One of the best things Alabama’s sanctioning body ever did was to require the private schools to play up or play in their own division. Did this solve all of the problems? No. But it did allow the public schools to pick up some of the palyers that the private schools were getting. Thus the feeling of a more level playing field so to speak. No matter what players a school has or can get, they all become that schools players, and then it is up to the program to make the best use of those players.

I seen a comment on here comcerning the making of a one man show team, and I believe someone may be referring to the use of a talented player in every way you can, versus centering you whole game plan around that player, either way both are dangerous buisness. You see alot of this in small schools though. Mostly because of the lack of student participation in sports in general in those schools, and the fact that not all students are interested in sports. Almost any school is going to have an approx. 20% participation from the total student body of both boys and girls, and that is if your programs are really working well. So at 20% of a 500 – 600 student school you might have 50 – 75 kids that want to play football, and a coach has to make a varsity team and then if able a j v team. Most of these kids will be average, then maybe 2 – 4 will be above average, and maybe 1 – 2 will be great. Break it down like this and you will see real quick why a coaches job is most of the time difficult. This applies to almost any school in almost any division.

Now you might say thats impossible, those other shools in higher classifications are always better. They always have better players, and that is why they win so much. Well sorry to break it to you, its not that simple. The reason these schools win so much is the whole package is fine tuned. Everything is working together to bring about one thing, WINS. These programs don’t have to recruit, players want to play there, so they move there, and they want to play for programs that are doing things well, which in turn gets them noticed, and the coach and the program get noticed, and the whole process starts over again.

Can a small school have a program like this? Yes they can on the scale that their school and community want it to be. Like some of the posts here have said, you can either make excuses for it, or you can do something about it. It appears that your school is at that crossroads, you just have to make the right turn. Hope it works out for your school.

“How” can we say we support our teams if just simply say, oh well if we lose we lose, as long as we played that is all that matters. As long as we play schools that are of low caliber and we win those games we are ok? It is evident from posts on this site that there are several supporters who agree we are capable of competing and beating all our opponents. Even if we don’t win that particular game at least we can give them a game to remember. Not a game they blow us out in, but a game we kept them close all the way through. Don’t tell me this can’t be done. I know it can be done. I am speaking from experience. Nothing happens by chance, you have to earn it, you have to work at it, you have to be willing to sacrifice and put whatever takes into the program to make that happen.

Give you an example, Coach Keene has been trying for the last couple of years to get support and funding for a much needed Field House for Northview High School. This has pretty much fell on deaf ears, not just with the school board either, it is held up by all involved, mostly because no one was involved. Will a new Field House make us win Championships? Not by itself, but it is a very important part of it, and the PRIDE it instills into our programs would be monumental. Can we do it? Yes we can, and hopfully with some renewed involvment we can make it happen.