Beek

Much appreciated. I really want to say something about the kids we had transfer or move in to our school. The 5 players who previously played for or went to Osceola who are now on our roster have the best character of any kids I have had in the 9 years I've been at Poinciana. Their demeanor, attitudes and being a non selfish team player are some of the best attributes I have ever seen. You guys build quality student-athletes. Not just a bunch of thugs who play football. I know these kids may have not been a big loss to your program. But it was defiantly a big gain for our program. We also had a Quarterback from a state final four team from NC move into our zone in the last moment. What a great surprise that was! We now have to get them used to playing with each other and the other players on our roster. We have 17 starters who were not on our team from last fall. Kids who moved in, some transfers in and kids who worked on their academics and made it back from poor grades from covid. We played sloppy last night. We made mistakes. We were even down 16-14 with 8 minutes to go. Avon park is no joke, they are a good team. They drove us down the field methodically. But our kids kept on working and the result shows.

Somehow, Poinciana got our game in. Basically it was because we were so far south of Orlando. We had a long lightning delay with about a minute to go in the first half. But we waited it out and finished the game. Poinciana 28- Avon Park 16

Myself for one, I do not want my school AD or my county AD to mandate my schedule. My fears are that first they would want to schedule only close opponents to avoid travel costs and secondly they would not have the pulse of the program to know where the program is at on a competitive level. Over or under scheduling talent. Which wouldn't help. No disrespect intended towards the AD's, Just my opinion

That didnt come out quite the way I meant it. LOL The ones I am counting on will be there , its the ones that I have not seen all summer who show up on the first day and possible new players that I have never met!

Obviously, Ill be there! It will be interesting to see who shows up.

Bird is a great guy. I also coach wrestling so I have had many interactions with him. A class act! Tribit, having been under bird in the past and already a good AD in the county. This should be a easy transition. From what I could see Bird was already passing the torch to him as early as last season!

Well first things first, we have to trend up before we can trend back down. Having been at the bottom for ever, there is only one way to go! This years kids are motivated and have a great attitude among the team. Nothing negative! More kids than ever in the weight room this summer. More coaches than ever too!

Thank you.

I can confirm that those 2 are enrolled at Poinciana, Perry had a great game for us in the spring. It has defiantly benefited him as he already has multiple offers on the table. We already have some things working for DJ, and should be able to confirm a offer for him in the next few days and he hasnt even played a down for us. I have no idea who starts and who doesnt at Osceola. Those 2 will be difference makers for us. You have to remember our dismal season last year which involved removing most of our seniors. We are returning 10 varsity starters and a bunch of kids who played varsity because we had no choice. We too have had at least 4 kids leave for greener grass to 1 school, just slightly out of county. I wish them the best of luck in their new place. I have always said. If Poinciana could just have the kids who are zoned for Poinciana we could compete. I know numerous kids playing for other teams who are zoned for Poinciana. But the flip side to that is you do have to have something to offer. The one thing we do well is get kids into schools. If the player takes the offer or not is up to them. We are playing an independent schedule again this year in hopes to bring success to the program. We finally have stability in coaching, which has never happened here. The district we were slated for would not have done us any good right now. Hopefully in a year or 2 with success we can rejoin a district and finally compete at that level.

Checked max preps, Cocoa is in 2s-12, according to FHSAA thats region 3 Updated 2s-13 Discovery Ft. Meade Frostproof Mulbery Tenoroc

We appreciate the vote of confidence. We have had a few kids come home. Meaning kids who were originally zoned for Poinciana that have been elsewhere decided to come to Poinciana for their senior year.

North Port has also scheduled Poinciana!

Our helmets were sent out December 9th. This is the story so far! Due to a logistics error our helmets were clearly marked to go to ohio. the transportation company shipped them to mexico instead. At some point once my AD, who was prompted by me in late march, called to check on our helmets. At this time it was discovered that they were in the wrong country!. So they were shipped to ohio. Spring practice started on monday, we received our helmets tuesday but in a incomplete fashion. 90% of the chinstraps were sent back in a bag marked 'rejected". upon further research, they were not even the ones that went out with our helmets. We studied the pictures and they were a different style on our speedflex. We also did not receive any of the hardware back to mount the chinstraps. We also received back 2 rejected helmets. looking at one of those something wasnt right. The dated code on the helmet and the style helmet did not match our inventory. It was not our helmet!, Now i wonder how many of the helmets we got back had been swapped. Our riddell rep has been awesome trying to fix this situation. He has had new parts shipped to us at no cost to mount the chinstraps. He also brought us all the new chinstraps he had to replace some of the ones which weren't ours. We have been told that once spring is over they will pick up all of our helmets and redo them again. (they werent happy with the paint, placed into bags while still wet). We are still trying to figure out about the chinstrap issue. I personally feel they will just give us new ones, as we had just replaced most of ours last year. The only thing is myself and coaches will check the dates on our helmets to be sure they are ours, I had already numbered inside all of our helmets as an inventory control measure. We have aging reports that show the month and year of manufacture and style of all of the helmets. So this wont be too hard to check and prove.

I require all my players to do something in the off season. By that I mean another sport. We have players participate in wrestling, track, weightlifting and baseball all the time. A very few play basketball, mainly because the basketball players think they are too good to play football so there is not much crossover at our school. The ones who do not participate in another sport must do work outs with the football team. We usually do not have many who do not participate in another sport. Most of our coaches coach other sports as well so getting the kids to play is a bit easier. For wrestling in particular, I feel football players gain many benefits from wrestling. leverage, additional strength training and stamina are the largest. It also uses different muscle groups which is also beneficial.

Appreciate the help. Just giving information. All Good

independent teams are listed. Liberty for what I was told by my ad is going back into a district, and we are staying independent, we already declared that on home campus So now we are looking for games as some teams already canceled on us even after they confirmed. But I get it. Some of the Polk county teams we play got favorable, competitive districts for them. So I understand why they went back. Heck, when you are ranked in the bottom 20 in the state, A lot of people will call. LOL

Liberty is not on the list either, maybe others Didnt see Cocoa Beach

Lol, they didnt even include us as a school at all. Our District would have been, most likely Celebration Osceola Toho St.Cloud Poinciana Still puts us in a no win situation. Staying independent

Thank you all for your posts. I was looking for clarity. I now have more appreciation for the things that I had not considered.

I am trying to gather some information. In a public high school. What is the role of the athletic director? Is the athletic director supposed to make all the decisions? Is the athletic director supposed to advocate for your program? Is the athletic director supposed to look for any way he/she can to disqualify a participant? Make up new rules to hinder the athletic programs so they align with the Athletic directors plan or morals? I understand that some athletic directors are teachers. some are coaches and some could be administrators. But what is their purpose and role? should they do everything they can to help the schools programs? advocate for their programs above others? Anything else that people can add please let me know!

Being from a program that gets killed by transfers a lot. Not bashing on any of the teams who are the recipient of the players who are zoned for my school. For it is not their fault. Knowing what players who are zoned for my school and seeing them play for other teams proves that when you are down, you will stay down. If we had those players we could compete. they are stars and starters for other programs. Players and parents suffer from the grass is greener syndrome. Why would a player with good talent want to play for a loosing program? The true issue is lack of knowledge. It is just assumed that playing for a great program will get you offers, no matter who you are. Being the big fish in the small pond, vs the small fish in a larger pond. We have absolutely no problems getting offers for the kids in our program. For the last 8 years that I have been there. every kid who wanted to go to the next level and had the grades to do it received an offer. Now it wasnt the big D1 offer that they thought they were entitled to! But it was a best fit offer for their talent and cost to the family / student. After all isnt that what we as coaches are truly supposed to do when it comes to higher education? We also get a few transfers in as well. Its bound to happen and always a pleasant surprise. The biggest issue for us is the backlash from home-bound education this last year and students becoming academically ineligible. Because we all know kids worked real hard when able to stay home from school and do all work online! The only real way to stop the transfer thing is to cut it out entirely. You must play for the school you are zoned for period! But we all know that isnt going to happen. Until something is done there will be a huge disparity in the haves and the have nots, the programs receiving transfers will continue to get better and the programs who loose players will continue in their ways. This isnt a knock on the programs who continue to loose transfers. Those coaches work real hard to retain players and continue to try to build their programs. Some will make it out of that stigma and finally become a higher ranked, more wins per season and able to compete with higher level programs. others will not and its not for the lack of coaching or effort. It is truly the rules and the cards you are dealt. Recruiting happens all the time, I hear it in the halls, i see texts from players on other teams. I see communications from staffs of other programs. Some will play by the rules, some think they are above the rules. But until there is integrity among coaches it will continue to get worse. Just my .02 worth

Good update! According to my administration the grades are still not in. But they were able to obtain the scores and run the grades and predict exactly where the gpa will end up. The end result is all of the kids who couldnt play last week are able to play this week and onward!

Thank you very much, I attribute that to the new head coach, as of last year. He was my assistant. But when I got the head football job, I stepped aside for him. He is a awesome coach. He is who made the wrestling program, I was just the facilitator. Now i just assist.

If what I said was taken in a way to dishonor the Osceola Ad,there was never an implication of cheating. What i said truly was not intended that way. I coach against him in wrestling and have much respect. In my opinion I feel he would fight for his kids, not illegally, but in the correct way, where other ad's seem to try to disqualify kids rather than fight for them. I apologize if the words i used were taken in any other way. Meaning he would contact guidance and work with the counselors and try to figure the gpa's. That is fighting for the kids, Not saying, The kids should have tried better in the past and when the grades eventually get posted , maybe they will be high enough

I do that personally. I keep up with all the kids grades.