Let me take you back to the good ol' days of 1996. I was a senior in high school who spent his Friday nights like most seniors in high school - watching high school football. Chattanooga had a great football scene with bitter rivalries and bragging rights on the line each and every Friday.
My high school was The McCallie School. We played Red Bank, East Ridge, Ooltewah, Brainerd and, of course, Baylor. Nobody cared who was public or private in our world - we just didn't want to hear about losing from their students for the next twelve months.
Fast forward to Chattanooga high school football today. It isn't the same. The local rivalries have been replaced by cross-state trips to play schools in Knoxville, Nashville or Memphis. Some schools are traveling beyond the Tennessee borders for games.
Look at McCallie's schedule so far - a game in Kentucky, hosting a school from South Carolina, two trips to Nashville and another game in Chattanooga against a Nashville opponent. It is the same thing for many of the cities teams. Ooltewah played in Maryville last weekend. Baylor and Brainerd are in Knoxville this weekend.
It all seems sad to me. Who really cares if McCallie wins or loses tonight at Ensworth? Do the McCallie kids know any Ensworth students? Are there bragging rights in this game? Is there a single Ooltewah Owl that has ever been to William Blount? Did the Red Bank guys get fired up about playing a team from Canada?
There are plenty of teams and players in Chattanooga to have the kind of thriving local scene that existed here 10 years ago. Sadly, it is gone. Because of allegations of recruiting, bad feelings between public and private schools and complaints about the size of the schools competing, we now have weekly schedules with few games people are excited about seeing.
I don't have plans tonight, so I thought I might check out a local game. There are only two games with teams I know - Red Bank vs. Boyd Buchanan and Soddy-Daisy vs. Hixson. Half the other schools are out of town or hosting schools from somewhere outside of the Scenic City. The student body must make a road trip of their weekend just to support their classmates. What a shame.
Looking back when I was at Ooltewah and then McCallie, we never cared about public vs. private or school size. We wanted to play the kids we knew from little league or church. I wanted to beat East Ridge to have bragging rights in my youth group. I still remember beating the Pioneers on their field my senior year - I was in the stands cheering and yelling the whole game. It took me 20 minutes to get there, and we had a blast. How many McCallie students are making the 2.5 hour trip to Nashville to cheer against Ensworth?
Coaches, parents and administrators ruined local high school football by carving it up by size and public/private classification. It seems the adults forgot that the game is really supposed to be about the kids.
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6 comments:
I don't know what planet you were living on when you went to Ooltewah (a public school), but we DEFINITELY cared about public v. private. Winning against one of the smarmy private schools was a way of giving the finger to their supposed superiority.
You are making my point - it was fun to play the private schools. We didn't care in the sense of, "We shouldn't play them because they are private and we are public."
I remember when my biology teacher (Coach Ratledge) spent the majority of a class explaining why he wanted to beat McCallie that Friday. He wasn't saying, "I don't want to play them," he was saying, "I want to beat them." Now the public schools don't have a chance to beat the smarmy private schools and the private schools don't have a chance to beat the twice-as-big public schools. Instead they play meaningless games against teams from Canada, Kentucky and South Carolina. It stinks.
Okay. I misread you then. I thought you said people back then didn't care about public v. private, and I knew that we definitely did.
It was probably even better in 1986 when I graduated. That was when you were either single, double or triple A, so McCallie, Baylor, Hixson, Notre Dame, Soddy, Rhea County, Cleveland, etc. were all pretty much in the same division.
Next weekend should be a good game between Red Bank and Brainerd-- too bad I'll be in Nashville watching Superdrag.
You're an idiot,get a life!
Don't forget McCallie/Baylor this week too. The luster was lost a little after both teams lost last night. I'll have an article about this game later in the week.
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