. In the late 90's and early 2000's the West Tennessee schools were playing 50-70 games per year, they would start playing tournaments in January and February. They would have 30 games under their belts before the regular season started..

Don't sleep on Abingdon's Martin Lucas. He's bigger, stronger, and faster this year. Also he's only a Jr. The kid has put in work this past off season

Abingdon should be better this year than they were last season. Coach Amburgey and Company now have had a full off season to get his program in the fashion he wants it to operate. Strength and conditioning has been a priority for the Falcons and they all look physically bigger and stronger. From what I'm hearing there has been good numbers out for spring and summer workouts. The Falcons will still need to settle on the QB position and it appears they have filled the holes left by graduation. RB Martin Lucas looks like a physical specimen. He will certainly be carrying the load early on.

I think John Battle may be better than a lot of people think they will be, I know there is a lot of things to be seen. They have a new coach but he has been around the team a while, they have a very good line returning on both sides of the ball, two very good linebackers an behind them seems decent. They have some fine wideouts that can catch the ball an a very good returning running back, the quarterback is capable of running things if he doesn't get hurt. But all this is yet to be seen but I do think they will be a team that surprise a lot of people.

The baseball draft receives no media attention because the media is not showing the players in college or high school. Most people already know who the NBA draftees and NFL draftees are before they are drafted. Almost no one knows who the baseball players are.

Baseball has a bigger issue.

VHSL Athletics Retweeted CoachTube.com‏Verified account @thecoachtube U.S. High School Sports Participation History 1970-2018 https://coachtube.com/youth-coaching/articles/sports-participation-rate-barchart … @NFHS_Org great state

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.

Today’s generation of athletes are guided by the social media culture. The fear of being on a losing team overrules any school or community pride or love for the sport. Throw in an overinflated sense of entitlement and that’s a recipe for a couch potato. The fact that there are an alarming rate of sports related transfers each year shows the lack of patience and loyalty that high school athletes have today. The common trait between the superstars that sit at home and the superstars who move on to greener pastures is that they are afraid of looking bad. The lazy kids just have less options so they choose to not participate.

A part that can be attributed to low hs numbers is the fact that they've played 200+ games of each youth sport before they even hit the competitive part, middle school/high school. But on a side note, there aren't many yards with bald spots from kids playing. Lazy is an issue

Bingo! I can speak for VHS, on the fact that the school’s halls are crawling with big, athletic kids, that do not participate in ANY sports. These same kids will attend games, badmouth the teams when they lose, but when confronted on why they’re not playing, will give a BS excuse, every time. Ive spent a total of 16 years coaching youth sports here in Bristol. Some of those years were well before my kids, who are both now college athletes, ever picked up a ball. I’ve witnessed first hand, the progression of laziness in kids who are now in their late 20s-early 30s, to the kids now in high school or are just entering the adult world. Both the VHS football and baseball teams suffered greatly this past year because of low numbers, due mostly to kids that played youth sports, being too lazy to put in the work required at the high school level. Mark my words, our region will see an all-time low in numbers and success for VHS sports across the board, this upcoming school year. It’s sad, but true.

The truth is, a lot of kids in SWVA are just plain old lazy. They don't play sports or work. They've learned from those older than them that they can do nothing and the Government will send them a check every month for doing nothing. Lots of folks live that way and don't see anything wrong with it...they don't try to find a job because they don't want a job. It's becoming hereditary.