High School Football

So I watched my nephew’s game tonight, Bountiful vs. Woods Cross, as it was streaming on KUTV.com. It was fun to see him play and it was his teams homecoming game and they beat their cross town rivals. The game started kind of slow but got better as it wore on. One of his friends was a one man wrecking crew on defense for Bountiful… just all over the field making plays. He had a pick six and several good plays during the game. It was a fun high school game to watch and I guess Bountiful has won some state titles over the years as well so I guess they are good.

However…

I must say that the level of play was well below what I was expecting. The top Utah teams, like Timpview or Bingham or some other big Utah programs are supposed to be really good but I don’t see it being much better. Speaking of Timpview, they did travel down here to SoCal and played St. John Bosco, losing a nail biter 49-0. I mean it’s nice to test yourself against the best but I think they were probably in over their heads, as most of the teams from Utah usually are when they play teams from SoCal.

I was watching a nationally televised game on ESPN the other night and it was Oaks Christian, about 45 min. from me, beating Bakersfield Christian 83-0. I think it might be better for the teams from Utah to start by playing teams like Bakersfield Christian and then work their way up…

Sorry to break the news to all the Utah high school football fans out there but your teams are overrated and the level of play is not up to the same level as the best high school teams in California.

Why do I post this?

Because I wish BYU would do more recruiting out here…

Yeah, it’s really too bad that there is no one from California on the team.:wink:

Now, if you could only comment on college as well as you do high school…:hugs:

Santa Paula is 7-0 after tonight’s win 34-0 over Carp. They played well.

Don’t sleep on the Salem Keizer (Oregon) School District–the second biggest in the state–that provides football for MIDDLE SCHOOL kids (grades 7/8) in a varsity/jv format! Can you believe that? It’s an incredible investment at that age level, but the data says that boys playing football at our middle schools outperform the boys who don’t, both academically and behaviorally, so the district pays to provide the opportunity. I have been the HC for years of the Whiteaker (Middle School) Wolverines. Over the past 10 years, the transition from cheap, neighborhood based Boys and Girls Club football to expensive ($300-$500 per kid per season, plus travel), recruiting based youth football has killed our high school participation levels, and our high schools are playing their worst football ever. Our district expanded to include 7th graders this year in an effort to boost participation. Over 1/2 of the students living in our district live in poverty, and if not for our district’s commitment, football would be inaccessible to those kids–so of course it would follow that the high school teams suffer. I don’t know anything about youth sports in Utah, but our problem here in Oregon is: more good athletes precluded from playing football at an early age=worse high school football.

There are other variables that could spell out reasons for lack of enthusiasm for playing high school football and focusing on it. For starters, the onset of increased enthusiasm for computer games and robotics competition. There are more lazy kids than ever before. Access to places to just play sports for those younger than 7th grade contributes to the above mentioned.
When I was in grade school all schools were accessible to play in at any time. Now, most around us are fenced off and locked.

Does anybody else see the poverty issue in our country as being a big problem?

I heard a statistic that there are at least 2.5 million kids who are homeless. That was from somewhere that didn’t have an agenda like trying to get you to donate to PETA by showing commercials of dead animals or something.

As good as the economy supposedly is right now, I don’t see it really helping those that need it most… and I’m not talking about giveaways hopper. The rich are getting richer and the poor are becoming a larger portion of society. The school I work at has some poverty issues and it is in a wealthier area of the city,

The Lord himself said there will always be the poor with us. But, in no way did he ever say it was up to Rome to force the rich to spread their wealth around. He taught that the wealthy should freely help the poor.

What happened over the 8 years of Obama’s economy was a very slow recovery from the financial challenges and recession. This created for the first time a middle class smaller than the wealthy and poor. What we do know is Obama’s heavily regulating government and high taxation caused this increase in poverty and decline of the middle class. In the last 2 years, we see a big change because of less taxation and less regulations. Opportunity has increased for all including the poor and middle class. The places where poverty hasn’t gotten better are in the big cities controlled by Democrats who give things to people instead of allowing them to seek opportunity instead of welfare. And that is where you see the vast majority of poverty and homelessness.

Look up “McKinney-Vento Act.” Many of these kids regarded as homeless aren’t. Every high school, even in wealthy areas, has students counted as “homeless” for Title 1 purposes (federal grant money). If your family moved in with the grandparents, or you are living with friends, and in many other situations that are pretty common, you are homeless in the eyes of the government. While being anything but: stable housing, food, clothing, etc.

The moral panic about kids being “hungry” is unbelievable, too. These “hungry” kids are better dressed than I am, have a better phone (I have no phone), and are eating Takis and drinking Monsters all day. They might be undernourished, due to food choices, but they are not “hungry” in the sense that kids in the Sudan are hungry.

So the two of you are saying that poverty isn’t a big problem? I’m not going to debate about how we got to this point but it is real. I agree with both of you on principle and reasoning but that doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of rich people getting richer and sorry grasshopper they aren’t very benevolent in how they impart of their excess.

It is a big problem and just another indication of the ills that plague our society as we inch closer to the second coming. I have worked in the school system for the past 3 years and I see it every day.

Well, there’s poverty, and then there’s poverty. Even the poorest of our poor in the U.S. have a data plan. I had people actually living in abandoned buildings in East Germany in the mid 1990s on my mission. And that’s not even the most down-and-out scenario people could think up.

The biggest problem with the homeless is mental illness. A supermajority of homeless on the streets are severely mentally ill. In the U.S., with social welfare programs, there is no reason to be on the street. Most homeless people should be on medication or wards of the state, but they resist it. Much of this can be traced to 1960s policies that persist to this day getting rid of mental institutions and asylums and putting people on medication (which they are supposed to take themselves). The severely mentally-ill don’t take their medicine, and wind up on the streets. I think we and they would be better off if they were institutionalized.

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How many of the homeless kids at your schools are living in drain pipes? How many of them wear Nikes and have a smart phone?

I’ve taught for 16 years, and we have our McKinney-Vento training every year for “finding” homeless kids to get services. I haven’t met one yet who was truly homeless. They’re living with family or friends.

You’re trying to convince a liberal with facts. You have to use emotions because facts aren’t convenient for Robinhood. Empathy leads to sympathy which to libs equals corroboration. And that’s what you are seeing here.

I take part in our cities Ministerial Association in which our common direction is the homeless and poverty. Homeless persons in our area mostly have some form of mental illness. The pan handlers mostly do it as a job in our area and aren’t homeless.

To Jim’s point about that there are more in poverty than say 15 or 20 years ago is true. During Obama’s reign the divide between the rich and poor widened substantially because of the high regulations for small businesses and higher taxation. That’s what happens in pure democracy. Mob rule follows as we see today with Democrats. The only cure for pure democracy is a republic. That’s what we have had for a long time until Obama. For 2 years the pure democracy democrats had total power. When the Republicans took back Congress the republic system or rule of law stopped a lot of that but couldn’t overcome it enough. A republic with personal freedom as we have in our constitution allows for people to fight for their opportunities. That’s why our level of poverty is no where near third world country poverty.

I want to get rid of the term “homeless” because that doesn’t say anything. I am talking about poverty and the people who barely have enough to put food on the table, dress themselves and have a place to “live”.

The method by which the wealth in this country is spread out is broken. I know grasshopper hates to hear it because he has a misconception of what the united order, etc. is but far too many people struglle to survive while far too many are wasteful, take advantage of others and fail to assist the poor and needy.

That is all I have to say on the matter…

I believe your reasoning for the poverty problem has a lot of truth to it but likewise, the overall system is broken and we see a lot of greed and opulence as a result of it as well. All I am saying is that it is a big problem and it isn’t improving right now, even with a republican president. It is a mess out here.

Well, how would we know if it was getting better or not? I say it is getting better because fewer people are on welfare because the employment numbers are so much better. And it’s people getting full time jobs instead of Obama part-time jobs. Also, those people who do give to charities are giving more now.