Explain something to me

I agree, they should have their own division for playoffs.

Totally agree that public and private schools be separate. Cardinal Gibbons (in NC) is a prime example of this.

Unfortunately, that’s the way it is, and likely that’s the way its gonna stay for quite some time to come. But I don’t get how you come up with them cheating. Its clear you don’t subscribe to the notion that baseball has become a “country cub” sport, where those who can most easily afford the best equipment, instruction, and environment will outperform the “average”. You also seem not to take into account that a private school’s student base is many times larger and more encompassing of a public school’s base. IOW, you’re stuck with who happens to live in the school boundaries, but private schools have no such restriction. But how is that “cheating”?

Don’t get me wrong, I completely empathize with you because our public schools more often than not get pounded like drums when they go head to head with the private ones. But the only answer I see, is to get better administrators and teachers, and give a better education than what the public schools give, and that way there’d be no reason to attend private schools. Unfortunately, what with the current movement to fire more teachers than get hired, and to make teaching a less attractive job than it already is by cutting pay and benefits, I’m afraid those bullies from the private schools are gonna keep right on whuppin’ up on most public schools they play.

Private schools absolutely should play in their own division. It's pretty simple: they recruit from all over the state, public schools can't. End of discussion.

quote:

Originally posted by Sandman:
Private schools absolutely should play in their own division. It's pretty simple: they recruit from all over the state, public schools can't. End of discussion.

Agree.

The compromise solution is to allow recruiting schools to compete against non-recruiting schools during the regular season, but not during the post-season.
I've been told that Maryland does this with HS ice hockey.

As the coach of a private Catholic school who does not "recruit", I am deeply saddened and bothered by this post. Coach, I can't count the number of times I've read your posts and been thrilled with your attitude and behavior....

...and now, I see the bias and thoughtless prejudice that I face every year in a state that has a combined playoff. Honestly, I thought the attitudes and competitive spirit was better here on the HSBBWEB. Sadly, it appears I was wrong. I have quickly lost the sense of community that I used to have. Not all private schools recruit. Not all private schools cheat. MOST private schools do not get students from other areas of the state. Most are prohibitively expensive and most do not offer any type of athletic scholarship, thereby LOSING students to public schools.

And yet we have to take these lumps from folks like you all who have not researched the situation, but simply speak from a state of frustration. Shame on you for your bigoted, blanket statements about me and my school. Your experiences are anectodal, and yet you apply them to everyone. I'm sure you'll all be happy to hear that I don't know that I'll be back.

TCB1
You're a non-recruiting school.
Rationally, you should appreciate the essential un-fairness of recruiting schools competing in the playoffs vs. non-recruiting schools.
Coach2079 is "bigoted"? Infected with "bias"? "thoughtless prejudice"?
Against Catholics? You're living in the distant past. JFK was elected President 52 years ago..
Give me a break.
Pathetic.
You and Al Sharpton can play the victimhood violin duet. But nobody respects it.

If they beat you ban them? Well somebody let them be a part of the playoffs.

Regardless of recruiting or not, private schools and "non-boundaried" schools have a distinct advantage. I honestly believe that many of these private schools do not purposely go out and recruit as has been implied many times.

I have worked in both private and public schools. The private school I worked in was about 200 students less than the public school I am currently at. The private school would win 7/10 games in most sports.

I don't think that private school went out and told a particular athlete "come to our school and we'll win." No, instead they developed a winning team, developed a first-rate facility and they go out and win championships. Winning breeds interest.


And I wouldn't call it cheating either. They just play by a different set of rules. I'm not sure how you can blame those coaches and athletes for that. Instead, talk to your representatives in the state athletic association-- THEY make the rules.

quote:

Originally posted by TCB1:
As the coach of a private Catholic school who does not "recruit", I am deeply saddened and bothered by this post. Coach, I can't count the number of times I've read your posts and been thrilled with your attitude and behavior....

...and now, I see the bias and thoughtless prejudice that I face every year in a state that has a combined playoff. Honestly, I thought the attitudes and competitive spirit was better here on the HSBBWEB. Sadly, it appears I was wrong. I have quickly lost the sense of community that I used to have. Not all private schools recruit. Not all private schools cheat. MOST private schools do not get students from other areas of the state. Most are prohibitively expensive and most do not offer any type of athletic scholarship, thereby LOSING students to public schools.

And yet we have to take these lumps from folks like you all who have not researched the situation, but simply speak from a state of frustration. Shame on you for your bigoted, blanket statements about me and my school. Your experiences are anectodal, and yet you apply them to everyone. I'm sure you'll all be happy to hear that I don't know that I'll be back.

I just want you to know that I never intended to attack you personally. I've enjoyed the heck out of your posts and I will readily admit most of my post came out of frustration from losing because we failed to do our job instead of facing a super team. I also, wanted to truly focus on this one school and not the whole system in general but one paragraph in my opening post ruined that.

Let me say that I agree that not all private schools recruit or cheat. I would even venture to say that the vast majority of them are in it for the right reasons. Same with public schools. There are some public schools who recruit and cheat but the vast majority don't. Let's face it - schools follow the rules because it's the right thing to do but there really isn't a way to enforce it. If a school (public or private) get caught cheating on anything it's because they are idiots. There are so many ways around rules and do wrong things but the vast majority of people follow them because it's the right thing to do. But this is where the bad people have the advantage - they don't care and there's really no way to catch them. All coaches go through your state handbook and read the section(s) on recruiting and see how murky it is. See how difficult it would be to prove a school (public / private) is recruiting / cheating.

In this one case of the team we are currently playing in our three game set I truly believe and feel that they are cheating. Look at the numbers I posted above and tell me how unlikely it is to find a young team full of studs like this.

There are some other underlying factors that leads to my distaste of this team as well. I'll go into them if anybody wants but it really doesn't factor into the private / public debate. It's more of a team with class versus a team without it and economic status.

Like I said I didn't attack you personally but I can see where you're coming from. One thing I know is when you're trying to do a good job by following the rules it stinks to get lumped in with the bad ones. In that regard I apologize for that aspect of my post but there are private schools who do recruit and cheat. There are public schools who recruit and cheat. Those two groups are the ones I'm trying to criticize. I'm upset at the fact that the lack of boundry restricts is what allows the private schools to cheat / recruit if they are that type of people.

TCB1 please stick around because you provide us with valuable contributions. We obviously disagree on this but we can move past it.

It happens everywhere and EVEN in public schools. Some states have ed. system where you can go to sveral diff choices of public schools,not just closest to home. I've seen kids go to specific public school for sports program(no matter what sport). What it comes down to is you have to hit to win baseball games.When you play Summer ball leagues your playing against teams who all select/recruit players.Don't worry so much on what's not FAIR, only work on the things you can control. Start havig camps for younger kids in your public schools "area" and learn to dev. the kids you will see in a few yrs.

I'm also from Ohio, and for the record, my son attends public school. I certainly dont have anything against private or catholic private schools. TCB1 seems to be reacting to the state of affairs here in Ohio. The Ohio High School Athletic Association has sponsored a referendum on this exact situation for the past several years. It has been defeated each time so public and private compete against each other for state titles. His institution, by his own admission, doesnt recruit. We do have several high profile private schools in the state that many feel do recruit, and offer scholarships to the "underprivileged." These same schools seem to appear again and again at the deep level of state tournament play. While it may be just as likely that they appear so often because they have a very good program, I think that anyone who is independent minded will at least admit that it may also have something to do with the private schools having the ability, in some not all cases, of attracting extra gifted kids to the table. So in TCB1's case, perhaps he is a bit thin skinned at this point for always having to defend his program, one of the programs that appears to not enjoy the advantages that some of his older, more alumni supported private cousins seem to enjoy and practice. All this said, I agree with the post just before mine. Work harder on your own. Play high level summer ball. My sons summer team recruits from all over the country. Many of the teams they play at PG games do the same. Kids dont get better by playing less talented teams as a rule. Programs improve by constantly competing against better talent.

You know what? There is not doubt in my mind that some private schools cheat and recruit. I know this because one local even took a shot at getting my child to play.

You know what? There is no dobut in my mind that some public schools cheat and recurit. Yes, they do it as well.

Coach, imo, didn't mean to insult anyone but rather, he was venting after a tough loss. We've operated on this site for years in a type of family atmosphere where that happens once in a while. Like a family, sometimes we also get in to arguments. Still, the better good has always been served here because we can vent some, air out our differences and yet see that by sharing our differences, we make all of us better.

JMHO!

Darrell Butler

quote:

I want you guys to know the reason we lost tonight is because we had four errors

sort of sums it up

quote:

Originally posted by Will:sort of sums it up

I’m pretty sure the 4 errors had a lot to do with losing that particular game, but I’m curious about something. Does anyone have any records they could use to show what percentage of games are won/lost by the team that made the most errors in a game?

quote:

You are telling me that they can find 15 studs out of 100 kids who are attending a school that is for academics?????? There is no way that's mathematically possible.

They are really good at math.

I also agree that the private sector should have their own divisional playoffs. I don't hink it is a matter of cheating, just that they have diiferent rules, so they should not be allowed to compete against a school that is "restricted" on enrollment. Call it what you want, but it is a distinct advantage.

Yeah, definitely segregate the privates from the publics. Then start explaining to the public school kids why they are not good enough to challenge the privates. Really reinforce the segregation. In fact, let's extend this to make sure no public school kid goes to a private school dance and certainly not a prom. They really don't belong there.

Stop your whining and play ball. The world is not created equal and Cinderella stories exist everywhere.

Here in RI we have a 16 team state wide playoff getting under way, 4 divisions with a one seed and only one of those one seeds is a private.

Yes we have the privates where it seems the best want to play but someone forgot to tell all the quality publics that they were not good enough and they keep having the nerve to beat the privates.

This has to stop.

quote:

Originally posted by RedSoxFan21:
Yeah, definitely segregate the privates from the publics. Then start explaining to the public school kids why they are not good enough to challenge the privates. Really reinforce the segregation. In fact, let's extend this to make sure no public school kid goes to a private school dance and certainly not a prom. They really don't belong there.

Stop your whining and play ball. The world is not created equal and Cinderella stories exist everywhere.

Here in RI we have a 16 team state wide playoff getting under way, 4 divisions with a one seed and only one of those one seeds is a private.

Yes we have the privates where it seems the best want to play but someone forgot to tell all the quality publics that they were not good enough and they keep having the nerve to beat the privates.

This has to stop.

The stealing from public schools has to stop. The rules say a public school has a set area they can only get students from. Private schools do not have boundaries. So while a coach may not actively go out and do anything there's nothing to stop a parent / booster from going three counties over to where a stud is and talk them into applying for the private school.

College and universities get low academic level athletes in all the time because of their athleticism. So who's to stop private schools from doing the same? Who checks on these so called lotteries to make sure they are truly random.

In Kentucky you have Louisville Trinity and Louisville Saint Xavier that are private catholic schools. They both are well over 1000 kids and they are all male schools. Guess who dominates the highest classification in Kentucky sports. How can a public school compete with this? St. X has went something like 30 years in winning a state championship in something. Occasionally there is that Cinderella public school who has a great team but for every Cinderella there are thousands of teams who aren't.

Throw out recruiting from the arguement since public schools recruit as well. Let's just look at it from the point of view of admissions and opportunity of who to work with. It's wrong on so many levels.

I don't care if a school is catholic, private, charter, magnet or whatever. But don't tell me this is the group I have to work with when another group can work with whoever they want.

Wrong sport, but my varsity basketball team lost in the state semifinal game to a private school. It sucked knowing that there's a good chance they recruited their players, but at the same time we knew we could have beaten them.

That's the main thing... beat 'em. In the original post it sounds like the public school could have won if they'd played tighter defense, and got a few more hits. So why not come back the next day and get the job done, and feel better about knocking out a team that possibly recruited its players?

I don't agree with public vs. private schools (although I admit not all "cheat", especially in a lower revenue sport such as baseball), but that's the way it is. Use all that time and energy from complaining about it and get better, then beat them next time.

If there's any downside to winning, it's winning with the thought that there's still a team out there that may be better.