I completely understand where you are coming from. With your youth football program in Boone County feeding four high schools it would be hard to teach an offense and defense to match the coaching style of the coach where they are going to attend. That being said, if you go to a middle school program and it is the only feeder school for your high school, you are back to only developing a limited number of players for each position. There is no way to develop as many players on one team as you can with numerous teams. One of the main problems with the single middle school feeder program is, the middle school wants to win there regular season and tournament. Thus not as many players are developed, you play to win. You run into the same problem when you have a youth program that goes through the sixth grade, then funnels them into a single middle school. For the most part the better coached and more developed players will play for the middle school. Everyone wants to win. It is only human nature. Maybe some should think about having High school specific youth teams there.(disclaimer; I did not go to Highlands or have a child go there, or will not have a child go to Highlands, nor am I a Highlands fan) That being said, Highlands has as good of a system as possible, from my point of view. They have numerous teams competing against each other through the eighth grade. All of which will attend Highlands for the most part. Then each position player from four or five teams competing against each other, for a starting spot as freshman.Which does not include a few players from NKYFL going there as well. As a coach, if I have four or five experienced players at every position coming to me every year, well, I think Highlands goal this year is for their 19th STATE CHAMPIONSHIP. Enough said.

Think about it.

 

Highlands actually has only one middle school.

New Harlan was the worst idea for the overall benefit to the high school; yeah New Harlan sends a message to kids from Evarts and Cumberland that this is our all star middle school and you can join them in 9th grade, especially with the amount of press New Harlan receives.

 

There are tremedous benefits by splitting up New Harlan. First, it levels the playing field for Cumberland and Evarts. Secondly, it makes scheduling much easier for everyone. Lastly, it promotes an increase in football participation because some students and parents do not want to play against the more talented New Harlan.

 

There's simply not enough kids to split up the New Harlan middle school team. The number of kids from each of the school's that make that team up vary from year to year. If you split it up, you would have a team with 8 or 9 kids. When my son started playing there were only 2 kids in his entire school that participated in the football program. That number increases and decreases depending on the interest of the kids. It would make no sense to tear apart a good feeder program because they are doing well. Talent comes in waves for all programs. Cumberland, for instance is loaded this year with multi-talented players. Would you want to tear that program apart because it was successful?

Not trying to sound sarcastic here, but what would be a scenario for not wanting multiple feeder schools?

 

 

This thread was started because a statement was made in the Harlan Co./Bell game thread that Bell was better for numerous reasons one being they just have one middle school and played better together!

People want to split New Harlan and I still haven't heard a school in eastern Kentucky that has more than one team.

 

There has to be a bunch of them if it's such a great idea.

I think one thing to worry about with more than 1 middle schools is getting good coaching and fundamental work for everyone. On the other hand if the number of kids out for football is going to be large its good to have more than 1 team to develop more kids.

New Harlan was the worst idea for the overall benefit to the high school; yeah New Harlan sends a message to kids from Evarts and Cumberland that this is our all star middle school and you can join them in 9th grade, especially with the amount of press New Harlan receives.

 

There are tremedous benefits by splitting up New Harlan. First, it levels the playing field for Cumberland and Evarts. Secondly, it makes scheduling much easier for everyone. Lastly, it promotes an increase in football participation because some students and parents do not want to play against the more talented New Harlan.

 

I don't think splitting New Harlan would bring out more players.

It was a feeder program for Cawood High School, which was a 3A school. It's not that big.

 

Cawood and Hall had one team for a while and they got down to 14 or 15 players. That's not good for a football program.

 

Technically, Evarts is an all-star team too with players from Evarts and Black Mountain.

New Harlan was the worst idea for the overall benefit to the high school; yeah New Harlan sends a message to kids from Evarts and Cumberland that this is our all star middle school and you can join them in 9th grade, especially with the amount of press New Harlan receives.

 

There are tremedous benefits by splitting up New Harlan. First, it levels the playing field for Cumberland and Evarts. Secondly, it makes scheduling much easier for everyone. Lastly, it promotes an increase in football participation because some students and parents do not want to play against the more talented New Harlan.

 

 

I don't believe New Harlan was formed to field a all star team. Evarts and Cumberland are county schools as well. Had the powers that be wanted an all star team their are plenty of players from both schools that would be considered all stars. There is no way one middle school out of New Harlans schools could field a team. Evarts has Black Mountain and Cumberland is the biggest middle school in the county.

I think one thing to worry about with more than 1 middle schools is getting good coaching and fundamental work for everyone. On the other hand if the number of kids out for football is going to be large its good to have more than 1 team to develop more kids.

Bingo!

Definetly more supervision is needed by Larkey to ensure kids are taught proper fundamentals, as well as have more guidance from him on the type of offense and defense to run at that level.

 

On the all-star team, kids have routinely left other schools to play for New Harlan. The reason is everyone wants to play for a winning team, when middle school teams such as Evarts have struggled over the years. When Harlan Middle School struggled kids left the city for this same reason.

 

There are tremedous benefits by splitting up New Harlan. First, it levels the playing field for Cumberland and Evarts. Secondly, it makes scheduling much easier for everyone. Lastly, it promotes an increase in football participation because some students and parents do not want to play against the more talented New Harlan.

 

I think you are missing the grand point though, while competition is definately encouraged at this level, it isn't really the emphasis to level the playing field for middle school, because middle school participation is for the enhancement for the high school. Evarts or Cumberland shouldn't worry about having an equal playing field against New Harlan, because it is about each schools progression towards the high school. Not too mention Cumberland beat New Harlan this year once.

 

It is really simple; 3 or more schools are excellent. 1 middle school will hurt the participation in all sports 3 years after the fact and it will not recover. Not to mention there are 3 quality teams in Harlan County that are excellent middle school programs, all 3 of them will join together at the high school and be a force in a few years.

I think you are missing the grand point though, while competition is definately encouraged at this level, it isn't really the emphasis to level the playing field for middle school, because middle school participation is for the enhancement for the high school. Evarts or Cumberland shouldn't worry about having an equal playing field against New Harlan, because it is about each schools progression towards the high school. Not too mention Cumberland beat New Harlan this year once.

 

It is really simple; 3 or more schools are excellent. 1 middle school will hurt the participation in all sports 3 years after the fact and it will not recover. Not to mention there are 3 quality teams in Harlan County that are excellent middle school programs, all 3 of them will join together at the high school and be a force in a few years.

 

The fact of the matter is that the middle school situation will not change, so how do improve upon the present dynamic. It starts with uncovering the lack of participation that has plagued middle school football; only then will you understand the true reason why kids don't play football.

 

You simply can't fix something if you do not know what's broken.

The fact of the matter is that the middle school situation will not change, so how do improve upon the present dynamic. It starts with uncovering the lack of participation that has plagued middle school football; only then will you understand the true reason why kids don't play football.

 

You simply can't fix something if you do not know what's broken.

Do you have participation numbers for Evarts, Cumberland and New Harlan? It would be interesting to see.

Highlands actually has only one middle school.

 

Yes I know, does the middle school have a football team? They have Ft. Thomas youth football league which feeds Highlands program.

Yes I know, does the middle school have a football team? They have Ft. Thomas youth football league which feeds Highlands program.

Does that mean they split kids up to form several teams?

The more middle school teams you have the better off you are. One middle school team will be destruction. I know for a fact. Numbers will drop and by the time they play HS the numbers will get worse. Sounds like the more the merrier.

 

 

 

It's killing Bell County.