Low Numbers in HS Football

[Gridiron60 2,554]

Posted on social media by Bland County's Asst. AD. It's sad but probably going to see more it in small divisions.  It's hard when the program doesn't see much success to recruit players from an ever dwindling enrollment. Hopefully, they'll get more involved to be able to field a team. 

"BCPS Parent Info: There will be a meeting for all varsity football players and parents July 15, 2019 at 6:00PM at the School Board Office.

This meeting will be held to discuss the future of Bland County Football." 

[GMan 3,569]

On 7/8/2019 at 2:23 PM, Pioneer pride said:

I know Lebanon will have low numbers. Schools should look at 8 man football. Some say that's where the state might be heading, any thoughts?

May as well just play 7on7 flag football then...

[GMan 3,569]

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.

[GMan 3,569]

On 7/10/2019 at 11:13 AM, Tigerman10 said:

Truth be told Lebanon would likely have state championships in baseball and softball ... if they were single A.

I heard from someone close to the program that most of the Senior girls on the softball team were pissed when the Semis and Finals got bumped back a week...heard they had beach vacations planned for that week.  Seems quite plausible considering how they played in the Semis.

[50kw 140]

I would be very afraid to dress in the visitors football locker room at Lebanon Middle School. 

I know we've talked and talked about it but SWVA is hurting for good or decent paying jobs. Coal is never going to be what it was. Check the numbers of households with school aged children and you'll see they are low. 

 

[sixcat 2,918]

9 minutes ago, 50kw said:

I would be very afraid to dress in the visitors football locker room at Lebanon Middle School. 

I know we've talked and talked about it but SWVA is hurting for good or decent paying jobs. Coal is never going to be what it was. Check the numbers of households with school aged children and you'll see they are low. 

The Twin County area of Galax, Grayson and Carroll has become a retirement community for northerners who spend the winter in Florida and the summer in the mountains.  Especially Grayson County!  They retire from Michigan, New Jersey,  Massachusetts, Connecticut or New York, buy cheap land in this area and a condo in The Villages and divide their time between the two.

This has become so common here that the median age for this area is well over 10 years above the state median age.  Checking the online stats for 2017, the median age in Grayson County is 10 years higher than Norton and about 7 years higher than Wise, Dickenson and Russell.  Scott County is the only median age approaching Grayson's.  

[Bearcat Dad 439]

On 7/12/2019 at 9:19 AM, GMan said:

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.

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.

[S10SQUAREBODY4LIFE 239]

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 

[Bearcat Dad 439]

On 7/12/2019 at 10:08 AM, sixcat said:

The Twin County area of Galax, Grayson and Carroll has become a retirement community for northerners who spend the winter in Florida and the summer in the mountains.  Especially Grayson County!  They retire from Michigan, New Jersey,  Massachusetts, Connecticut or New York, buy cheap land in this area and a condo in The Villages and divide their time between the two.

This has become so common here that the median age for this area is well over 10 years above the state median age.  Checking the online stats for 2017, the median age in Grayson County is 10 years higher than Norton and about 7 years higher than Wise, Dickenson and Russell.  Scott County is the only median age approaching Grayson's.  

Bristol has become nothing short of a retirement community as well. With once thriving industrial parks becoming little more than ghost towns, young families have no choice but to move away from the area to find work that pays good enough to raise their children. At least we are working hard to become the retail capital of SWVA! (Sarcasm)

Even a respectable profession like education, is in a horrible state in SWVA. Teachers are grossly underpaid compared to the rest of the state and because of issues like declining population, cities like Bristol do not want to build new schools, they just want to slap band-aids on their decrepit old schools and build fancy shopping centers in hopes of mirroring our Tennessee brethren. 

We do have a superintendent that is fighting very hard to help the kids in Bristol, but as we all know, the powers that be in Richmond usually forget that the state does extend west past Roanoke.

Both of my kids have expressed interest in leaving the area when they receive their degrees. I hate it, but I can’t say I blame them.

[redtiger 1,740]

16 hours ago, Smashmouth said:

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 

I know a local dad/coach who had coached his son in little league football and was bragging about the number of game they had played over the previous two seasons, it was an insane number. There has to be a limit. Same with baseball, basketball, whatever.  I genuinely believe it sucks the life out of them. Would any of us want to play football year round? I know I really like basketball and when I was younger played a lot of pickup games with my friends, but sometimes we played Tap/21, and sometimes we played flag football.

Repetition and the desire to get better is taking the fun out of sports. I loved football but when winter came around I really enjoyed weightlifting, it would have been a shame to take it easy on weightlifting so that I wouldn't be worn out for the weekend travel ball game, if not skipped all together. 

Some kids are lazy and would rather sit at home than be out working through two-a-days and the long evenings during season but thats not the primary issue imo. The main problem is we, the adults involved, are taking the fun out of sports and replacing it with pure competition. Well competition is tiring. How much time do kids invest in "unorganized" sports now? My guess is significantly less than 20 years ago. Everything is AAU this or travel that. Just let the kids play and when _____ season is in coach them hard, but dont make it a year round grind.

[50kw 140]

17 minutes ago, redtiger said:

Everything is AAU this or travel that. Just let the kids play and when _____ season is in coach them hard, but dont make it a year round grind.

Where you are missing the point is that all these kids are going DI or straight to the pros out of high school 😂. Same kids cant even dominate A or AA SWVA talent. 

I will say all the travel teams have taken the hometown pride out of local sports. That is a big part of it. There is no sense of commitment or loyalty to the community.   

16 hours ago, Bearcat Dad said:

Bristol has become nothing short of a retirement community as well. With once thriving industrial parks becoming little more than ghost towns, young families have no choice but to move away from the area to find work that pays good enough to raise their children. At least we are working hard to become the retail capital of SWVA! (Sarcasm)

Even a respectable profession like education, is in a horrible state in SWVA. Teachers are grossly underpaid compared to the rest of the state and because of issues like declining population, cities like Bristol do not want to build new schools, they just want to slap band-aids on their decrepit old schools and build fancy shopping centers in hopes of mirroring our Tennessee brethren. 

We do have a superintendent that is fighting very hard to help the kids in Bristol, but as we all know, the powers that be in Richmond usually forget that the state does extend west past Roanoke.

Both of my kids have expressed interest in leaving the area when they receive their degrees. I hate it, but I can’t say I blame them.

PREACH!

[sixcat 2,918]

53 minutes ago, redtiger said:

I know a local dad/coach who had coached his son in little league football and was bragging about the number of game they had played over the previous two seasons, it was an insane number. 

I know a current all-state caliber player that once played sandlot in two different leagues simultaneously.  Two practices per day, two games per week for multiple seasons.  Dad is a bit of a psycho!

[SXSW 557]

I don't want sound like a wet blanket or prophet of Doom, but there is absolutely nothing to keep folks in Southwest Virginia anymore! The textile jobs have long since disappeared, the coal industry has been decimated and the residual effects are now being felt area wide. I have said this many times that you can draw a line from Gate City to Abingdon and anything north of that line is on life support! There will be pockets of areas that can hold out a little longer aka (Richlands, Graham and maybe Union) but they too will see dramatic declines in the future. The closer you are to Tennessee the better off you will be. The concentrated wealth of SW Va. is in Abingdon and Scott County is close to Eastman and those are the exception to the rule. I hate it for the dedicated people who spend their whole lives trying to build something athletically special to watch a kid lose interest or move away but you have to give people a reason to stay and unfortunately now there isn't any reason too!

 

[Pioneer pride 70]

On 7/12/2019 at 9:24 AM, GMan said:

I heard from someone close to the program that most of the Senior girls on the softball team were pissed when the Semis and Finals got bumped back a week...heard they had beach vacations planned for that week.  Seems quite plausible considering how they played in the Semis.

Not sure what happened exactly, but I agree it sounds plausible. I thought a week postponment was ridiculous. I think at that point the senior girls were done. They had already graduated and were just finished with high school. I wished they would have finished what they started, but with kids today nothing surprises me. 

[Pioneer pride 70]

19 hours ago, Bearcat Dad said:

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.

Lebanon is the same way. Halls are filled with big guys who could play but won't as far as football is concerned. 

[Bearcat Dad 439]

20 minutes ago, Pioneer pride said:

Lebanon is the same way. Halls are filled with big guys who could play but won't as far as football is concerned. 

It really is a shame. I can remember when I was at VHS in the early to mid 90s, we had 3rd string players at a lot of positions, without having to reach into the JV pool.

In baseball, coaches had to cut twice as many kids than the amount that ended up on the rosters.

VHS, along with most SWVA schools, may never see those days again!

[redtiger 1,740]

2 hours ago, 50kw said:

Where you are missing the point is that all these kids are going DI or straight to the pros out of high school 😂. Same kids cant even dominate A or AA SWVA talent. 

 

Im seeing it where the parents just want their kid to be the best they can be. Theres truth in that thought process, the more work they put in the better they will be but is it worth being the absolute best you can be as a player if theres nothing fun about the game anymore?

[SXSW 557]

1 hour ago, Pioneer pride said:

Lebanon is the same way. Halls are filled with big guys who could play but won't as far as football is concerned. 

Gate City is in the same boat, a coach must now recruit his own hallways and parking lots after school. I know 3 kids at GC who are 250lb lineman and just quit playing, I hope that the new coaching staff can at least get back half if the kids that used to play. 

 

[Eersfan 36]

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.

[Great City 210]

4 hours ago, SXSW said:

I don't want sound like a wet blanket or prophet of Doom, but there is absolutely nothing to keep folks in Southwest Virginia anymore! The textile jobs have long since disappeared, the coal industry has been decimated and the residual effects are now being felt area wide. I have said this many times that you can draw a line from Gate City to Abingdon and anything north of that line is on life support! There will be pockets of areas that can hold out a little longer aka (Richlands, Graham and maybe Union) but they too will see dramatic declines in the future. The closer you are to Tennessee the better off you will be. The concentrated wealth of SW Va. is in Abingdon and Scott County is close to Eastman and those are the exception to the rule. I hate it for the dedicated people who spend their whole lives trying to build something athletically special to watch a kid lose interest or move away but you have to give people a reason to stay and unfortunately now there isn't any reason too!

 

The issue you have is a lot of people from Scott County who work in TN........move to TN so they do not pay a state income tax. Gate City is close to Kingsport/Eastman, but we lose families to TN all the time.

[Tru Blue 72 423]

A lot of truth has been shared on this thread, and I agree with most of what has been said, but one thing has been overlooked.  Kids use to want to "Be Like Mike", or whoever their sports hero was, and tried to emulate them on sandlots, outdoor basketball courts, cow pasture football fields, and anywhere a ball could be tossed around.  Today, they can set in air conditioning, sip on a soda, push buttons, move toggles, and become whoever they desire to be without sweating one drop.  How many kids do you see playing pick up games in the summertime. Instead they are picking up a controller.  Sad but true, we're creating a generation of lazy children who don't give a squat about playing sports and a lot of the players we see in high school sports are there because their parents have been there before them.  What is missing, or in decline, is a desire to "Be Like Mike" where it counts, putting in the time and effort, pouring out the sweat and using up the stored energy, not flopping on the couch with controller in hand, living in dreamland, believing they are going pro, screaming into headset, and all the while poised in front of a high def Xbox monitor.

[redtiger 1,740]

4 hours ago, Eersfan said:

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. 

I know several players who are of that mindset, playing on a average/poor team is worse than not playing. They want to be superstars on winning teams, not players. They "like" football but they don't "love" football.  

[Deleted Account 5,203]

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.

[Ryan4VT 4,550]

10 minutes ago, UVAObserver said:

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.

Check. Mate. 

[sixcat 2,918]

1 hour ago, UVAObserver said:

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.

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!