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How do you win a state championship in football?

I'd have to agree with the CatholicCougs14 and BleedBlue. It all starts with continuity with the kids from middle school on up. We all have seen teams with "freak" athletes make a splash in the pan for a few years and then they disappear into the dark and become middle of the road teams. Where as you look at the Charlotte Catholic, Crest, Clinton, Murphy, Shelby, and a couple other you see two things. 1 - Consistency from middle school on up. 2 - Coaches taking athletes who are so-so and making them better than they are. Sure, everyone can talk recruiting with Catholic - I don't see it. In today's football with all the flash the spread, RPO's, and Air Raid what "athlete" wants to choose to go to school that runs an offense that no college team in D1 run; the wing-t? They always have a really good back and kids that have a high football IQ that don't shoot themselves in the foot.

This learning starts in middle school. Way to often you see guys who have never played a lick of football coaching middle school teams. They know nothing about the development of individual technique and how to apply that to a scheme. I went and watched the two middle schools in my area that feed into the high school play. The high school runs a shotgun power scheme - always at least a pulling guards or a tackle & guard pulling in a counter play. Very rarely does the high school run vertical shots unless it is being given to them. In the middle school game it was get the best athlete the ball and get to the outside. The kid wasn't learning how to run upside in A, B, or C gap. Zero guard pull - zero proper hand placement by linemen - standing straight up. These are habits that are learned and hard to break once a kid is 14-15 years old; unless you are a "freak" athlete and can use raw strength or athleticism to by pass this.

Also, JV programs tend to be overlooked. Once again with cuts in available coaching slots with pay and the actual pay of the positions most programs looks to volunteers to fill their staff and coach JV. Shoot, just south of us in SC they have (at the bigger schools) 9th grade team, JV team, and varsity team. Most of all (not all) of those positions are paid and typically the coach is in the building as a teacher. Here in NC you don't find that (there are only a couple I know about).

If people want NC to be a football state then it has to start from the bottom up not the top down. HC's at the high school must demand a system that starts in the middle schools and works up. Works with the coaches at the middle school level. Take them with them to clinics and coaching conventions. The older coaches have bought their time in the system and have every right to say they don't want to move back down because they learned to cut their teeth down there with hard work and learning. Todays younger coaches want a HC position by the time they are 30 and most don't want to go through the trenches teaching football and learning how the process to developing a culture and how a team is built. They learn to stick it out at school and work their way up from the bottom even when things aren't going so great. Even when their is a coaching change you see a good chunk of the staff sticking around. Kudos to Catholic, Crest, and Shelby if there is one thing I know from an outsiders perspective is there is Culture taught to those kids from the time they reach middle school till the time they graduate. That can't be said for most schools.


Outstanding!
 
You old fellas (you know who you are )better slow down you are already in mid-season form which means for most of you it is not being liquored up enough to coherently put together two or more words without the rest of us praying for blindness

Your friend

Shelby Lion
 
Totally surprised by SP's decision to go to a spread offense this year. Hear that the new transfer QB from Eastern NC has an absolute gun and the receivers recruited from Cleveland County can fly. Those linemen brought in from Gaffney are stout and the LB's recruited from Buford Georgia are side line to side line beast...............Sorry, just woke up from my dream and thought that we were the Crest BullChargers.
 
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