Rumblings - Georgetown Prep May Leave the IAC, Setting Up Ripple Effect
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Anonymous
| PP, Actually, I have a ds who attends Landon! |
Anonymous
I wouldn’t agree with the term “death grip”, but the bitter rivalry between Prep and Landon athletics is bigger than it ought to be. We have had two sons go through Prep, who were good athletes and who played the three major sports. So we got a good look at the “rivalry” up close. As an old high school and college athlete, I was very surprised at the “heat” between the teams and the fans of the two schools. Every contest in what seems like every sport between Prep and Landon is the big game of the season. At its best the rivalry leads to exciting games between (usually) the two best teams in the conference. At its worse, these games are out-sized, near desperate struggles between two groups who really don’t like one another very much. My observation is that these schools arrive at this coming from two different directions. Athletics are very important at both schools. But at Prep, I don’t think they are quite so integrated into the whole school experience as they are at Landon. Landon seems to be following more of an English public school model . Teachers are also coaches and athletics teaches valuable life lessons. They seem to subscribe to the theory that “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”. I came to believe that Prep would be better off in the Catholic league not playing Landon in anything. I thought the wrong lessons were being learned. I never found a Landon parent or alum that agreed with that. |
Anonymous
| Ok. I buy that. At least if Prep dropped Landon, it would still have Catholicism and the jesuit tradition. And the pp certainly isn;t the first GP parent to say that the rivalry with Landon is not healthy. |
Anonymous
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Prep isn't leaving the IAC. In fact, their football team is leaving the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association and will play an independent schedule beginning the 2012 season -- kind of like Notre Dame does in college football.
The move is apparently due to the growing sense among the administration that Prep needed to reestablish its DC-area football presence and resume the rivalries that have been part of their past (e.g., St. Albans, Bullis will return to their football schedule, added to their annual games against Landon and Gonzaga). |
Anonymous
No, it's because they were getting pummeled by the MIAA and no other conference would have them for now. Expect them to find a way to join the WCAC (if they can somehow keep a rivalry going with Landon in lacrosse). |
Anonymous
Ridiculous. If Prep left because they were getting pummeled by the MIAA, then what would lead anyone to believe they would want to join an even tougher conference like the WcAC? It all comes down to alumni getting sick of a football schedule littered with unknown schools an hour outside of town. Interesting that Bullies, St. Albans, and Landon are willing to take them on. Why not bring Prep back into the fold for I.A.C. football? I think this all plaid out the same way back in the 70s. Prep was kicked out of IAC football and reinstated. |
Anonymous
Why would the players and fans want to go to Baltimore for so many games? No one wants to play a schedule full of random or long distance games. This is high school. |
Anonymous
| Georgetown Prep football returning to IAC. http://www.gazette.net/article/20131115/NEWS/131119412/1007/news&source=RSS&template=gazette |
Anonymous
I was going to post this, but you beat me to it. This thread should be saved as a perfect representation of the reliability of DCUM rumblings - the posters here had the IAC blown apart and were drooling over the remnants only to find that Prep is rejoining the IAC for football. Who would imagine that a small conference of tiny private schools could stir such passion among some of the most important people in the world. |
Anonymous
The most important people in the world are spending their time posting on an anonymous Mommy site? Jesus. |
Anonymous
Amazing. Prep is back in for football because Bullis, who led the charge to throw Prep out for football, has rediscovered sports as a way to boost school spirit and build enrollment. They were aided by the decline of GP strength which is due largely to their recent financial problems affecting the amount of aid they can offer. A football team consisting largely of kids paying full price is going to be less competitive. Landon never wanted Prep out and pursued them doggedly to schedule games because playing Prep has been the whole point of their athletic program. The IAC's problem is that it has no rules. So when one school or one coach decides he is going to break out of the pack like Episcopal basketball with Freddie Brown, Prep basketball with Duane Bryant or Prep football when they brought in Marcus Mason, the others are left in the dust. Bullis appears to be the next candidate. The IAC schools would do well to watch Landon and what they do to try and regain their position as the lacrosse power. Losing doesn't go down well on Wilson Lane. |
Anonymous
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I agree with the others who suggested that the issue across these leagues are based on competitive imbalance issues related to single-sec versus co-ed institutions.
I do not believe Potomac and Flint Hill would join the IAC to put themselves in a position of such a competitive imbalance to Landon and STA on a regular basis (and now Prep since they are rejoining for football). At the same time, Sidwell left the IAC in the mid 1990's exactly because of this imbalance - not because "they sucked at sports" but because they realized trying to compete in certain sports when they simply didn't have the enrollment population to draw on for regular competitiveness (and weren't willing to compromise academic standards for success on the field) - not sure why other co-ed schools would sign up for that today. Now, if there were a move to create a private school league for NoVa comprised of EHS, SSSA, Flint Hill and Potomac, that would be an issue for both the MAC and IAC and would necessarily change the landscape in the area. |
Anonymous
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[b]"The IAC schools would do well to watch Landon and what they do to try and regain their position as the lacrosse power. Losing doesn't go down well on Wilson Lane."
This is a very insightful statement. Landon has just implemented a "merit scholarship" program with ambiguous, at best, criteria for awarding $$$ to rising freshmen candidates and existing students as part of a "good citizen" campaign. Somehow, I see Coach Bordley, et al. in control of that checkbook. Losing to SSSA last year in lax and a below .500 year in football this season is just not an acceptable outcome in Bear Country. St. Albans was a good snap on a short field goal from beating the Bears last weekend. Not sure the Bear faithful could have handled that loss after last spring's loss to the Saints. |
Anonymous
| It is remarkable how important IAC sports are in this area. Second only to NFL. |
Anonymous
 Yes, so important to civilzation as we know it.
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