That's just crazy to see at a 2A school though. Oelwein has some serious challenges in that community though.
Iowa High School BEDS count 24-25
- Thread starter qwerty
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I think they lost kids going out again when they went back up. They have a very good group of Juniors out for football, and very few seniors. I saw them play Colfax at the start of the season and they looked a lot better than the game I saw them play last season. They are fighting for a playoff spot, but they have to win this week or beat Madrid next week to get one, and they will not beat Madrid.
Agreed.
I look at a Waterloo East and you didn't solve any of their problems by letting them move down to 4A. Getting blown out by West Delaware, Decorah and Western Dubuque doesn't do them any better than getting blown out by City West, Kennedy and Liberty.
Now you put them in 2A with Jesup, Iowa Falls and Vinton and, maybe, they have a chance to be competitive right up until those towns scream bloody murder about a school that size being in 2A.
The IHSAA is eventually going to have to be the bad guy in this and make a decision and policy that makes this more fair. There are hardly any competitive games Friday nights anymore.
Wayne probably had some decent players come up during those 8-Man years as well. I see they are 5-2 in 11 man this year.
They are in the playoffs. Looking at their standings, they should be the #4 seed out of that district.
Good to know, I was told by a parent from one of the players that they were in position to get into the playoff, but they thought they had to win one more game to get in. Wayne should be pretty good next season, and then back to struggling to win games after that.
There's some schools, like Waterloo East, who should be dropped down to 8 man. I don't care how big they are, they had 23 juniors and seniors total out for football this year. The school would be pissed, the opponents would be pissed but it'd be the right thing to do considering how small their roster is.
Make the schools more appealing to attend? Make kids and families say......
"Hey, I think we might pull our kids out of Waukee and open enroll them to Hoover."
Easier said than done. Not sure what the answer is.
Good for them. Hopefully for them, there are some dogs in the 4th and 5th grade coming up.
The problem with those schools isn't the size of the student body. Lincoln is the 3rd or 4th biggest school in the state, another 100 kids in the school isn't going to make them competitive in football.
I'm not sure what you are reading, but I'm pointing out that it's pretty easy for a coach to limit his participation and roster size through various means. If there's an incentive to do so, there are coaches that are going to do it. That could be through direct cuts, that could be setting up a situation where kids that do other sports have no shot to play (as in my example of a "weed out"), where your kids buried on the depth chart get pounded by the starters in practice, scream at kids until they quit, etc. None of those things are positive.
Like you said, a school like BGM can win championships in 8 man and would not be able to in 11 man. I think we are agreeing that there's a benefit to playing in a smaller class. And if a coach can weed out his roster through various means to keep only his best X players, there are going to be coaches that do that. Not every coach, maybe not most. But some are going to think that way. Some coaches already like to employ cuts and weed out numbers just for the sake of making practices more manageable and managing reps.
I'm not saying there's anything we're going to do to make schools with poor traditions or poor socioeconomic situations get good participation rates. What I'm saying is let's not provide an incentive where programs that do have high participation to want to reduce participation to be able to compete in a lower class. Le
That might be a bit extreme. Maybe make them play A or 1A 11 man. I bet 23 juniors and seniors is bigger than a lot of 8 man or A rosters, but I don't know that for sure.
It may not matter in Waterloo much longer if the community approves the merger of the two high schools.
Waterloo community to vote on high school merger plan after petition gathers enough support
Last November, a Waterloo Community Schools high school task force recommended all high schoolers be in one building. Eight months later, the school board approved a $165 million high merger plan. Now community members get the final say.
There are plenty of kids at Lincoln, East, Roosevelt, North and Hoover that are or could be good at football. It's getting them to go out and not open enroll. Football is the most extreme case, but there are some other sports where it's similar.
In girls BB just a couple years ago Roosevelt and North were good. A couple good players graduate, and remaining good players open enroll to Johnston and elsewhere, and they are not competitive with hardly anybody in their own class except the other DM metros. DM East won a state title maybe 10-12 years ago, and for the last few years they are regularly getting beat like 80-8.
At least the DM metro teams have each other to play in sports and can have a few competitive games there.
Under the BEDS count system there is no need to run kids off or limit participation for the sport. Since they are counting the total number of kids in grades 9,10 and 11, whether you have 50 kids out or you have run off 20 and now only have 30 does not matter, your classification would stay the same.
Even with the system of looking at free and reduced lunches factored in, it would not matter. The only way running off kids could get you down a class would be if they were grouping by actual roster size, which I think they should do, but its never going to happen. Then it would be possible to run kids off to drop, but by doing so, the coach and the district is going to create a **** storm of bad press and the state assocation would get involved.
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They were in the conference when my oldest son went through school, and then left, no since letting them back in now. Hell they took Cardinal in the conference might as well add Van Buren as opposed to PC.Hell no we don't want them!
