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Post by dtrain on Jun 15, 2013 19:55:11 GMT -6
There are some 4A D1 teams, like G-town last and Lake Travis that have 5A numbers in their programs, while in urban districts, like Austin ISD or even Pflugerville there are only 3 teams. McCallum, which is the best AISD 4A program usually has about 17-1800 kids, but they have no B teams and only field about 30-40 freshmen, 35-40 JV and the same number of varsity players. Compare them to a G-town, that might have 30-50 seniors on their varsity, 2 JV teams and 2 freshmen teams. Some programs, such as LT, even had 3 freshmen teams. This huge numbers gives them a massive advantage in winning, especially when teams like LBJ and McCallum go D1 in the playoffs and get beat 70-0 by a CP, VR or LT. Both schools have the same enrollments, but program participation makes these games jokes. Districts like AISD should not even be allowed to field a D1 team only D2, which is the only place they might be able to compete. As a matter of fact the AISD numbers look more like 3A D1 numbers.
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Post by Tom on Jun 16, 2013 0:11:47 GMT -6
Well, there are a ton of problems with the D1/D2 designation as it is. I think you'll eventually see the UIL split 4A (or 5A as it's going to be called) into D1 and D2 at the beginning of the season and that should do away with a lot of these issues.
I've never really figured out why some programs have such low participation. Eligibility's probably one factor, but some schools just don't get that many kids coming out for football.
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Post by dtrain on Jun 16, 2013 1:20:32 GMT -6
Stony Point is a great example of numbers. When they had over 3000 kids, they had 6 sub varsity teams. Last year's team only had 41 players on their varsity, but when they were making 5A semis all their teams were winning district, now all their teams are losing and struggling.
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Post by Clemensbuff on Jun 16, 2013 6:10:49 GMT -6
No doubt participation numbers is huge in building a solid and steady program. And no doubt you are correct in the pitiful low numbers participating at some larger 4a schools. But, who's fault is this and is, the UIL's?
I see your point but at the same time what would you suggest the UIL do to improve this? Should they get the participation numbers from each and every school statewide and base their classifications from that for each sport?
I don't know why the numbers are so bad at the schools you mention and others as well. Is it just an 'inner city' thing or does it occur in the suburbs and or schools in 'the country' as well?
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Post by SCBuffaloes16 on Jun 16, 2013 6:46:37 GMT -6
Yeah at Clemens we're supposed to have a little over 300 kids in the football and about 125 freshman! And we're talking a team that went 0-10 last season and 8-22 the last three! Yowzas!
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Post by CLEMENS_2016 on Jun 16, 2013 9:24:02 GMT -6
Yeah at Clemens we're supposed to have a little over 300 kids in the football and about 125 freshman! And we're talking a team that went 0-10 last season and 8-22 the last three! Yowzas! 'YOWZAS!'
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Post by dtrain on Jun 16, 2013 18:39:11 GMT -6
When I was at Reagan we were 5A with 1600 students and so was LBJ with 1300. We had about 180-200 kids in program, but our winning was based on having better athletes, not numbers, because we didn't have organized B teams and the varsity only suited 45-50 players mostly seniors and juniors and VERY rarely sophomores. We beat teams with far bigger enrollments, like Judson, but that's because our 22 were better than theirs. LBJ beat them when Judson was ranked number one, but LBJ was producing D1 players for OU, Texas, TAMU, UNF and FSU back then. Lamar made the finals, but they were in D1, with small program numbers, but with big talent. Urban schools only have good runs when they field talented super teams once every 10-20 years.
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Post by FB fan on Jun 17, 2013 8:47:16 GMT -6
I have argued for years that participation numbers should be used instead of total student population. That would be no harder to track and would be a lot better way for the UIL to do classifications and district alignments.
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Post by Tom on Jun 17, 2013 11:40:05 GMT -6
I have argued for years that participation numbers should be used instead of total student population. That would be no harder to track and would be a lot better way for the UIL to do classifications and district alignments. Eh, I think this comes with its own set of problems. In theory, anyway, participation is subject to a lot more fluctuation. One year you've got 300 kids and the next year you've got 200 kids. It seems like this would subtly punish programs like Aledo that have extremely high participation rates for their size, and subtly benefit programs with horrendously low participation. Plus, things would get too complicated. Having one number for each school is a lot easier than having a different number for each athletic team the school has, and then having to do a separate alignment for each. Another issue: when do you take the numbers? Do you take them on the first day of practice in August? Or do you take them in October, when some programs will have lost some kids to grades or just had some quit? And in other sports, particularly winter ones, you'd have some schools whose numbers would go up. Denton Guyer's basketball team would have had its numbers go up in early January because of football players joining the team.
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Post by Clemensbuff on Jun 17, 2013 12:25:53 GMT -6
I have argued for years that participation numbers should be used instead of total student population. That would be no harder to track and would be a lot better way for the UIL to do classifications and district alignments. Eh, I think this comes with its own set of problems. In theory, anyway, participation is subject to a lot more fluctuation. One year you've got 300 kids and the next year you've got 200 kids. It seems like this would subtly punish programs like Aledo that have extremely high participation rates for their size, and subtly benefit programs with horrendously low participation. Plus, things would get too complicated. Having one number for each school is a lot easier than having a different number for each athletic team the school has, and then having to do a separate alignment for each. Another issue: when do you take the numbers? Do you take them on the first day of practice in August? Or do you take them in October, when some programs will have lost some kids to grades or just had some quit? And in other sports, particularly winter ones, you'd have some schools whose numbers would go up. Denton Guyer's basketball team would have had its numbers go up in early January because of football players joining the team. I agree with you Tom. Also, if you did this I think you'd have to take the numbers for participation in every sport at every school. Some schools may have huge participation % in football but not so much maybe in basketball, baseball, volleyball, etc. I think that in itself would make it a pretty damn big headache. The bottom line is that there will always be 'flaws' within every system. I know that travel costs are huge now and that some schools already travel great distances to get their district games played but I'm still in favor of getting rid of the D1/D2 Bullcrap and going to larger number of classifications.......say like 6-man, and then 1a through 8a. I think this would be the only way to make it a little more fair. Heck, as the classifaction stands right now you could have one of the giant Plano 5as with over 5K kids playing a small 5a like LT or Steele (2200 or so) in the finals.
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Post by Tom on Jun 17, 2013 16:31:51 GMT -6
Eh, I think this comes with its own set of problems. In theory, anyway, participation is subject to a lot more fluctuation. One year you've got 300 kids and the next year you've got 200 kids. It seems like this would subtly punish programs like Aledo that have extremely high participation rates for their size, and subtly benefit programs with horrendously low participation. Plus, things would get too complicated. Having one number for each school is a lot easier than having a different number for each athletic team the school has, and then having to do a separate alignment for each. Another issue: when do you take the numbers? Do you take them on the first day of practice in August? Or do you take them in October, when some programs will have lost some kids to grades or just had some quit? And in other sports, particularly winter ones, you'd have some schools whose numbers would go up. Denton Guyer's basketball team would have had its numbers go up in early January because of football players joining the team. I agree with you Tom. Also, if you did this I think you'd have to take the numbers for participation in every sport at every school. Some schools may have huge participation % in football but not so much maybe in basketball, baseball, volleyball, etc. I think that in itself would make it a pretty damn big headache. The bottom line is that there will always be 'flaws' within every system. I know that travel costs are huge now and that some schools already travel great distances to get their district games played but I'm still in favor of getting rid of the D1/D2 Bullcrap and going to larger number of classifications.......say like 6-man, and then 1a through 8a. I think this would be the only way to make it a little more fair. Heck, as the classifaction stands right now you could have one of the giant Plano 5as with over 5K kids playing a small 5a like LT or Steele (2200 or so) in the finals. Well, aside from all this, football is the only sport in which participation really makes much of a difference, simply because depth is such a big deal. It's a big advantage to have 200 players in your program as opposed to 100. But, my experience in high school with basketball is that depth doesn't really make much difference at the high school level. If you have 50 kids in your basketball program and the other team only has 20, well, that doesn't make a lick of difference if their five best players are better than your five best players. This is where I get the rationale behind the D1/D2 split, at least in the direction that UIL is moving toward with the football classifications being split into D1 and D2 for both the regular season and the playoffs. Enrollment and participation numbers don't make much of a difference outside of football, whereas travel's a bigger deal when you've got twice as many road trips in district play and some of them are in the middle of the week, so it makes more sense to leave the non-football sports with fewer, larger classifications. To wit, the four state semifinalists in 5A basketball this year: South Grand Prairie, Richardson Berkner, Fort Bend Travis, and Steele. All of those except for SGP aren't all that big. So I don't really see the rationale for more classifications outside of football. My home state of Tennessee recently went to six classifications for football but has only two or three classes in everything else.
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