Talent To Win?

[Amphibious Rodent]

A good coach can make average talent look very good, but it will only take you so far. You are not seeing average teams playing for state championships in any sport.
 
We all know that a bad coach with great talent in this area will end up reading the want ads.

My point is, if your a great coach and have support you will win. May not have great talent every year. You'll still be above average on a down year. When you have alot of kids with great talent you will do well. Great programs are consistent, when they couple great talent with a great program, great things happen. A team that loses year in and year out, is not coached well and not supported, every school has talent, it goes up and down, but you need a good program with support to be successful

[Ty Cobb]

Baseball is almost certainly learned skills and if your great at track and football you can play baseball, if you concentrate on it. But they don't.

You couldn't be more wrong. Being good at track and football does not mean you can play baseball. Being an athlete can help make you a more complete player but you have to have certain skills to be a baseball player. Being fast doesn't mean you can hit a baseball. Being a great football player doesn't make you a pitcher.

[Amphibious Rodent]

You couldn't be more wrong. Being good at track and football does not mean you can play baseball. Being an athlete can help make you a more complete player but you have to have certain skills to be a baseball player. Being fast doesn't mean you can hit a baseball. Being a great football player doesn't make you a pitcher.

That's not what I meant. If the kid that has all the natural talent, the track kid. If when he's 10 years old starts to play baseball and that is what he primarily concentrates on he will be a good baseball player, provided he is coached well. And very few has the potential to be a pitcher. Or quarterback for that matter. But good coaching definitely helps. Not saying every kid can be great at every sport. But I don't believe that school A that has never been good at a sport is not because they don't have athletes available. The athletes available are not being coached for the sport they are not good at, or there is no emphasis on that sport. There is no way you can convince me that football athletes only grow in certain neighborhoods. Some years you have more athletes. available than other years. My last post on this. We must agree or not to disagree

[87JAG]

A good example of consistency in football is Converse Judson who 

has been winning since the 80's.

[badndn]

Smitty you posted this in regards to Dodge's record at Marble Falls, but the key thing missing for Dodge at MF versus the talent they are up against each week in district is the depth of athletes. MF is roughly 700-800 students smaller than the rest of its district. And they are much farther away from Austin where the other schools are and dont have alot of the in town training that is available in the offseason that CP and Leander etc. have. If you have a three star player for every 100 students and a four star kid for every 500 then MF is short handed in its athletic depth. Not many coaches that can each year coach up 7 to 9 decent players to match those great players at larger schools.

I firmly believe that this is one of the reasons you have not seen a local (Golden Triangle) 4A team make a state title run in a long time. It gets tougher each week going up against teams with 2000+ students the farther you get in the playoffs.

[Amphibious Rodent]

Smitty you posted this in regards to Dodge's record at Marble Falls, but the key thing missing for Dodge at MF versus the talent they are up against each week in district is the depth of athletes. MF is roughly 700-800 students smaller than the rest of its district. And they are much farther away from Austin where the other schools are and dont have alot of the in town training that is available in the offseason that CP and Leander etc. have. If you have a three star player for every 100 students and a four star kid for every 500 then MF is short handed in its athletic depth. Not many coaches that can each year coach up 7 to 9 decent players to match those great players at larger schools.
I firmly believe that this is one of the reasons you have not seen a local (Golden Triangle) 4A team make a state title run in a long time. It gets tougher each week going up against teams with 2000+ students the farther you get in the playoffs.

That makes perfect sense!! Almost seems unfair to have to play teams that it's enrollment is that much larger. Naturally they will have more natural athletes

[Razor]

Smitty you posted this in regards to Dodge's record at Marble Falls, but the key thing missing for Dodge at MF versus the talent they are up against each week in district is the depth of athletes. MF is roughly 700-800 students smaller than the rest of its district. And they are much farther away from Austin where the other schools are and dont have alot of the in town training that is available in the offseason that CP and Leander etc. have. If you have a three star player for every 100 students and a four star kid for every 500 then MF is short handed in its athletic depth. Not many coaches that can each year coach up 7 to 9 decent players to match those great players at larger schools.

I firmly believe that this is one of the reasons you have not seen a local (Golden Triangle) 4A team make a state title run in a long time. It gets tougher each week going up against teams with 2000+ students the farther you get in the playoffs.

 

 

 

Hard to believe that I agree with an Indian, but I think this is very true...at some point, it does become a bit of a numbers game..take Nederland's 2012 team for example...great team, but when they ran into Gerogetown, they were severely outnumbered...Nederland had several kids play both ways and GTown had none and this factors in...the teams that typically play for the D2 championship are often much larger than the D1 representatives from our area...until this dynamic changes, I think it will be very hard for a SE Texas team to win a state championship in football

[RaiderRed30]

Explain then how it's possible for a school the size of LCM to have 4 sub varsity teams plus 50 on varsity. Southeast Texas doesn't seem to have a problem enrollment wise but participation wise. I admit to being bias towards Fort Worth and west Texas but up there 70-80% of the guys play football and by the time they are seniors at the good programs it still is at least 40%. My seventh grade year 120 out of 145 guys played football. My senior year there still were 45-50 plus underclassmen. Constant participation is fueling these schools and it just doesn't seem that Southeast Texas has the amount willing to play to keep up.

Another issue in the larger classifications is the amount of money spent on football both at a school level and in private lessons. Lake Travis, Katy and the DFW suburbs spend money on football than others schools spend on teaching. Many have 4-5 sub varsity and around 15-20 coaches. Individually most of these students pick one sport entering high school and then have private coaches because the parents can pay for that.

Not trying to bash anyone that's just my take on things having lived all over the state.

[chukslegacy]

Smitty, why was Nederland's defense so dominant the past 3-4 years, but open to so much criticism the 3-4 years prior??? This is high school football, you roll with the best you got, sometimes you have more to work with than others. There's only so much you can do to overcome talent deficiency... even for someone like Todd Dodge. Ask Nick Saban if he would go coach at Vanderbilt and do what he's done at Alab

 

One thing we are all missing: For the most part when we talk about the two most successful programs in the area (Newton and WOS),  No One else has that support.  By that I mean if a kid tries to quit the football team, they are not only ostracized in the community but the vast majority of them would be in serious trouble at home.  How many players would quit at other schools because of the Mustang mile, bleachers at the end of a two a day practice, etc.?

Right on Football! WOS does things a little different, i guess you can say its OLD SCHOOL COACHING!

[badndn]

RaiderRed the money spent on private lessons is what Dodge had at SLC and what he will get at Westlake. MONEY. Westlake is loaded just like SLC.
Numbers is an issue. One thing that keeps Nederland and PNG in the hunt for DCs locally each year is that those programs get alot of kids to come out for football and stay with it through HS so they have some depth. Problem is when they get into the later rounds of playoffs against teams with 400-700 students more than them the bigger schools have more talented depth.