Don't most schools have some form of reciprocal agreement with neighboring schools in the cases of multiple schools in the same county?

 

I wonder sometimes if there are some who would advocate for a "Single Rural County School Only Classic State Championship."

 

Not me. See my "two types of schools" point in Post #81. Tobacco sticks vs. lacrosse sticks for the All A championship is fine with me. It's more about the tiniest of schools who don't have a chance at competing with the rest of their district and region, not about whether they are rural, urban, etc.

Long story short, when I think of the All-A, I think of it as a way to reward a small community and give them their chance in the spotlight. Elliott County's teams a few years back would be a perfect example of that. A bunch of kids from a small town who grew up playing together, were good enough to get to state tournament, but just couldn't get past some of the bigger schools like Mason County or Covington Holmes.

 

Private schools can have these same close-knit communities, and many of their kids (while probably not as talented as one of the more "talented" All-A teams from the mountains that I could think of), still have a regional and state championship to play for.

 

I just think that, as a coach, at a certain point, I'd probably hope that my team graduated from the point of playing for All-A titles and instead worried about winning tournaments like the LIT (back when they invited teams from all over the state).

Jokers Wild ~ In this key matter you bring up, shouldn't we talk about moving from a winner-take-all Sweet 16 to maybe 2 or 3 divisions with as many titles? I know winner-take-all sounds cool & has a venerable history of Inez or Carr Creek coming out of nowhere to beat the big boys but those days on gone.

 

Here's the KHSAA list of total championships per school + year by year as a reference point.

http://khsaa.org/records/basketball/bbk-recordbook_sweet16historyresults.pdf

I think going to a class system in ALL sports is a much better solution than kicking out private schools. But lets face it....due to the Sweet 16 and its tradition sports like volleyball, baseball, softball, etc have to suffer through the one class system.

Are city schools considered to be private schools? Campbell County has a lot of them. Dayton, Bellevue, Newport, Highlands, Silver Grove. If you live in the city, you go for free or you can go to Campbell County school for free as well? If you live out of the city you have to pay tuition. Is that not similar to the complaint that anyone can go to a 'private' school?

Knowing I thought I heard at one time Highlands had to disallow any new out of city students as they were over crowded?

That's a new one on me. Who knew? :idunno:

 

Just discovered that they are located in Independence, Ky. I don't see them or some of the other KCAA teams listed at KHSAA.org. Their website lead me to a ranking of the KCAA league.

 

The Kentucky Christian Athletic Association

 

1. Cornerstone 9-0

2. Community 5-1

3. North Hardin 6-1

4 Trinity 3-1

5 Somerset 3-2

6 Academy 4-3

7 Heritage 1-2

8 Highlands 5-6

9 Blue Grass 2-2

10 Holy Angels 4-5

 

Best of The Rest:

 

Bethel

MICAH

Glasgow

Lakeside

Sayers

 

Lawnboy13... How are you aware of some of these teams?

 

Some of the team's names are the same as other Schools in the state (example: Highlands, Trinity etc...)

 

Let me bring a little light to this particular topic as I am probably by far the most familiar with this on this board, or at least of the ones who post anyway.

 

There are 2 Christian school affiliated sports conferences in the state of KY for non-KHSAA entities to play in. The first one, and probably the most organized is the KY Christian Athletic Association (KCAA). Most of the larger non-KHSAA Christian schools play in this one. The other is the KY Christian School Athletic Association (KCSAA). This one actually has a few more entities associated with it, and they also allow home school players and teams to participate, where as the KCAA does not. The KCAA has 29 schools participating, the KCSAA has 39 schools/entities participating according to this years list. Some schools, like the Christian Academy of Lawrenceburg (also known as CAL), participate in both leagues. However, because they allow home schooled kids to play on their sports teams, they are not allowed to participate in the post season tournaments in the KCAA, they can only participate in the regular season. There are a handful of schools that participate in both. There are also different rules for teams to participate in the KCSAA (to belong to the association)...things like the length of hair and tattoos, stuff like that.

 

The KCSAA is broken in to different divisions for post season tournament competition, 1-4A. The KSAA is not, just broken down into regions but no classification as to size of school. There are schools as big as 400+ students (all grades) such as Heritage Christian in Hopkinsville and the Academy for Individual Excellence in Louisville, both of which participate in the KCAA. There are also very small schools with just a handful of students, and teams made up completely of home schooled kids who may come from a three or four county area.

 

There have been a couple of school in the recent past, North Hardin Christian in Radcliff and Cornerstone Christian in Shelbyville try to go KHSAA. Neither were able to sustain their participation and chose to drop out. Cornerstone took a nose dive in enrolment the year after they petitioned to join the KHSAA which really hurt them, North Hardin I'm not sure what happened. They are one of the larger overall schools, but they seem to have been losing kids as they enter high school age the past few years.

 

A few of these schools can/could compete with smaller KHSAA schools on a given year. Somerset Christian, Cornerstone, North Hardin, Community Christian (which is up in NKY) and Heritage have all had some very good teams of recent years. But it also doesn't take much for them to nose dive and go from good to bad pretty quickly. Community Christian and North Hardin are the two who seemed to have been able to sustain a high level the past few seasons. Heritage Christian in Hopkinsville, though I have never seen play, I have been told on good authority that they are very good and could easily compete with small KHSAA schools as well, though I'm not sure how long they have been on the scene.

 

The KCAA competes in both men's and women's sports, and include basketball (boys and girls) volleyball, softball, baseball, soccer (co-ed), golf (co-ed, of which I used to help coach at CAL), cross country and cheerleading. The KCSAA has boys only basketball, volleyball and boy/girls track.

 

How do I know so much about these organizations? Well, we (Fox Creek Christian) compete against several of these teams every year in both conferences in basketball. It's where the majority of our schedule is made up. We can't officially belong to either organization because we are neither a Christian school or a home school team, but the teams can play us independently if they choose to. For instance, we have played North Hardin, Somerset, CAL, Cornerstone (play them tomorrow as a matter of fact), Holy Angels, and others. All these belong to the KCAA. We also play many teams from the KCSAA, such as Galilean, Light, Bourbon Christian, Frankfort Christian Academy, and others.

 

Both the KCAA and KCSAA have websites with information about the organizations and the participating schools/teams. Check them out when you have time, you might have one of these teams in your back yard and not even know it.

Are city schools considered to be private schools? Campbell County has a lot of them. Dayton, Bellevue, Newport, Highlands, Silver Grove. If you live in the city, you go for free or you can go to Campbell County school for free as well? If you live out of the city you have to pay tuition. Is that not similar to the complaint that anyone can go to a 'private' school?

Knowing I thought I heard at one time Highlands had to disallow any new out of city students as they were over crowded?

 

You cannot go the Campbell County for free.......You would pay an out of district tuition fee. Those schools are independent schools. The independent only referring to they do not belong to a county school system but have their own school system. Nothing else.......They are like all county public school systems and develop their own rules for tuition students, etc.

Jokers Wild ~ In this key matter you bring up, shouldn't we talk about moving from a winner-take-all Sweet 16 to maybe 2 or 3 divisions with as many titles? I know winner-take-all sounds cool & has a venerable history of Inez or Carr Creek coming out of nowhere to beat the big boys but those days on gone.

 

Here's the KHSAA list of total championships per school + year by year as a reference point.

http://khsaa.org/records/basketball/bbk-recordbook_sweet16historyresults.pdf

 

 

Still like it the way it is. Just the spectacle of playing in Rupp is something that makes kids heroes in their communities, especially for the really small schools.

 

If it goes to classes, I think it's kind of a death sentence for those teams getting to Rupp.

 

Think of it this way, which would you rather be able to say if you were a high school kid:

1. I won the All-A Classic in Richmond on EKU's floor.

 

2. We had a once in a generation team at my school, got to make the trip to Rupp and got drilled by _________ (Ballard, Male, Eastern, Scott County,) because they had __________ (Michael Bush, Chris Lofton, Donta' Smith, OJ Mayo, Remy Abell, Darius Miller) who went on to play at _______ (UK, U of L, NBA, Big time D1 school).

 

The second one might sting some right after the game, but the thrill of playing in Rupp and telling everyone about how your "little" school got matched up with some of the best players in the country. At least you had that chance to beat them. That probably doesn't go down if there are classes.

 

Tons of arguments all year about who was the better team between Trinity, St. Xavier, Male, Bowling Green, Highlands, and Scott County in football this year. Wasn't really a good way to settle it, even though it got narrowed down more than it usually would have with the Louisville "Super District" being upset and Highlands losing.

 

We'd have those same arguments about basketball. Just seems like the talent would be really watered down.

 

I know it doesn't happen as often, but schools like Breckenridge County, Paintsville, and Shelby Valley have won it all recently too. We've also seen a team like a South Laurel, who has an enrollment around the 4A/5A size but isn't in an urban area by any means, or a Mason County or Elizabethtown, which are 3A/4A sized schools who've combined for four state championships as well.

Edited January 13, 201412 yr by JokersWild24

I dont feel that it will ever be split in the state. Like mentioned earlier, there are simply too few "private" schools that are KHSAA members to have a private championship in each sport. These schools vary in number too much & would eliminate about 95% of the other private schools from having any chance of winning anything honestly.

 

These types of public/private debates are always interesting & entertaining to hear different perspectives. I just showed up too late with my popcorn on this one.

There seems to be a number of thinly-veiled swipes at the quality of play in the All A Classic and how NCC "doesn't have anything to gain" by continuing to participate in it.

 

In a majority of the regions in Ky, the top All A schools are major contenders for the overall region championships and ranked teams are regularly a part of the All A field. This is true in boys and girls play.

You cannot go the Campbell County for free.......You would pay an out of district tuition fee. Those schools are independent schools. The independent only referring to they do not belong to a county school system but have their own school system. Nothing else.......They are like all county public school systems and develop their own rules for tuition students, etc.

I always thought you had the option to go to Campbell County for free even if you lived in those cities? They don't pay county taxes? I just thought bus service was not offered. I learned something new today. So the difference between a private school and an independent or County school is that everyone that attends a private school has to pay tuition, while only people from outside of the city or county limits have to pay tuition at the independent/county schools?

I dont feel that it will ever be split in the state. Like mentioned earlier, there are simply too few "private" schools that are KHSAA members to have a private championship in each sport. These schools vary in number too much & would eliminate about 95% of the other private schools from having any chance of winning anything honestly.

 

These types of public/private debates are always interesting & entertaining to hear different perspectives. I just showed up too late with my popcorn on this one.

 

Welcome to BGP Johnny. Glad to have some more CKY fans. Let us know if you have any questions.

 

Hopefully I'll have up a nice article on the 11th Region in a couple of hours. Check out our contests as well.

There seems to be a number of thinly-veiled swipes at the quality of play in the All A Classic and how NCC "doesn't have anything to gain" by continuing to participate in it.

 

In a majority of the regions in Ky, the top All A schools are major contenders for the overall region championships and ranked teams are regularly a part of the All A field. This is true in boys and girls play.

 

I wouldn't say they don't have anything to gain. I just think they have more to gain by playing stiff competition. The kids have the memories and experience of winning it last year too, so it's not really like many of them are missing out.

Think of it this way, which would you rather be able to say if you were a high school kid:

1. I won the All-A Classic in Richmond on EKU's floor.

 

2. We had a once in a generation team at my school, got to make the trip to Rupp and got drilled by _________ (Ballard, Male, Eastern, Scott County,) because they had __________ (Michael Bush, Chris Lofton, Donta' Smith, OJ Mayo, Remy Abell, Darius Miller) who went on to play at _______ (UK, U of L, NBA, Big time D1 school).

 

Both! Why is it limited to just one of these options?

Understand. There have also been some schools that have gotten in some hot water for advancing too far in tourneys and playing too many games, or advancing further than they thought and later having to drop them and break contracts.

 

Also, how far are you banking on NCC advancing in your calculation above? I think they have a really solid draw, and that we could see them in the finals against a Hazard or Cordia.

 

Just out of curiosity, what kind of reciprocal agreement is in place? Maybe it's being too caught up in the terms, but I'm not really sure what jumps out as advantageous to another school who'd just willingly let the other party break the contract. I'm not saying there isn't some advantage, just that I'm not really sure what it is.

To answer your questions, I have projected them to advance to the finals of the ALL A. This is the only way you can do it. This is not to dismiss the real possiblity they won't make it that far, but if they don't they just don't get to play 30 games this year. The reciprical agreement could be with a team like St. Henry whereby if either team advances and needs to drop a game the other school agrees in advance to let them out Understand I have NO inside information on this, just a guess.

Football and Basketball are two complete different animals when it comes to competing against larger schools. Basketball can be successful with 4or5 really good kids and one good coach, football needs many more really good athletes and several good coaches.

I don't disagree at all, but realalistically do you think kids from small to medium schools are not smart enought to realize they have little to no chance to win a state basketball championship.

That's all I am trying to say. I know the KHSAA will most probably never change the sweet 16 set up unless a viable lawsuit were filed, and that won't happen as long as the smaller schools continue to have the ALL A. I'm sure the KHSAA are happy as hell this tournament is held each year. They don't have to be involved and it takes a lot of pressure off of them about classification. I'm not advocating going to classes in basketball. I'm just saying it could be done without a lot of trouble. I guess I'm also a little defensive when people dismiss the ALL A as not a big deal and of no consequence.