No competition

[Deleted Account 5,203]

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im sorry, but i completely disagree that a smaller school couldnt compete with a bigger one. "A" classes simply dont matter, im sorry. Any school that is good in a smaller class could compete with those of a bigger class.

 

Bluefield could beat any team in AAA this year in football. Im sure Richlands could compete with most AAA teams in VA in football also. All you need to be is a good team. It doenst matter how many people you have in your school, doesnt matter how many people you have to choose from, its just how good your players are. My friend that moved here from Florida went to a 6A school with over 3,500 students and he assured me that Bluefield, Richlands and even Graham would most likely beat them in football along with many other 6A, 5A, and 4A schools. You can have as many students as you want and have as big of a school as you need, but that doesnt mean you will be good at a sport.

 

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Let me say, I don't agree with a lot of this. In Virginia, there is such a talent leap between A/AA and AAA in football that it is startling. Here's one example: in 2002, a fairly good, 8-2 Graham team came out on top a AAA George Washington-Danville team 28-21. GW-Danville's record? 4-6. As one of my Virginia friends from Danville said: "we didn't really give a lot of attention to football". My friends from Halifax County confirmed this. With regards to Richlands, I have nothing but the utmost respect for the Blue Tornado: to make it to the state finals for three years in a row is a great feat, no matter what level of football you're playing. However, put Richlands on the same field as Potomac and Stone Bridge (AAA, Div. 5) or Westfield and Woodbridge (AAA, Div. 6), and the aforementioned teams would blow Richlands off the field. I don't think it's close.

 

It certainly DOES matter how many people you have in your school. If School A has just 11 guys try out for football, and School B has 50 guys try out for football, which team do you think will be better? Of course, you go with School B: much more talent to choose from! The larger schools: Westfield, Woodbridge, and Landstown, for example, often have over 100 students trying out for football every year; the number is so much that they have to repeatedly cut the numbers. I am not as familiar with SWVA schools, but I bet not that many come out for football tryouts. Often times, this would be a sizable fraction of the school (and I remember from my own high school days that not THAT many came out). Given my school A and school B hypo from earlier, 90%+ of the time, the school with the far greater, consistent turnout will have the better team. There are obviously aberrations, such as Wheeling Central in West Virginia. This gets at the issue at the end of my post.

The underlying reason more people come out for football at the larger schools: hmmm, could that be because the enrollment is larger? If it's not that, what else could it be?

 

There are a few reasons that smaller schools occasionally beat larger schools: better feeder systems, an aberration in the quality of athletes, and overall better coaching. However, as much as the schools in southeastern and northern Virginia pride themselves in football, do you think that this would generally be an issue in those parts of the state? I say not: far too much competition, not only for high school, but for collegiate offers. The competition often pushes those kids to the limit.

 

I would hate to see the best teams from around here go against good teams from Virginia AAA. It might be interesting for a quarter. That's honestly about it.

[grundyballer09 10]

i think they have a hell of a shot at the district title and a playoff apperance as in state but it is going to take a real performance in the regions to make it to state which they are capable of if they play up to there potiental

[GMan 3,569]

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i think they have a hell of a shot at the district title and a playoff apperance as in state but it is going to take a real performance in the regions to make it to state which they are capable of if they play up to there potiental

 

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No team from the SWD will win in Region tournament play unless they play another SWD team. With Piedmont and River Ridge districts in the Region, the chances of a SWD team advancing are zero point zero...

[GetMoney55 11]

i'd take the school with 11 good players try out rather than 50 horrible ones. what im saying is, just because you have more people, doesnt mean they are good people.

[vikings12 10]

bigger selection of kids.....a better chance to have more athletes.....you can't tell me that a A school can compete w/ a AAA school..

[GetMoney55 11]

yes I can. look at Wheeling Central.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

Who said the 11 players were good and that the 50 were horrible? In my hypothetical, I sure didn't, nor did I imply that anywhere.

Do yourself a favor: get out and about. Take a weekend and go to Virginia Beach. Go to a Landstown or a Hampton football game. You'll be surprised, amazed even, how much better the quality of football is among those schools than here. Why are those schools much better than SWVA schools? SWVA schools have good coaching, undoubtedly. The local feeder systems are solid. What's the difference? Could it be that those two high schools are between 4-5 times BIGGER than the schools here? As I have established ad nauseum, if the caliber of coaching is the same, and the feeder programs are solid, then there are two differences. One, *a larger talent pool to draw from, therefore a higher number of athletes given the same percentages, therefore a larger number of athletes on the football team, and therefore A BETTER TEAM.* It logically follows in a chain: if A, then B-C-D-E. Two, those larger and better high schools will compete against each other, thereby competing against the best teams in the state, thereby becoming more battle-tested in the process.

Do me one favor: look at the ESPN Top 25 high schools. Tell me how many of those high schools have enrollments under 1000. Can you find any? I know of one, Pahokee, and it has 900 in south Florida. It's not a coincidence that 24-25 the best football-playing high schools in the nation are the largest ones?! It would be foolish to assert otherwise.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

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bigger selection of kids.....a better chance to have more athletes.....you can't tell me that a A school can compete w/ a AAA school..

 

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Ding, ding, ding!

Likewise, how do we know that Wheeling Central can compete with the AAA high schools in the state? Do they schedule them? If so, then that is exactly one aberration in a trend, which does very seldom occur.

[GetMoney55 11]

the size of the school doesnt matter in how good a program is. im telling you. Pahokee is a 2A school and Booker T. Washington is a 3A school. I know that for a fact. Also last time I checked, I believe 15 of those top 25 schools were 4A or smaller...so that proves that they can easily hang with bigger schools.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

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the size of the school doesnt matter in how good a program is. im telling you. Pahokee is a 2A school and Booker T. Washington is a 3A school. I know that for a fact. Also last time I checked, I believe 15 of those top 25 schools were 4A or smaller...so that proves that they can easily hang with bigger schools.

 

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Yes, but even at 3A, that's still at least twice as large as the schools in this region! You say that 15 of the 25 schools are 4A or less. I counted 11, but that was a quick glance, of course. Populations of schools in the 4A school range often number in the 1750-2250, especially in larger states (Texas, Florida, etc.) in general. And it deflates your point just the same: if a school that is merely 2-3 times as big is that much more superior to those in southwest Virginia, what about the ones that are even larger? Again, Virginia has been in a slight downswing as far as football talent goes lately, with no teams in the national top 25, but regardless: more people = more talent = better team, if coaching/feeder systems are equal.

[keeper1 10]

you missed the point of his post: while teams like wheeling do exist (smaller pool but better players) they are an anomale. GENERALLY SPEAKING, the more people you have, the better players youll end up with.

[GetMoney55 11]

Pahokee's schedule consists of 5A and 6A teams. they are undefeated and the #6 team in the country. Their arch-rival, Glades Central, is a 3A school and schedules a lot of 5A and 6A schools, and their only loss is to Pahokee. explain that. Also, the number 2 school in the country last year was from Louisiana and produced Joe McKnight. They were a 2A school and killed Hoover, which is a 5A school from Alabama. And it's not like Hoover was an average 5A school..seeing as how they were ranked 8th in the country at that time I believe.

 

 

Yes, a bigger school can produce a possible outcome of more talent, but not always, as a smaller school can do the same. A smaller school can produce just as many kids to play good at sports as a bigger school can. A bigger school can have 150 people try out for a football team but they might be 150 average players, while a small school could have 50 kids try out and they would all be phenominal. It just depends on who you have at your school and how good they are. The size of your school doesnt matter.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

As keeper correctly stated above, there are obvious anomalies. Pahokee (by the way, the example I brought to everyone's attention) and Wheeling Central are anomalies. For every 2 teams that can buck this trend, there are 2,000 who can't.

There is an obvious as morning daylight correlation between larger schools (and thereby a larger base from which to draw football players) and the best football-playing schools. It's implicit in the reason there are state classification systems in the first place: so incredibly small schools don't get beat 90-0 by a high school 8 times its size.

 

Let me try yet another example. Say you have two public school marching bands that do not recruit superior talent, A and B. A has 20 players, B has 100 players. If you needed to take the best 10 players from each band, 19 times out of 20, which band of 10 do you think will be better? Obviously, the correct answer is B. You have the larger talent pool to draw from, and with a larger talent pool, you will have more great players than in the small band. Hence's B's band of 10 is better.

 

If this was an issue that there was a valid competing argument against, I would use the mantra "agree to disagree". That's not the case here. Yes, there are aberrations, hence not "causation". However, there is a painfully obvious "direct correlation" in the works. You can say that the earth is square all day long, even in the face of a mountain of evidence; it still doesn't make it right.