Private School Domination

[OldSchoolLion]

I recently read a post that spoke of "private school domination."   There are 2,344 high schools in Florida, made up of 1,563 public schools and 781 private schools.  I took a stab at pulling out the 25 best private school programs and then put them in one of 3 categories below.   Do you agree/disagree with the teams and placements?

What is I see is a number of very good programs, but only four I would say are truly "dominant" programs, capable of consistently beating the better public schools year in and year out.  One of these is IMG, who is not costing any public schools championships.

Percentage-wise, I don't believe there is a disproportionate number of "very good" private schools programs.   Recognizing there are about double the number of public schools, I don't think we would have a problem finding 50 public school programs we could put in one of these three categories.

I just don't see domination here.  Do you agree/disagree?  After going through this exercise, I think it is more accurate to call out the few dominant, private schools who we think have an unfair advantage, rather than making generalizations about all private schools.   I would put Armwood, Cocoa and Madison County, to name a few, in the category of "dominant" public schools.  I don't see a lot of people claiming they have an unfair advantage and recruit, simply because they dominate the competition like the Aquinas' of the world.  What's good for the goose....    

 

Truly dominant private schools, who consistently beat the better public school programs year in and year out:

American Heritage-Plantation

Bolles

IMG

St Thomas Aquinas

 

Very good private school programs with consistent winning seasons, but probably a stretch to say they do/could dominate the better public school programs year in and year out, based on their records:

Belen Jesuit

Berkeley Prep

Cardinal Gibbons

Christopher Columbus

Clearwater Central Catholic

Oxbridge Academy

Tampa Jesuit

Trinity Christian (Jacksonville)

University School (Ft Lauderdale)

 

Very good programs, but not not consistently "very good," i.e. multiple losing seasons in the recent past:

American Heritage-Delray

Archbishop McCarthy

Bishop Verot

Chaminade

Champagnat

Glades Day

Melbourne Central Catholic

Monsignor Pace

Ocala Trinity

Tampa Catholic

University Christian (Jacksonville)

Westminster Christian (Miami)

[DisabledAccount]

18 minutes ago, OldSchoolLion said:

I recently read a post that spoke of "private school domination."   There are 2,344 high schools in Florida, made up of 1,563 public schools and 781 private schools.  I took a stab at pulling out the 25 best private school programs and then put them in one of 3 categories below.   Do you agree/disagree with the teams and placements?

What is I see is a number of very good programs, but only four I would say are truly "dominant" programs, capable of consistently beating the better public schools year in and year out.  One of these is IMG, who is not costing any public schools championships.

Percentage-wise, I don't believe there is a disproportionate number of "very good" private schools programs.   Recognizing there are about double the number of public schools, I don't think we would have a problem finding 50 public school programs we could put in one of these three categories.

I just don't see domination here.  Do you agree/disagree?  After going through this exercise, I think it is more accurate to call out the few dominant, private schools who we think have an unfair advantage, rather than making generalizations about all private schools.   I would put Armwood, Cocoa and Madison County, to name a few, in the category of "dominant" public schools.  I don't see a lot of people claiming they have an unfair advantage and recruit, simply because they dominate the competition like the Aquinas' of the world.  What's good for the goose....    

 

Truly dominant private schools, who consistently beat the better public school programs year in and year out:

American Heritage-Plantation

Bolles

IMG

St Thomas Aquinas

 

Very good private school programs with consistent winning seasons, but probably a stretch to say they do/could dominate the better public school programs year in and year out, based on their records:

Belen Jesuit

Berkeley Prep

Cardinal Gibbons

Christopher Columbus

Clearwater Central Catholic

Oxbridge Academy

Tampa Jesuit

Trinity Christian (Jacksonville)

University School (Ft Lauderdale)

 

Very good programs, but not not consistently "very good," i.e. multiple losing seasons in the recent past:

American Heritage-Delray

Archbishop McCarthy

Bishop Verot

Chaminade

Champagnat

Glades Day

Melbourne Central Catholic

Monsignor Pace

Ocala Trinity

Tampa Catholic

University Christian (Jacksonville)

Westminster Christian (Miami)

I would either switch bolles and Trinity Christian or move one or other up or down and go in same category 

[DisabledAccount]

I think issue is that several privates are spread out 

 

2a 

Almost all privates 

 

3a

Top 5 teams all privates 

 

5a 

AHP 

 

7a 

STA

 

8a

Columbus 

 

 

But i do think that the top publics in the state can compete with those teams

 

I'll post my proposal soon

[Proseteye]

Even more evidence is that there are approximately 755 private high schools that are mostly non competitive and approximately 1545 public high schools that are non competitive. Only a very few high schools in Florida, that have a football team, are competitive at all.  Most of the private and public high schools, that are competitive, are so because of receiving extensive transfers every season. Or, in other terms, "recruiting". Since Florida now allows transferring from any school nation wide to any other school, the public schools have no restrictions. The private schools still have inbred restrictions, such as high tuition costs and certain academic standards, which lower the transfer pool significantly. In the old days when I went to school, you played with the students you had. Most families didn't move around the way they do today and you usually went from K-5 to 12th grade with the same students. The HC built his team with what he had year in and year out and some of those teams were outstanding.

[OldSchoolLion]

1 hour ago, Proseteye said:

Even more evidence is that there are approximately 755 private high schools that are mostly non competitive and approximately 1545 public high schools that are non competitive. Only a very few high schools in Florida, that have a football team, are competitive at all.  Most of the private and public high schools, that are competitive, are so because of receiving extensive transfers every season. Or, in other terms, "recruiting". Since Florida now allows transferring from any school nation wide to any other school, the public schools have no restrictions. The private schools still have inbred restrictions, such as high tuition costs and certain academic standards, which lower the transfer pool significantly. In the old days when I went to school, you played with the students you had. Most families didn't move around the way they do today and you usually went from K-5 to 12th grade with the same students. The HC built his team with what he had year in and year out and some of those teams were outstanding.

I appreciate your comments.  I do think we need to be a bit careful, though, assuming that if a public or private school gets a number of transfers it is absolutely due to active recruiting.  Sure it is suspect when a big slug of players transfers.  But certain elite programs like Aquinas, Plant, etc, are going to attract a lot of good players without any effort on their part.  And it's not their fault if kids are lining up outside the door to come there. We have created that madness that is high school football today.

With today's transfer rules and our making of high school football into big business, kids are behaving like rock star free agents. We blame schools and coaches for "the problem."  But how about the self-serving behavior of some of these kids and the parents who enable it?  Is that not just as big, if not a bigger part of the problem?

More and more, they are using schools like football prep academies to selfishly further their athletic careers...on OUR dollars.  It breeds an entitlement mindset that can follow these kids into adulthood.  I bet if these parents had to pay a big administrative fee every time their kid switched, they would be thinking twice.  Maybe we need to spend less time calling out coaches for recruiting and more time calling out these parents for wasting the time and limited resources of our public school system for their financial gain.  If they put their foot down, we would have a lot less of this musical school scene.

Years back I knew a coach who had a rule.  Once you committed to a college, that was it. That sent a huge message about values to the players. 

 

 

[DisabledAccount]

https://flavarsity.forums.rivals.com/threads/county-breakdown-1963-2017-55-years.9189/

This is interesting

[OldSchoolLion]

8 minutes ago, ColumbiaHighFan2017class said:

https://flavarsity.forums.rivals.com/threads/county-breakdown-1963-2017-55-years.9189/

This is interesting

...fascinating..some random thoughts...

-bigger metro area=bigger resources, in some cases??

-demographics-some counties have lower percentages of high school age kids, ie Pasco, Pinellas, etc??

-domination in certain sports by certain counties due to regional preferences for certain sports, ie girls volleyball in the orlando area?? 

-how many of those private school titles belong to Bolles and Aquinas-skewing the numbers??

 

 

[Cocoa2010]

1 hour ago, ColumbiaHighFan2017class said:

https://flavarsity.forums.rivals.com/threads/county-breakdown-1963-2017-55-years.9189/

This is interesting

Wow, with Counties with double digit appearances, Brevard leads with the highest % of state titles with 70%.

[DisabledAccount]

20 minutes ago, OldSchoolLion said:

...fascinating..some random thoughts...

-bigger metro area=bigger resources, in some cases??

-demographics-some counties have lower percentages of high school age kids, ie Pasco, Pinellas, etc??

-domination in certain sports by certain counties due to regional preferences for certain sports, ie girls volleyball in the orlando area?? 

-how many of those private school titles belong to Bolles and Aquinas-skewing the numbers??

 

 

Something interesting is raines is only public school duval team to ever win state

 

How does a city with 1m people only have 1 public win state? 

 

Also you mentioned areas being better in certain region for certain sports

 

Football is dominated by south Florida but when looking at baseball and softball the better teams for most part are from North Florida

 

Then you look at Leon county which is very good in soccer 

 

Very interesting how the successful teams in sports come from different regions than ones successful in others 

 

Kinda crazy in Columbia's case that the most monetary support goes to football but spring sports have been most successful last few years despite limited resources 

 

If they had resources that our football had we would average top 50 in nation in baseball and softball 

[Proseteye]

1 hour ago, OldSchoolLion said:

I appreciate your comments.  I do think we need to be a bit careful, though, assuming that if a public or private school gets a number of transfers it is absolutely due to active recruiting.  Sure it is suspect when a big slug of players transfers.  But certain elite programs like Aquinas, Plant, etc, are going to attract a lot of good players without any effort on their part.  And it's not their fault if kids are lining up outside the door to come there. We have created that madness that is high school football today.

With today's transfer rules and our making of high school football into big business, kids are behaving like rock star free agents. We blame schools and coaches for "the problem."  But how about the self-serving behavior of some of these kids and the parents who enable it?  Is that not just as big, if not a bigger part of the problem?

More and more, they are using schools like football prep academies to selfishly further their athletic careers...on OUR dollars.  It breeds an entitlement mindset that can follow these kids into adulthood.  I bet if these parents had to pay a big administrative fee every time their kid switched, they would be thinking twice.  Maybe we need to spend less time calling out coaches for recruiting and more time calling out these parents for wasting the time and limited resources of our public school system for their financial gain.  If they put their foot down, we would have a lot less of this musical school scene.

Years back I knew a coach who had a rule.  Once you committed to a college, that was it. That sent a huge message about values to the players. 

 

 

Agree with you 100%. A great part of a school's responsibility is building character in their students regardless of whether one says that it's the parent's job exclusively. Considering that there are a lot of absent and/or irresponsible parents somebody has to do it. The schools are the last bastion of transitioning from child to adult. IMO, when you have a great amount of transfers into a school for a particular sport you tend to disrupt the cohesion of the team. If you have 10 outstanding players transfer into a system you obviously have at least 10 and possibly as many as 20 players that probably will be sitting on the bench. Maybe these players grew up in the town and have gone to the that one HS. Maybe they were on the JV or played a year or two already on the varsity. All of a sudden they don't play anymore, deposed by a transfer that may only be there for one season. This is going on with many HS football programs as I speak. I just don't think it builds good character, confidence,  nor does it build good teamwork.

[OldSchoolLion]

2 minutes ago, Proseteye said:

Agree with you 100%. A great part of a school's responsibility is building character in their students regardless of whether one says that it's the parent's job exclusively. Considering that there are a lot of absent and/or irresponsible parents somebody has to do it. The schools are the last bastion of transitioning from child to adult. IMO, when you have a great amount of transfers into a school for a particular sport you tend to disrupt the cohesion of the team. If you have 10 outstanding players transfer into a system you obviously have at least 10 and possibly as many as 20 players that probably will be sitting on the bench. Maybe these players grew up in the town and have gone to the that one HS. Maybe they were on the JV or played a year or two already on the varsity. All of a sudden they don't play anymore, deposed by a transfer that may only be there for one season. This is going on with many HS football programs as I speak. I just don't think it builds good character, confidence,  nor does it build good teamwork.

Amen.  We often speak of transfers as a positive for a program, but dealing with a substantial number at one time must make things very difficult for the coaches and, ironically, could hurt a team's performance in the end due to jealousy and infighting.  Some of us may remember when the Dream Team from Northwestern sent all of those kids to the U in one year and things did not work out nearly so well as many thought it would. 

How many of these kids who are tranferring are thinking, "Gee, I might disrupt the cohesion of the team if I go there and/or hurt some other kid's chances to play."   Nope..it's all about me, baby.  A kid transferring into a program his senior year is not invested in the program.  Only an extraordinary kid is going to be giving his all to the team and not thinking of his own self-interests.  We are turning these kids into amazing self-promoters.

There are a lot of hidden costs associated with all of these transfers, and you give a great example.  In business we call them transactional costs.  You don't see them on your balance sheet, but they effect you big-time

As much as many of us dislike the IMG's, unless we change our current path in hs football, I would almost like to see football academies where the kids who want to take their chance on a pro career can go and stop wasting public school resources for their personal campaigns.  If kids and their families want to shamelessly promote for their gain, let them do it on THEIR dollar and not mine.  I don't mind contributing taxes so a poor kid can eat or get an education.  I do mind when my taxpayer dollar is supporting some young recruit flaunting himself like a peacock, acting like a thug, and leaving a trail of damage on his way to the NFL to make millions.

 

          

 

  

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[OldSchoolLion]

1 hour ago, ColumbiaHighFan2017class said:

Something interesting is raines is only public school duval team to ever win state

 

How does a city with 1m people only have 1 public win state? 

 

Also you mentioned areas being better in certain region for certain sports

 

Football is dominated by south Florida but when looking at baseball and softball the better teams for most part are from North Florida

 

Then you look at Leon county which is very good in soccer 

 

Very interesting how the successful teams in sports come from different regions than ones successful in others 

 

Kinda crazy in Columbia's case that the most monetary support goes to football but spring sports have been most successful last few years despite limited resources 

 

If they had resources that our football had we would average top 50 in nation in baseball and softball 

May not be an issue, but I wonder if the numbers get skewed a bit due to certain sports not offering as many state championships (less classes), ie wrestling, giving an edge to the areas who excel in the sports that historically have had a lot of classes