Spring

[DisabledAccount]

Hey ik it's technically off topic but since it's not football season and traffic is low i don't think it will hurt to have this here a day or 2 

 

Anyone involved or a fan of spring sports

 

I'll be following baseball and softball at Columbia this spring and both should be state contenders this year 

 

Baseball is currently 3 year running district champs and going for 4 straight with a deep roster this year 

 

Softball has made it to district finals every year since 2013 including winning it in 2013,2014 and 2017 

They also won state in 2013 and made regional finals in 2014 and 2017 and only had 2 seniors last year, they could very well win 7a this year 

 

 

So who else on here follows spring sports? 

[OldSchoolLion]

46 minutes ago, ColumbiaHighFan2017class said:

Hey ik it's technically off topic but since it's not football season and traffic is low i don't think it will hurt to have this here a day or 2 

 

Anyone involved or a fan of spring sports

 

I'll be following baseball and softball at Columbia this spring and both should be state contenders this year 

 

Baseball is currently 3 year running district champs and going for 4 straight with a deep roster this year 

 

Softball has made it to district finals every year since 2013 including winning it in 2013,2014 and 2017 

They also won state in 2013 and made regional finals in 2014 and 2017 and only had 2 seniors last year, they could very well win 7a this year 

 

 

So who else on here follows spring sports? 

I know wrestling is a winter sport, and not a spring sport, but had a question for you Columbia.  For decades, Suwanee had a great wrestling program, consistently placing well at the state tournament and actually winning a few.  This decade, it seems like the program has fallen off the radar.  Was just curious what happened.  

 

[DarterBlue2]

I follow soccer which is Winter but still in progress. I know Columbia had a good soccer team last year. Seminole High in the Orlando area is really good and should make the Semifinal, at a minimum, for the second consecutive year. 

[DisabledAccount]

8 hours ago, OldSchoolLion said:

I know wrestling is a winter sport, and not a spring sport, but had a question for you Columbia.  For decades, Suwanee had a great wrestling program, consistently placing well at the state tournament and actually winning a few.  This decade, it seems like the program has fallen off the radar.  Was just curious what happened.  

 

Truthfully all the sports at Suwannee has begun to fall off since we hit the 2000s

 

I think part of it was they dominated when in small classes but once they moved up they couldn't sustain at any sport

 

I personally haven't seen their wrestling so i can't be sure that's why they struggled but ik that's why they struggle in a few other sports

 

I only go to sports where i can look at a scoreboard and know who's winning,  nothing against sports like wrestling, weightlifting, track, ect.  I just have a hard time following unless i know who's winning by simply looking at a scoreboard 

[DisabledAccount]

8 hours ago, DarterBlue2 said:

I follow soccer which is Winter but still in progress. I know Columbia had a good soccer team last year. Seminole High in the Orlando area is really good and should make the Semifinal, at a minimum, for the second consecutive year. 

They were a talented team last year but the problem is that soccer at Columbia isn't well funded

 

The schools up here that are good are Fleming Island as well as a few in St John's plus the Tallahassee schools mainly because they fund soccer well and have good fanbase 

 

Columbia has maybe 50 in stands for most soccer games which is why they aren't consistent enough to be contenders

 

I got to see our volleyball team towards end of the year and honestly i won't be surprised if they make the playoffs next year, they look to be getting better and if they had better money support they probably would already be competitive but also like soccer generally are given next to nothing by the school towards the program and the fan support is bare minimum 

 

 

It also amazes me that both Columbia baseball and softball has been so good at Columbia with such limited monetary support towards the program 

 

If they had the money put into those 2 programs that they put into football those teams would be in top 50 nationally every year 

 

That's why it's frustrating to watch football who is loaded in talent and gets almost every penny the school makes and can barley get past second round 

 

I'm sure a lot of it has to do with fact the football players always think they are badasses, i see them always talking on twitter about how they gonna go win state, smh

 

Prove it on the field not on some damn social media

 

 

I also always wonder where this money goes because it certainly ain't going to travel bc basically every game less than 2 hours plus they never use charter busses unless the school district mandates it (which only happened once in 3 years i was out there) plus even though most the crowd sounds like dead fish during the games they probably have 2-3k people in stands and with 5 bucks a seat minus the 50-100 students who pay a cheaper price if they buy in advance but they probably make up with the reserved section who pays 7 bucks a ticket

 

 

[Cat_Scratch]

9 hours ago, OldSchoolLion said:

I know wrestling is a winter sport, and not a spring sport, but had a question for you Columbia.  For decades, Suwanee had a great wrestling program, consistently placing well at the state tournament and actually winning a few.  This decade, it seems like the program has fallen off the radar.  Was just curious what happened.  

 

As an old high school wrestler I have an opinion about the program at Cocoa. 

3rd generation. I have 2 grand kids wrestling for Cocoa this year. Both are 7th graders.

My son wrestled for Cocoa, 2nd generation.

I wrestled for Cocoa as a Soph, and Jr. then moved to Rockledge for my Sr year.

I have watched the program fall off by about a quarter each generation.

As a Sr at Rockledge, we packed the Gym. 

My son as a Sr at Cocoa, they had about 3 quarters of the Gym filled depending on who the match was with.

My grand son and daughter are both in the 7th grade and the Gym was about 1 quarter filled at the match I watched.

My team, 1971,  had over 40 wrestlers come out. My sons team, 2004, had about 30 come out. Then my Grandkids team have about 20 on the team.

The kids just don't want to make the effort to join a physically demanding sport it seems. They would rather play video games on the sofa, or hang out with their friends and txt on their phones I guess. 

[OldSchoolLion]

3 hours ago, Cat_Scratch said:

As an old high school wrestler I have an opinion about the program at Cocoa. 

3rd generation. I have 2 grand kids wrestling for Cocoa this year. Both are 7th graders.

My son wrestled for Cocoa, 2nd generation.

I wrestled for Cocoa as a Soph, and Jr. then moved to Rockledge for my Sr year.

I have watched the program fall off by about a quarter each generation.

As a Sr at Rockledge, we packed the Gym. 

My son as a Sr at Cocoa, they had about 3 quarters of the Gym filled depending on who the match was with.

My grand son and daughter are both in the 7th grade and the Gym was about 1 quarter filled at the match I watched.

My team, 1971,  had over 40 wrestlers come out. My sons team, 2004, had about 30 come out. Then my Grandkids team have about 20 on the team.

The kids just don't want to make the effort to join a physically demanding sport it seems. They would rather play video games on the sofa, or hang out with their friends and txt on their phones I guess. 

...a common theme is great coaches leave/retire and a program falls apart.  ...a couple of examples I can think of... 

• Hollywood McArthur, under coach John Lyzott, was a wrestling powerhouse of the 1970's and 1980's.  
• Largo's cross country teams, under coach Brent Haley, were amongst the best Florida has ever seen.

There are some success stories where a good coach laid a foundation and then another coach came in afterward and built upon it.  Fort Lauderdale Dillard and Ely's basketball programs are a couple of examples I can think of.  

In today's age of coaching musical chairs, it will be interesting to see how well programs will be able to sustain success.

Maybe kids today look more closely at effort/reward when picking a sport.  Wrestling and cross country are physically very demanding sports but do not get much press relative to football and basketball and do not offer as many chances at college scholarships.     

  

[BrowardHandicapper]

On 1/16/2018 at 12:23 PM, OldSchoolLion said:

...a common theme is great coaches leave/retire and a program falls apart.  ...a couple of examples I can think of... 

• Hollywood McArthur, under coach John Lyzott, was a wrestling powerhouse of the 1970's and 1980's.  
• Largo's cross country teams, under coach Brent Haley, were amongst the best Florida has ever seen.

There are some success stories where a good coach laid a foundation and then another coach came in afterward and built upon it.  Fort Lauderdale Dillard and Ely's basketball programs are a couple of examples I can think of.  

In today's age of coaching musical chairs, it will be interesting to see how well programs will be able to sustain success.

Maybe kids today look more closely at effort/reward when picking a sport.  Wrestling and cross country are physically very demanding sports but do not get much press relative to football and basketball and do not offer as many chances at college scholarships.     

  

Did Plantation and/or Piper used to have good wrestling teams back in the '80s?

I thought I remember someone telling me that...

[OldSchoolLion]

29 minutes ago, BrowardHandicapper said:

Did Plantation and/or Piper used to have good wrestling teams back in the '80s?

I thought I remember someone telling me that...

I followed wrestling very closely back then.  I don't recall Piper ever being strong.

The 1980's were a heyday for wrestling in Broward.  Am not sure there has ever been a time when there were so many good/very squads in the county at one period in time.  The big powers were STA, McArthur, Chaminade and Deerfield Beach.  Some of their squads won state championships, and even when they did not, they were contenders.  The next level down I would put Miramar, Plantation, Western and Stranahan. 

All of these teams mentioned above produced state champions in the 80's. There were even a few multi-title winners.  McArthur produced some phenomenal athletes.  Errict Rhett, who played for the Gators and in the NFL was a great wrestler.  Oddibe McDowell played in the Major Leagues and was a great wrestler, too.  Anthony Brown won multiple state titles and I believe he became an all-american in college.   I remember watching all of those guys.  

It's a shame, but with the exception of STA, those programs have fallen off.     

 

[Cat_Scratch]

On 1/18/2018 at 3:40 PM, OldSchoolLion said:

I followed wrestling very closely back then.  I don't recall Piper ever being strong.

The 1980's were a heyday for wrestling in Broward.  Am not sure there has ever been a time when there were so many good/very squads in the county at one period in time.  The big powers were STA, McArthur, Chaminade and Deerfield Beach.  Some of their squads won state championships, and even when they did not, they were contenders.  The next level down I would put Miramar, Plantation, Western and Stranahan. 

All of these teams mentioned above produced state champions in the 80's. There were even a few multi-title winners.  McArthur produced some phenomenal athletes.  Errict Rhett, who played for the Gators and in the NFL was a great wrestler.  Oddibe McDowell played in the Major Leagues and was a great wrestler, too.  Anthony Brown won multiple state titles and I believe he became an all-american in college.   I remember watching all of those guys.  

It's a shame, but with the exception of STA, those programs have fallen off.     

 

It wasn't until the mid 60's that a wrestler won state from out of the South Florida area. Dade, and Broward if I remember correctly. I think it was George Vanderhall that was the first wrestler outside of the Dade/Broward area to win a state title in 1965 or so.

I agree with old Lion about coaching and the foundation. A great coach will bring an entire area up in competition levels. Well, that was until open transfers.

[OldSchoolLion]

12 minutes ago, Cat_Scratch said:

It wasn't until the mid 60's that a wrestler won state from out of the South Florida area. Dade, and Broward if I remember correctly. I think it was George Vanderhall that was the first wrestler outside of the Dade/Broward area to win a state title in 1965 or so.

I agree with old Lion about coaching and the foundation. A great coach will bring an entire area up in competition levels. Well, that was until open transfers.

John Lyzott came to McArthur in the late 60's and coached there for over 20 years.  It took him about 10 years to win his first state championship.  His coaching record was 282-28-3. That is a winning percentage of 90%.  For some perspective...

Corky Rogers/Bolles 433-77-1=85% winning percentage

George Smith/Aquinas 279-61=82% winning percentage 

Victor Balmeceda of South Dade, Russ Cozart at Brandon, Frank Pettineo of Cardinal Gibbons-all extremely successful wrestling coaches who spent 20+ years at their schools building the programs.  And we have football coaches leaving/stepping down after 3 years.  How can anyone to build a sustainable program in 3 years? 

 

[DisabledAccount]

12 hours ago, OldSchoolLion said:

John Lyzott came to McArthur in the late 60's and coached there for over 20 years.  It took him about 10 years to win his first state championship.  His coaching record was 282-28-3. That is a winning percentage of 90%.  For some perspective...

Corky Rogers/Bolles 433-77-1=85% winning percentage

George Smith/Aquinas 279-61=82% winning percentage 

Victor Balmeceda of South Dade, Russ Cozart at Brandon, Frank Pettineo of Cardinal Gibbons-all extremely successful wrestling coaches who spent 20+ years at their schools building the programs.  And we have football coaches leaving/stepping down after 3 years.

 

 

  How can anyone to build a sustainable program in 3 years? 

 

Instability and bad administration is why so many teams stay at the bottom 

 

Just look at publics in duval outside of raines,  none are consistent and none can sustain winning long term