Private School Football Thread

[Anonymous]

Prep has excellent coaching. Their defensive line is on the small side, but they are quick and well coached. The 20 million is an anonymous alumni bequest that was earmarked by the donor for the dorms. Prep can only spend the money for that purpose.

[Anonymous]

This is adapted from a post on another thread -- I realized it probably belongs on this thread more:

I am curious about how the various IAC schools keep up the numbers/talent in football.

--Bullis recruits aggressively mostly in the DMV and is willing to bring in upper class transfers.
--Episcopal has developed a Division I pipeline from a Canadian "football academy" (not my phrase, that's how it's described), which provides the top level talent for that program.
--Landon's legendary head lacrosse coach is an assistant football coach and actively encourages the lacrosse kids to play football -- I noticed that a top Division I lacrosse recruit blocked a field goal to help Landon win a recent game. (Follow up: I wonder if that trend will continue when he retires? When STA last won the the IAC in football (2011, I think), a lot of the best football players were very good lacrosse and baseball players playing football as a second sport. That "second sport of football" seems to have dropped precipitously at STA, I assume mainly because of the concussion fears.)
--St. Stephens St. Agnes, which has a very good lacrosse program, so scuffling in football this year in the league so far and I'm curious if the number of lacrosse/football two-fees has gone down.
--STA used to rely a fair amount on athletes who identified more as baseball/lacrosse players and played football as a second sport. They may be doing more football-specific recruiting now?
--Lastly, Prep has the advantage of having 500 boys and being high school only, so presumably they know a bit better if kids are going to play football when they apply and can target numbers and talent, but do they have a lot of football/lax two-fers? Or football/baseball two-fers?

I'm not trying to start a mudslinging match about recruiting, etc. -- I'm honestly curious how to keep numbers up in football in this independent school environment (one-sport specialization and off-season club commitments, relatively small student bodies, prevalence of youth soccer, concussion concerns). Is it a "build it and they will come" scenario, in which, if you have a winning program, you'll get a big roster because home-grown athletes want to play? Or are all the schools essentially going to have to recruit for the majority of their football rosters?

[Anonymous]

Yes Prep has some football/baseball and football/ track kids, but not so much football/lacrosse. Those seem to be different worlds. For football, they don't recruit outside of this area, to my knowledge, but they do know what sports each boy wants to play. In my son's case, he attended a parochial school and they came to watch him play at his football club games when he was in 8th garde. I really think the secret to their remaining competitive is the football tradition, the strong coaching staff, and that the boys on the team really have fun. Also many many boys try the all freshman team to see if they enjoy it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes Prep has some football/baseball and football/ track kids, but not so much football/lacrosse. Those seem to be different worlds. For football, they don't recruit outside of this area, to my knowledge, but they do know what sports each boy wants to play. In my son's case, he attended a parochial school and they came to watch him play at his football club games when he was in 8th garde. I really think the secret to their remaining competitive is the football tradition, the strong coaching staff, and that the boys on the team really have fun. Also many many boys try the all freshman team to see if they enjoy it.

I asked my two sons, who played three sports (FB, BB and Lax) at Prep about the difference between the three programs.

They said FB was the best of the programs. The program was incredibly well-organized. They always knew what they were doing and what was expected of them. There was never any time-wasting or confusion about anything. It was like a well-oiled machine in both the Fagan and Paro eras. The team "punched above its weight" beating teams with superior personnel because they just didn't beat themselves very often.

Both of these boys played a college sport for all four years and they still felt that their Prep FB experience from a coaching standpoint was the best they had. This includes 5 or 6 years of Maplewood youth football.

[Anonymous]

Prep football is very strong but it has a huge advantage to its IAC counter parts.

It's enrollment is over 500 boys.
Landon and STA upper school enrollment is close to 340 boys.
Bullis is around 280 boys in its upper school and Saint Stephens and Episcopal are even smalller.

My son also played football and baseball at a rival IAC school and to this day says his best sporting memories in HS were on the gridiron field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Prep football is very strong but it has a huge advantage to its IAC counter parts.

It's enrollment is over 500 boys.
Landon and STA upper school enrollment is close to 340 boys.
Bullis is around 280 boys in its upper school and Saint Stephens and Episcopal are even smalller.

My son also played football and baseball at a rival IAC school and to this day says his best sporting memories in HS were on the gridiron field.

Stop your whining.

[Anonymous]

no one is whining just stating basic facts.

[Anonymous]

Bullis won the IAC in 2011 in football--it was the Bullis football teams first IAC outright championship. St Alban's may have won in 2010 or 2009...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:no one is whining just stating basic facts.

Yeah. Whining.

[Anonymous]

Prep football is very good this year. They still have Landon, Episcopal, and Bullis on the schedule. Let's see what happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Prep football is very good this year. They still have Landon, Episcopal, and Bullis on the schedule. Let's see what happens.

Prep demolished Landon in a shutout win yesterday. It appears to be a two-team race in the IAC (with Bullis as a strong third-place team): Prep's depth vs. Episcopal's Canadian imports. Episcopal is sitting in the catbird seat (to use a Southern reference to balance out the Canadian reference) because they've beaten everyone else in the league already. Prep still will have Bullis at the end of the season.

[Anonymous]

Episcopal has not
Beaten Zprep so they have not beaten everyone in the league. Next Friday's game should be fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Episcopal has not
Beaten Zprep so they have not beaten everyone in the league. Next Friday's game should be fun.

It said Episcopal had beaten "everyone else" in the league -- i.e., other than Georgetown Prep. Episcopal has beaten Bullis, Prep has to play them in their last game, and Bullis is a good team. So Episcopal is in the better position objectively -- they need one win, not two wins, to win the league championship outright.

But there's certainly a good possibility that Prep will beat Episcopal -- seems pretty evenly matched so turnovers and execution may be the difference. If Prep does win, though, they will need to stay focused to close it out against a Bullis team with some nice talent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:no one is whining just stating basic facts.

Yeah. Whining.

This is why everyone hates the Catholic mafia. Their dads are the worst.

[Anonymous]

Congratulations to Maret Football, by the way -- winning the MAC title this year with an undefeated season (most recently crushing Sidwell, Potomac, and Flint Hill).