HedgeHog8

Morgan from Paris has some nasty stuff. Enjoyed watching her pitch. She took over the game against CC. Impressive. I look forward to coming back and watching Paris and Bourbon in the final on Wednesday, if they can get it in. They may have to wait until the weekend if this rain comes like they are predicting.

Scouting report says they lost 11 men off of a 30 man roster. First thing they need to do is recruit players to replace a good senior class. Of those 11 they lost, I believe the Oline and Dline gets hit the hardest. Its hard to win without men in the trenches. From their KHSAA roster, they lost 5 Olineman (some who were pretty darn good) and have 6 returning, 4 of which were freshmen. I wouldn't give them the trophy just yet, and 6-0 prediction before district play is pretty bold. Good luck to Coach Brausch and the Polar Bears as the summer gets underway.

I will agree that the later start makes sense as far as heat index goes, but the schedule of acclimation and acclimatization that the KHSAA requires of football practices would make it hard to get it all in before the game. See the KHSAA bylaw 23 Limitation of Seasons specifics for football and you can see what I mean. Basically, in 4 weeks you would have 1 week of helmets only, 1 week of lighter contact in shells, 1 week of full pads slowly increasing contact, then your scrimmage week where you are limited to only 90 minutes of full contact in that week. Although I do not condone hitting the crap out of each other all summer, I do believe it to be a bit reckless to send kids into a scrimmage with such limited time in full pads. Your time table may not be feasible due to safety. July 10th is the end of dead period because it is 3 weeks prior to August 1st (first day full contact) and allows ample time for the acclimation and acclimatization of athletes to the equipment and elements. The additional weeks after August 1st until the first competition are necessary for scrimmages and getting the kids back to school schedule.

I'm all for another week of dead period. It's not just a week for the student athletes, but coaches and parents as well. As a football coach, I hate June. Its like a tease because you are so close to the season but you are still missing your whole team for one reason or another. I'd like to see that extra week come out of June. Since there is not a real "season" for June, kids tend to try to do as much as they can. We have had athletes try to play travel baseball, practice HS basketball and strength train with us in football all at the same time; it about killed them. Instead of competing sports and coaches trying to split a kid in half and have them at every practice (because there are no real games), give an extra week out of this month to go do (insert what floats your boat here) and come back the second week of July ready for football. And just one more thought: I understand that having set dates for dead period makes scheduling much easier, but I'd like dead period to be 3 full weekends and 2 full weeks each year. And if we are adding a week, then its 4 full weekends and 3 full weeks each year. I also like that it completely surrounds July 4th, and that should never change.

Van Isaac is a good dude. If he doesn't take the Harrison County job, then I'd want him on our staff. Tiger Pride.

Literally just discovered the "what's new" tab at the top because of you. Thank you so much, now I can waste time so much more efficiently!

I know right! really missed out on some serious marketing if you ask me. You can't tell me they need these 20 days to finish the film.

Young indeed. Apparently their usual lineup (per twitter and roster) has 2 7th graders, 2 8th graders, 3 freshman, 1 sophomore and a senior. They played 2 seniors at Wednesday's game I attended.

Is it time to start talking about Pendleton County Softball? Went down Wednesday to catch a game and it was electric. Pendleton routed a good Nicholas County team in walkoff fashion, final was 6-5. Great game; I think there were only 3 errors the whole game. On Monday they beat Harrison County. They will not play Robertson County due to scheduling conflicts (so I'm told). They play both Harrison and Nicholas again next week, but as it stands right now... Pendleton is #1 in the 38th district. What's crazy is they seem to be rolling with a certain momentum. They are 11-1, the one loss occurring in the finals of a tournament at St. Henry against Lewis Co. I'll let y'all debate the strength of schedule, but its still impressive. Oh, and their 7th grade pitcher threw a perfect game against Grant Co in five innings. No hits, no walks, no errors (good job defense) So, is it time to start talking about Pendleton County Softball?

Our school has a full time AT. She is at every game and only misses practices for home varsity soccer games at the field next door. Great asset (most of the time...)

I agree it's not the correct thread. After your suggestion I looked at Grant Co's district and you are correct, I doubt it is that much easier with the addition of Scott county. Regardless of our discussion, I believe that some great games will come out of this new nky district. And from the district the two Scott Co schools and Grant county are in as well.

I'm sorry, but I'll disagree. Playing out of district is like starving, it doesn't happen right away but it will certainly get you in the end. Playing in certain districts is like fighting lions for food, you ain't going to starve but rather get slaughtered for food. More kids were not playing because they were getting destroyed by highlands, covcath and holmes by 60 for 3 straight weeks. Dropping out of district was a slow bleed until we re-entered district play, bringing numbers back up. Luckily we realign every 4 years. Staying in districts, specifically the one we were in, would have certainly killed the program. Watch Grant Co. in the coming years and you will see a gradual resurgence of football. Same scenario. I hope Boone Co. can hang with a district schedule like that, if not then I hope they do what they believe is best for their program. I do think there will be some very good games come out of this district.

Again, I may be on the outside here, but I believe the motives of the AD's were probably in the best interest of sport in general, not just football. Granted the big Louisville schools don't have the same problems of sharing athletes that a small 1a school may have, but I believe that they were trying to make it so those multiple sport athletes that are playing baseball, track and tennis are not pressured into skipping the opportunities these sports can provide to participate in a non-mandatory session of an offseason activity. What I don't understand is, if this is their reasoning for terminating spring practice (to alleviate pressure from offseason activities of one sport during season of another) then why replace this with basketball scrimmages in July? Also, with little to no acclimation time leading into full pads in spring practice, I believe that the safety concern is a legitimate one. Otherwise, how can you justify all the constraints and protocols we see in July and August if you are to completely ignore them in April?

Myself and our staff may be on the outside of this argument when compared to other coaches in the state, but spring football is not the most important thing to us. The past two years we have held our 10 days in shells or helmets only to avoid injury, had less than 22 players due to spring sports participation and interrupted our successful strength and agility program enough that attendance drops significantly after completion of spring ball. (We are a rural 3a school for context) I would venture to say all of our staff would support the proposal to nix spring ball with the addition of 7on7 scrimmage capabilities in June. I believe it would help with our attendance in June. Coincidentally, the part that is concerning to us is the concession to basketball. If basketball was allowed to compete in scrimmages in July, despite football in full swing with mandatory practice, we feel that athletes may choose to go to basketball over football during this period. Quite frankly, this scares me more than losing 10 practices in April.

Off season workouts are more important to overall success than spring practice

We are fighting the battle currently to get flag football installed into our community. The people resisting believe they are saving football by having first graders run into each other full speed. They are fighting the good fight, but aren't seeing the bad practices in what they are fighting to protect. I don't have a son yet (crossing my fingers), but I would not like him to wear pads and a helmet until he has hit puberty and beginning to become physically mature. I think the soccer argument is crap. (my opinion only) Are you telling me that a busy parent wouldn't want their son (or daughter) playing flag football that practices 1 night a week and plays games 1 day a week as opposed to the 2-3 practices per week that many youth programs practice. 1 practice/1 game is the youth soccer philosophy and they have huge numbers in my area, I think football can copy that model and get both parents and kids interested in football again without straining their attention spans. If you can't tell, I'm a big supporter of alternative routes to youth football, especially flag.

Great one, read it a while ago. Good scientific reasoning without all the hysteria. Ask kids all the time in the hallway about football and always get the same answer: "I don't have the time." These are kids that don't do anything and kids that play other sports. I don't know what their parents say, but kids seem to think they have more important things to do than spend their time playing football. Take that as you will.

I like this. It's hard to play for a championship if you have never been there, but that should be the goal of the program. Each team should have their own goals. When we took over, we set a goal for the program to be a team that competes for a district title and a chance for a championship. We have yet to win a single district game, so our goals this year are to win district games. When that is the norm, our goal will be to win district titles and so on. Its like a hierarchy of goals and anyone associated with the program knows we have work our way up. The goal of the program is to win a title, the goal of the team may be different. On a different note, when I played HS football, I played for a brand new program that was not even in district play yet. We had zero chance of playing for a championship. We played because there was a game and we were in it and we loved that game. One of the programs best seasons on record was when we won 6 games playing in 7 different opponents homecomings, none of them were ours.

If I follow you correctly, you mean that if they stay 5A then Grant would be pushed to a district to the south or west and if they move up then Grant would be forced back in to the district that they just left, ultimately making Grant drop out of district play again. Correct?

Thank you for your post coach. There are some of us on here that join the forum to participate in discussion about the sport we love and we hear comments about ourselves that do not always feel good. The thick skin is necessary in our profession even though I wish it wasn't so. Rumors, misconceptions and hearsay can ruin anybody and social media is a great platform for this type stuff despite its great qualities. I think sites like this one serve a unique purpose and I'm glad to be a part of this community specifically, even though sometimes it hurts to read the comments. Some people just don't prescribe to what my Grandma told me, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all." Thanks Coach and thanks BGP

If those of us associated with PC could add our input, we would travel up and down the AA each week vs traveling to the others is Proposed District 4. We can be at Mason in 45 min, Lewis in 65, and Fleming in 75-80. Rather travel that way and compete with schools that are more like us. With that being said, we are on an island up in NKY. No 3A teams up here. We are impossible to place in that class and we CANNOT play up to make travel easier. At least not right now.

That district is a program killer if you are not "elite". Look to the east at Pendleton County, playing the likes of CovCath, Highlands and Holmes (mixed with plummeting enrollment) made it very hard for the former Head Coach Terry Brown to find success. He's a good coach that led a CovCath defense to a state title this year. My point is, if you are not on the level or anywhere near that level, it can kill or cripple your program despite who you have at the helm. The recipe for rebuilding is sitting out of district until you can compete in a district again and pray that its not the district you just jumped out of.

I've just been reading up to this point, but this burns me sir. Brian Landis in one of a kind. No one puts more heart and soul into their craft, their program and their kids than this coach. How do I know this? This man coached me. How about the fact that he took his suspension, kept moving forward and lead this team to the playoffs when he could have easily cracked and distracted his very new team from their goal. Shift your paradigm. TIGER PRIDE

I've coached against this guy and his staff for the past 3 years. Our team has taken some big strides during that time but one game we do not take for granted is the matchup with the devils. I think he does a fine job with what he has and they fight hard for him in each game I have seen, despite the end result. There is something to be said about a coach that can make kids play all 4 quarters against opponents that are, for the most part, better than they are. He is laying a foundation at a 1A school that, eventually, will have the athletes line up right. (Not unlike Sizemore was doing at Bracken for last years class and for the class Coach Brausch has this year) They compete, and in the games I witnessed held their own for a little while before being out athlete-d or out manned. For me it is not always about W's. If it were for the people I work with, I would probably have had a different job by now.

Agree. He is putting more competitive teams on the field each year. They need to hold on to him.