ADVERTISEMENT

Round 1 playoffs, post scores here

EC students aren't allowed to participate in sports, and their enrollment is not counted in adm's. And to answer your question, no I see no inherent advantage. We all know what Robbinsville fans argument is, and I just don't see it. Knights fans are the only ones who whine about it. There are early colleges in almost half the counties in the state. It is purely academic. I am all for the advancement of education in North Carolina, cause apparently there are some really dumb people out there.
Then how does a football player attend there?
 
I'm done arguing about it. Robbinsville is the underdog, forever and always. They are always going to be at a disadvantage, somewhere, some how.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cdoc73
I'm done arguing about it. Robbinsville is the underdog, forever and always. They are always going to be at a disadvantage, somewhere, some how.
Lol! Thats funny, you were the one that actually brought it up in this thread! I would never say were an underdog either. Think we usually hold our own. The simple easy to understand point Ive always made is that if there were no early colleges or in some cases off campus alternative schools, some schools would be in a different bracket. Simple truth.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BK13T-$ and Mbulld
Early colleges are killing enrollments across the state. Here in rural Edgecombe County, our early college is growing quickly and just finished expanding campus buildings. Two realignments from now, SW Edgecombe will be 1A, Tarboro will remain 1A, and North Edgecombe, currently with 190 students, will close their doors. Like someone said earlier, how could you blame students serious about academics for choosing early colleges? And I know of none that play sports.
Northeastern also going 1a
 
Don’t know if you know but the head coach is Travis Gaster the son of Jack Gaster who coached at Albemarle. Travis played for his dad at Albemarle. His mother was also the principal or assistant principal at North Rowan during that time.Does Princeton still run the single wing?

They still run single wing.
 
I don't know when, but eventually there will be two high schools in this county: Cherokee County High and TCEC. Numbers continue to fall at Murphy, Andrews and HD. They'll probably push for a Cherokee Co West (Ranger) and Cherokee Co East (Marble) as an intermediate step but eventually that will be untenable as well.

Personally I will never support consolidation as long as Conley and others are hellbent on splitting up Murphy's current student body. The only plan I would support is a central high school for the whole county. Murphy is the geographic, demographic and economic center of the county, as much as it upsets some it's the only logical place to put a consolidated high school. I'm not suggesting to keep the Murphy name if that happened either, figure something out that represents the whole county.

The biggest blow back on a one high solution is the travel arguments but they are largely bunk, it's no farther to Murphy from Topton or Culberson than it is from Unaka or parts of Beaver Dam. Plenty of kids are already traveling from Hiwassee Dam or Andrews to Peachtree for the early college, very similiar travel distance. The travel would be a hardship for some but the needs of the many should always outweigh the needs of the few.
Based on this week's paper some on the school board are finally coming around on the idea of one central high school in their long term consolidation agenda, as opposed to the east/west high nonsense. The school board members also asked to look into the feasibility of K thru 8th schools in HD/Ranger, Murphy and Andrews as a long term elementary/middle school solutions.

This is where I've stood from the beginning on how it should go if consolidation must happen (i.e. one central high school and three K-8 schools) it's the only consolidation plan I will ever get behind. It's good to see it potentially trending in that direction, it's the only way you'll get people in this county to come together long term and there not be bitter feelings and resentment involved. Murphy people would have never supported splitting up their district in an East/West proposition.

The one central school plan is also exponentially cheaper than an East/West high plan or somehow trying to fix all the current dilapidated school buildings in the county. Four total schools to maintain and upkeep (minus the Oaks/TCEC building) for a small county with a declining student population, as opposed to the 13 they have now that would need major repairs to maintain and use. That's not a hard call in my opinion.

If the one central high route is the one they ultimately take, it looks like they would probably put the central high school in Peachtree in the same complex as the Oaks/TCEC building. If that happens you'll probably see one athletic program for the whole county as opposed to a separate TCEC athletic program. One athletic program would be better for the county in terms of competing, even if adding in the early college students pushes the enrollment numbers up. Cherokee County High (or whatever they would call it) would be 2A sized with or without the early college students added in (800 ish versus 950 ish students) under the current class alignment.

This long range consolidation agenda is something that will take a while to come to fruition no matter what plan(s) they ultimately decide on, but people might as well mentally prepare themselves because major change is coming, no matter how any of us feel about it. It started with Marble Elementary and now Martins Creek Elem/Middle looks likely to soon follow, these are the beggining.

It goes without saying that I would hate to see Murphy High go, it would be a punch in the gut. But if all the current kids that make up Murphy's district got to stay together in the future in one county wide school I will take that all day long over dividing them up and killing athletics in this county.
 
Last edited:
Not to get into whether I personally favor one, two, or three high schools, but I hated that the article gave an indirect quote (or misquote, possibly) of a school board member apparently advocating exploring the idea because they said all of Cherokee County’s border counties have one central high school and Buncombe is the closest county that doesn’t ...a figure off by at least 4 counties that either border Cherokee Co or are west of Buncombe in N.C... and could include as many as 8 counties (depending on if you count K-12 schools, schools run by different governments within the same county, and Jackson Co. now that Blue Ridge is technically an Early College). Then the article just let that misinformation sit there uncorrected, where it will probably get read by a bunch of part time residents who don’t know any better.

However, if it happens, it will be interesting to see what would happen to the SMC. Would it become a 1A/2A split league with Smoky Mountain, Franklin, and maybe even the TWO Haywood schools joining the Cherokee County school in the 2A part? Or would the Cherokee County school essentially join the Mountain Six, then the Little Smoky and Big Smoky fold into one league with 9 or 10 schools but only 5 football schools? Or something else?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: mbdfan
Not to get into whether I personally favor one, two, or three high schools, but I hated that the article gave an indirect quote (or misquote, possibly) of a school board member apparently advocating exploring the idea because they said all of Cherokee County’s border counties has one central high school and Buncombe is the closest county that doesn’t ...a figure off by at least 4 counties that either border Cherokee Co or are west of Buncombe in N.C... and could include as many as 8 counties (depending on if you count K-12 schools, schools run by different local governments within the same county, and Jackson Co. now that Blue Ridge is technically an Early College). Then the article just let that misinformation sit there uncorrected, where it will probably get read by a bunch of part time residents who don’t know any better.

However, if it happens, it will be interesting to see what would happen to the SMC. Would it become a 1A/2A split league with Smoky Mountain, Franklin, and maybe even Pisgah and Tuscola joining the Cherokee County school in the 2A part? Or would the Cherokee County school essentially join the Mountain Six, then the Little Smoky and Big Smoky fold into one league with 9 or 10 schools but only 5 football schools? Or something else?
Yeah I caught that misinformation too. Fannin, Union, Graham, Clay, Towns are one high school systems but Macon isn't, Polk isn't, Swain isn't (although since Cherokee is a federal school maybe you could conclude it is).

Buncombe isn't even close to being the nearest with more than one high, pretty misleading statement to make.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ObserveAndReport
Yeah I caught that misinformation too. Fannin, Union, Graham, Clay, Towns are one high school systems but Macon isn't, Polk isn't, Swain isn't (although since Cherokee is a federal school maybe you could conclude it is).

Buncombe isn't even close to being the nearest with more than one high, pretty ignorant statement to make. Would have been much better off being truthful and saying the majority of surrounding counties have one high school.

Monroe County also borders Cherokee Co to the north and has three traditional high schools. Plus Haywood and Transylvania have two each and are west of Buncombe. And I’d point out that of the five single-high-school counties you mentioned, Cherokee County is about 4,000 people and 75 square miles bigger than the next biggest county (Fannin). If one high school is what the informed consensus ends up being, that’s fine. But it needs to be informed.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mbdfan
Not to get into whether I personally favor one, two, or three high schools, but I hated that the article gave an indirect quote (or misquote, possibly) of a school board member apparently advocating exploring the idea because they said all of Cherokee County’s border counties have one central high school and Buncombe is the closest county that doesn’t ...a figure off by at least 4 counties that either border Cherokee Co or are west of Buncombe in N.C... and could include as many as 8 counties (depending on if you count K-12 schools, schools run by different governments within the same county, and Jackson Co. now that Blue Ridge is technically an Early College). Then the article just let that misinformation sit there uncorrected, where it will probably get read by a bunch of part time residents who don’t know any better.

However, if it happens, it will be interesting to see what would happen to the SMC. Would it become a 1A/2A split league with Smoky Mountain, Franklin, and maybe even the TWO Haywood schools joining the Cherokee County school in the 2A part? Or would the Cherokee County school essentially join the Mountain Six, then the Little Smoky and Big Smoky fold into one league with 9 or 10 schools but only 5 football schools? Or something else?

Hey guys, I'm gonna fess up. I'm the board member in question. It was a combination - the paper misquoted me and I misspoke. What I said was something more like "you would just about have to go to Buncombe County to find a county with as many high schools as us" but they put something like "you would have to go to Buncombe County to find more than one high school". Even if they quoted me accurately, that still wouldn't be 100% accurate because of counties like Macon. And I was only considering WNC, I'm not real familiar with neighboring counties in TN.

I wasn't trying to intentionally mislead the public on consolidation. I'm just trying to consider everything. I said I could support one school, but I think there's a lot to consider. It would be a big change and I don't take that lightly. It would have to be done right.
 
Hey guys, I'm gonna fess up. I'm the board member in question. It was a combination - the paper misquoted me and I misspoke. What I said was something more like "you would just about have to go to Buncombe County to find a county with as many high schools as us" but they put something like "you would have to go to Buncombe County to find more than one high school". Even if they quoted me accurately, that still wouldn't be 100% accurate because of counties like Macon. And I was only considering WNC, I'm not real familiar with neighboring counties in TN.

I wasn't trying to intentionally mislead the public on consolidation. I'm just trying to consider everything. I said I could support one school, but I think there's a lot to consider. It would be a big change and I don't take that lightly. It would have to be done right.
Thank you for the clarification, appreciate you taking the time to respond.

In an ideal world retaining our community schools would be great but when money and resources are spread so thin because there's more schools than the population can support, it very likely makes that an untenable proposition long term. That's a painful truth, but it's a truth none the less and from what I gather you seem to recognize and understand this.

Tough decisions will have to be made and I wish you and the rest of the board the best in coming up with a solution that gives the future generation(s) of this county the best opportunities academically and athletically.
 
Last edited:
Hey guys, I'm gonna fess up. I'm the board member in question. It was a combination - the paper misquoted me and I misspoke. What I said was something more like "you would just about have to go to Buncombe County to find a county with as many high schools as us" but they put something like "you would have to go to Buncombe County to find more than one high school". Even if they quoted me accurately, that still wouldn't be 100% accurate because of counties like Macon. And I was only considering WNC, I'm not real familiar with neighboring counties in TN.

I wasn't trying to intentionally mislead the public on consolidation. I'm just trying to consider everything. I said I could support one school, but I think there's a lot to consider. It would be a big change and I don't take that lightly. It would have to be done right.
I live in the Piedmont, and know absolutely nothing about these issues. But I want to thank you for posting this. People often think these decisions are easy, especially if one particular option favors them. And just because a newspaper quotes something doesn't make it accurate.
Thank you for taking the time to serve your school system. I wish more people with integrity would seek public office. And obviously, you have it.
 
I live in the Piedmont, and know absolutely nothing about these issues. But I want to thank you for posting this. People often think these decisions are easy, especially if one particular option favors them. And just because a newspaper quotes something doesn't make it accurate.
Thank you for taking the time to serve your school system. I wish more people with integrity would seek public office. And obviously, you have it.

Thank you, I appreciate that. We are passionate about Murphy, Andrews, and HD sports but we just want to try to do what's best for all the students. And I appreciate people paying attention and calling me out haha!
 
I also really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I wasn’t sure if the quote was correct and wasn’t trying to call anyone out, necessarily, except maybe the paper itself. I don’t envy the decision you are going to have to make.
 
I also really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I wasn’t sure if the quote was correct and wasn’t trying to call anyone out, necessarily, except maybe the paper itself. I don’t envy the decision you are going to have to make.

Thank you!
 
If what's best for our students and community takes more money than we have, we can't settle for less than they deserve.

Agree 100%. It should save us money in the long run, but I'm not going to go along with a plan that ends up calling for us to nickel and dime it to death. We will have to have top notch facilities, gym, ball fields, etc.
 
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest posts

ADVERTISEMENT