Proseteye

I wonder why STA never plays IMG? The two best teams in Florida should play at least once every couple of years. Other Florida teams manage to play the national IMG team with a few that play the various other color IMG teams. Miami Central doesn't seem to have any problem with playing the national team every year.

How do you fix it? You stop high school teams from recruiting. Most of the top football teams have a high rate of transfers in. IMG at least admits that they are a school that recruits the best for all sports. As a result of that they are not eligible for the playoffs and are not really considered a standard high school. With recruiting any HS team can become an artificial powerhouse without ever having much more than a few token players from the district that they are in. HS sports have been turned into mini NFL teams with families that come out to see their son do not much more than bench time or they don't come out at all because he has not even joined the team. Sad state of affairs where it's become more important to pad the egos of a few narcissistic teenagers and their coaches than to build character in all players that have joined the team or the one's that could have joined the team.

Madison and Hawthorne are playing for the championship in 1R. Trinity and Cardinal Mooney are playing for the championship in 1S. I would like to see a final playoff between 1S and 1R. https://www.maxpreps.com/tournament/0rn28S-aEe6A0wqb9tl3hA/vIanMi-bEe6A0wqb9tl3hA/football-23/2023-fhsaa-football-state-championships-1-s.htm

Everybody, except for a few folks, thought that the Celtic's season was over. Some people knew better. With a horrible season, where the Celics won only 3 games (1 of which was a forfeit) they have managed to win 3 straight playoff games, and by big scores. Go up to Tallahassee on Friday morning to play Cardinal Mooney. Celtics defeated last season's 1 S champion First Baptist in Naples this past Friday. First Baptist has one of the best QBs and receiving corp but they couldn't outplay or outscore Trinity. IMO the Celtics played a masterful game with discipline and no self inflicted mistakes and had a total of 3 interceptions off the hands of QB Crossan. The Celtics had 432 total yards of offense. This is not the Celtics' team that I witnessed in the beginning of the season and, if they play as well against the Cougars, they should have a good chance of coming back to Ocala with the champianship.

Trinity played a pretty rough OOD schedule against some championship type higher classification teams. They lost 3 games by 1 or 2 points. Yes, won their district against pathetic opposition. Believe me, they are a much better team than their record indicates. I would not be surprised if they defeated last year's champion First Baptist.

CFCA cancelled like they have for every game over the last two years. Have no idea why Trinity agreed to schedule them. You can't be anymore baffled than I am about that and this strange season.

Unfortunately the season did not go as I thought it would for the Celtics. They have the players and the coaching, where they should have been contenders for possibly a title game, but just can't get the job done. Lost close games to three good teams but got defeated pretty well by a couple of other teams that they should have done better against. That being said they play Bucholtz at home tonight. Bucholtz is undefeated and is in 4S with the Celtics in 1S so the Bobcats would normally have the advantage at anytime. Although I don't expect it, there is a possibility that the Celtics could bring all of that ability together and either give the Bobcats one heck of a game or even defeat them. I have seen them do it before.

OTC @ CCC tonight. Just remember that last season OTC gave CCC it's only defeat until CCC played Chaminade in the championship game and lost in a very competitive game. I believe that both teams are as good or better than last season. I know that the Celtics are a much better unit than they were in 2022 with 3 exceptional QB's two seniors and 1 junior, any one of which could be a starter on most other teams. Think it will be a game worth watching as it looks as though the weather in Clearwater will be dry for the most part.

The Team I support, the Trinity Catholic Celtics, is IMO a team to watch this season. They went down to Key West yesterday, a distance of 470 miles, and defeated Key West in the classic. Given that Key West is not a powerhouse. But, they are a well coached team with skill players and I believe they run a wing T offense that is always difficult to defend against. The Celtic defense had some difficulty against it for the first quarter and a half until thay came up to speed and Key West was then shut down. This Celtic team is very big and very good. They are also a lot quicker than I have seen in the past and seem to have more dedication like the championship teams we used to have. They have 3 excellent QBs 2 Seniors and 1 Junior and quite a few skill players at WR and RB. The speed of these players makes the difference. Considering that their schedule for a 1S team, FSU HS, CCC, Gainesville, Carrollwood Day, Raines, Calvary Christian, St. Xavier (Cincinnati), and Buchholtz, is not a walk in the park. We shall see how it goes but I am more positive this season than I have been in quite sometime including being the runnerup in 1S last season. The smaller classes don't get much play on this forum, unless you are a Pahokee or a Madison, but the Celtics are here and have a young history of getting the job done when it counts. Thanks for listening.

The Celtics did defeat NM and Vanguard a couple of times over the years. Maybe you can ask those 7 teams why they didn't play the Celtics in 2022. Coach Brantley has always tried to play the local public schools. Could be that he offered to play them and they declined. Could be that previous 5A and 6A teams don't want to risk losing to a previous 3A team.

Should be a very good game especially with the former UCF QB Dillon Gabriel at the helm for Oklahoma. May be a high scoring affair. I think that FSU has enough to win it as Oklahoma may have one of its worst teams in recent memory. What do you folks think and why?

Don't understand "blacklisted". The Celtics have played a good compliment of Marion Country Public Schools over the years. 2021 - North Marion, 2019 - Dunnellon, 2018, 2017 - Belleview, Dunnellon, North Marion, 2016, 2015 - Lake Weir, 2012, 2011, 2010- North Marion, Forest, Vanguard. A couple of the publics have accused the Celtics of "stealing their players" which nobody was ever able to prove. I saw an equal amount of players over the years transferring from Trinity to the publics as they did transferring to Trinity. The Celtics have always been willing to play anyone and their schedules have always been filled with higher division out of district teams. Who knows how this new FHSAA structure is and how it will affect the teams we play in the future.

It's true that First Baptist has not played anyone, with the exception of Bishop Verot and a loss to Pahokee, equal to the Celtics schedule. Although the Celtic's District schedule was soft as ice cream. There was no equivilent of FSU High, CCC, Raines, Calvery Christian, and Ponte Vedra on FBA's Opponents list. That being said FBA is a good solid team with skill players that score a lot of points. They are no walkover. Celtics better be ready and hopefully have cleaned up their propensity for personal fouls that only help their opponent.

First Baptist has a minimum 7 hour bus trip to Gene Cox Stadium. The Celtics have less than 3 hours. Since the game starting time is 1 pm on Saturday I'm assuming that the FBA team and most of the Naples community will be staying overnight on Friday and maybe even Saturday. Weather report for Saturday is clear skies, sunny, with tempertures around 67 degrees at 1 pm. Perfect football weather. I've watched FBA on video and they are a pretty good well disciplined team. They played a good 11-2 Ohio team Chardon, in Ohio, very close and should have won that game. If the Celtics can stop receiving unecessary personal foul penalties maybe the opposing team would not have an easier time than they should. The Celtics certainly have all of the capabilities to defeat any team a lot easier than they sometimes do.

As I suspected JCC (Ft Pierce) gave the Celtics all they could handle. Rams have 3 or 4 D-1 commit seniors. All tied up in the 4th quarter and then Wright and Beard came through against a very tough Ram defense in the last couple of minutes. Final 22-10 Celtics. Championship will be against another pretty good team, First Baptist Academy (Naples). I think they are better than their name would indicate. QB has nearly 1800 yds passing and their lead RB has just under 1,000 yds. However, they did lose to Pahokee and an Ohio team Chardon.