Diogenes

If we are going to discuss this topic, at a minimum we should be accurate with facts. Your allegation that private schools have the best of both worlds-a lack of accountability in testing and housing and financial aid that equals what public schools provide is off base. To answer your allegations in reverse order: When you lump "private schools" together as offering housing and financial aid that equals out to what public schools provide you badly miss the mark. In Jefferson County there are a large number of "private schools" -St. X., Trinity, Holy Cross, DeSales, Presentation, Sacred Heart, Assumption, Christian Academy, Portland Christian, Mercy, and others perhaps I overlooked. None of these schools offer housing. None of the Catholics offer more than one half of the tuition and this is done on a needs based formula with analysis of finances done by an out-of-state corporation. Athletic ability is not considered, and the absolute minimum tuition, including financial assistance that any student is going to pay at any Catholic school in Jefferson County is $3000. An amount of tuition this small would be extremely rare. Now, that compares with zero dollars to be paid by a student attending a public school. "Private schools" therefore do not all provide housing and financial aid that equals what public schools provide. The closest Catholics in Jefferson County come in a comparison of expenditures for the individual student with public schools in Jefferson County is a $3000 deficit. Catholic schools in Jefferson County generally are accused of being educationally elite. Your allegation that somehow "private schools" disregard test scores and take in academically unqualified athletes flies in the face of reality in Jefferson County. For example, St. Xavier has four national merit scholars on this year's top-ranked football team. I venture to say that few, if any, school’s football teams in Kentucky can match this academic achievement. All players are monitored for academic progress. If you check the KHSAA athletic/academic requirements and the same St. Xavier athletic/academic requirements (I have) you will find that the St. Xavier requirements are considerably more stringent. Lumping all "private schools" together as organizations that cut corners to field superior athletic teams is flatly false. I don't object to criticism of private schools or Catholic schools (although I don't understand it). I do object to criticism of these schools if the criticism is based on falsehoods or misunderstandings.

John Hardin!!!!!!!!!

Trinity fans-what is the injury situation with the team? Anyone out or questionable? No X injuries of significance that I am aware of.

As a former BPer used to post: * Legendary Coach Brown

I just spoke to both Western Kentucky University and Warren Central at about 10:50 a.m. Louisville time and received mixed signals. Western informed me that the game would not be played at their campus. Warren Central informed me that the final decision had not been made and advised me to call back tomorrow.

Jefferson County: Western Desales X Trinity

I believe that the Tigers will best the Crimsons in the rematch. No surprise, but Anderson is the difference maker for the Tigers. There is speculation all over BGP about one of the "Big Three" falling this weekend. If any one of the Big Three is going to fall this weekend, this is the game in which it could occur. Male is also matched against a rugged opponent in an away game. The Shamrocks look to have the fewest impediments in their path to the next round, although KJ Black could make things interesting.

Funny you say that........they played on the same youth football team.

Each team has their work cut out. Manual’s senior class is the remnant of the super freshman class they had four years ago. X comes in with no injuries and at full strength, to my knowledge. The Tigers face a daunting task shutting down what I believe is the fastest backfield overall in Jefferson County. Manual has to find a way to slow down Victor Anderson, and that will be difficult with the X offensive line opening holes. Neither team can afford to look ahead, and I believe that neither team will. Each team will not be totally successful at the task they face, but in the long run X should prevail by about 28-14. I look for a clean game between two classy teams, hopefully with no injuries. Of course, although the players cannot, we fans can look ahead. Given the region each team plays in, the view on the horizon is not pretty. Male or John Hardin loom, and it appears that the winner of that game may have the pleasure of traveling to Bowling Green to play a very impressive Warren Central team. This type of speculation is probably why coaches tell their players to take it one game at a time!

If I may step into this robust discussion of school enrollments on the St. X-Manual football thread, I believe that LSURock is simply pointing out that the so-called "numbers" advantage enjoyed by the private schools over the public schools is more ephemeral than real. The more pertinent issue is percentage of boys at a school who play football at the school. The fact of the matter is if the publics had similar percentages of boys playing football there would not be the discrepancy in the number of boys on the sidelines of each respective school during football games. For example, St. X has about 1450 boys in their school. They have about 279 boys on the varsity, JV and freshman football teams (numbers taken from the St. Xavier High School 2005 football directory). Therefore, a little over 19% of the St. Xavier's students play football. LSURock's numbers indicate that Manual has about 950 boys, and the Male has approximately 850 boys. A multiplier of .19 would leave Manual with about 181 boys playing football and Male with about 162 boys playing football. St. X has 112 boys on the varsity squad (they only dress 100), a retention rate of about 40% of the total number. If Manual had the same percentage of boys on their varsity football team, they would have 72 varsity players. Using the same statistics, Male would have 65. It may be true, as suggested in earlier posts, that Manual has a number of boys in YPAS that do not play football. That is not the point that LSURock seeks to make. His point is merely that the school enrollment numbers issue, as espoused by some (Dr. Keepers) is not valid.

If you have been saying that for years, why would you take the opposite position in this post? Principles should remain the same despite the teams involved.

They could only play the teams that showed up. And for some reason, Trinity never showed up!

St. X will not look to play at PJCS vs Manual.

Good choice! I wondered if anyone had an eye on this guy. The game with Warren Central was telling. It will be interesting to see how far Marshall County goes in the playoffs. By the way, Mike Glaser is also a good nomination. His team was the preseason favorite, but to go undefeated with a killer schedule like they had deserves recognition. Beating Male, Manual, Trinity, Bowling Green, Lexington Catholic, and PRP while never being the home team is impressive. Throw in a massacre of Fort Thomas Highlands at home and you are looking at an impressive campaign.

Pete-thanks for the quick response. I may take some of your points out of order, but I will attempt to discuss each point. One of your points deals with facilities. I believe that we have established in an earlier post that your primary target is St. Xavier, because St. Xavier has won 39 state championships over the previous 10 years. From looking at your avatar, I surmise that you are a Manual fan. St. Xavier does not have a football field. For the past half-century St. Xavier has been tenants at your school, Manual, which has the largest high school football stadium in the state of Kentucky. The St. Xavier basketball gym was built in approximately 1962 and it is small. Our baseball facilities are fairly nondescript. Therefore, a fair analysis of facilities, matching Manual with St. Xavier, would result in advantage to Manual. Certainly a fair analysis of facilities matching Male with St. Xavier would result in a large advantage to Male (newer, top-flight facilities). I do not know that Manual is not permitted to take students from out of County. Several posters in previous posts have cited specific examples of Manual accepting students from out of county. I had understood that public schools could take students from out of county but that any student coming in from out of county had to pay a small tuition. If that is true, then a student coming to St. Xavier from out of county has to pay a large tuition. Therefore, the advantage would again go to Manual. On the other hand, if Manual truly is not permitted to accept out of county students the advantage would have to be to St. Xavier, although we established in a previous post that this has been virtually no advantage to St. Xavier but may have been an advantage to Trinity. By the way, Manual is quite selective with its students, requiring them to test into the school. This, of course, results on the average in a superior student. Are your football players held to the same requirements? Or, are standards lowered? Feeder System-when we talk about "level playing field" I assume we are talking about some inherent imbalance, not something each side would be able to accomplish with hard work. Yes, there is a Catholic grade school football league. There is no prohibition whatsoever to nonprivate schools volunteering, working hard, and establishing powerful grade school football leagues. I have known a number of young players in Catholic grade school football leagues and I have known their parents. These people are very dedicated and work very hard. There is no inherent reason that nonprivate schools could not achieve the same results. Also, Coach Glaser has not always been the recruiting coordinator at St. Xavier and certainly Manual could place their coach and a similar position if they so wished.And, there is an upcoming countywide high school night where eighth-graders can come in and meet with and talk to and examine aspects of public high schools. This is held for public schools at a public location paid for by taxpayers money. No such an analogous form exists for Catholic schools. This is an inherent advantage that public schools have over their Catholic counterparts. Number of coaches permitted to coach-It is my understanding that schools in Jefferson County are restricted to payment of a certain amount to their coaching staff in football. If I am right than we are on a perfectly level playing field except, again, Catholics may have more volunteers. This is not a built-in advantage and the publics are more than welcome to volunteer at their schools. I would note, parenthetically, that coaches are teachers and public school teachers are paid more in salary and their Catholic school counterparts. Therefore, the advantage in this instance is to Manual. Title IX-This is diversity, and we are always told that diversity is advantage. I believe that Doctor Keepers, your principal, would argue that diversity is an advantage. You have both genders and St. Xavier has only one. Political correctness aside, no girls play on the Manual boys teams. I see no advantage for either school here. Would you agree that if the private schools refuse to take any students from out of Jefferson County that the public schools should have to abide by the same regulations? And if all schools did so, would you agree that the public schools would then have the playing field tilted toward them since Catholics have to pay between $5,000 and $8,000 in tuition each year, may not have their own football stadiums (St. Xavier and Desales), have teachers/coaches who are paid less than their public school counterparts, and often have older or nonexistent athletic facilities (with the exception of Trinity's football field built with private contributions).

Pete, it appears that your beef is directed toward Trinity High School. I counted eight athletes in the memo in post 275. Six of them attended Trinity High School. One was claimed to have been recruited by private school but did not go out of his district in Indiana. The other was listed as playing in a private school but the memo did not name the private school. I fail to see how this bolsters in any way your argument that "I guess T and X would not have won all those Kentucky Championships without the help of some really pretty Hoosiers." Earlier this week there was a listing of all the multiple state championships won by the various high schools in Kentucky since 1995 in the Louisville Courier-Journal. There were three or four schools, including Trinity, that had won eight state titles during this period. Some schools had won seven state titles during this period, and a few had won six state titles during this period. St. X was listed as having won 39 state titles during this period. Your real target, then, is St. X. Do you really believe that the one player that was listed in the memo that St. X allegedly recruited but never came to St. X had anything to do with those 39 state championships? Many of the arguments made against the private schools by proponents of separation are totally unfounded. You asked that some of us reply to your post. Let me returned the favor and posit a question for you, and ask that you answer the question rationally. When separation advocates say we must "level the playing field"with private schools what do they mean? If anyone answers this invitation, please list of three or four areas that you believe the playing field is not level, and tilts in the favor of private schools. I would be interested in discussing this with any other posters who believe that the playing field "is not level".

One disadvantage I have always felt the public schools have compared to the Catholic schools in high school football is the percentage of boys that play football at the public schools. For example, St. X has about 1500 boys in their school. About 130 play varsity football (although they do not have uniforms for all of these players, but the players practice with the team using different uniforms). In other words about 8.7% of the boys eligible to play on the football team at St. X do so. Now, because of the lack of uniforms only about 100 suit up. If a public school with 850 boys had the same percentage of players the school would have about 74 boys playing on the team. There really is not much of an advantage to having 100 boys suit up for a game and 74 boys suit up for a game. It should be much easier for the public schools to have a higher percentage of boys playing because a number of boys at St. Xavier have to work after school to pay tuition and there is no tuition at public schools. :sssh: