<p>Is there a prep school league where the kids are that big? Inquiring minds want to know.</p>
<p>The schools that admit one year seniors and PGs have some big boys. A quick google of “Andover, football, pounds” spat out the names Bobby Kubacki (6-5 300-pounds) and Bobby Vardaro (6-5, 320-pounds). Not picking on Andover. I’m sure other schools have some bruisers. I’m just too lazy to do more than one search. :-)</p>
<p>Woodberry Forest (395 boys, 100% boarding) plays football in the Virginia Prep League. Members include:</p>
<p>Christchurch School
Collegiate Schools
Fork Union Military Academy (FUMA)
Norfolk Academy
St. Anne’s-Belfield School
St. Christopher’s School
Trinity Episcopal School
Woodberry Forest School</p>
<p>FUMA produces a number of DIV I and (eventual) NFL players. However, their PG football team, which has the bulk (no pun) of huge kids, plays in a separate league (e.g., against collegiate JV teams).</p>
<p>Woodberry’s varsity plays a few non-league games each year against public high schools (e.g., J.R. Tucker with a student population of 1,593). It is not uncommon for WFS to face 300 lb linemen in such games.</p>
<p>Lots of things wrong here…</p>
<p>The fact that a team defeats its opponents by 40 or more points is irrelevant to a forefeit issue. I’m not sure why this is even being discussed.</p>
<p>I went to a public HS in Los Angeles that had a history of dominating LA’s football scene. I can remember a streak of 10 years where they were in the championship game all 10 years, winning 8 of them. I remember multiple years where the average margin of victory was in excess of 60 points. I remember a year where the 2 RBs in the backfield were future rookie starters in the NFL and both averaged in excess of 10 yards per carry. The team didn’t recruit people to move to the area. It just happened. And I’m sure LA doesn’t need to knock on too many doors as it has a reputation as a powerhouse. When I hear other schools complain about margin of victory, I hear sour grapes. </p>
<p>Moving onto the 300 lb player issue. These are OFFENSIVE linemen. This means they have to get in a 3 point stance, so the defender can choose the angle and point of attack. 200 lb safeties blitz these gaps between behemouths and stuff runs and sack QBs in the NFL every week. They don’t get creamed doing it. It is not like they nail the defensive players to the ground and let the offensive linemen play big time wrestling. </p>
<p>If St. Georgeous cannot field players fast enough to get away from these behemouths and not get hurt, they are not doing their job as a participant in an athletic league. </p>
<p>If someone brings up the concussion issue, I will tell you that concussions are the effect of force which most of these schools teach as mass multiplied by velocity. These 300 lb linemen are not sprinting at helpless receivers trying to catch a ball. If you know much about football, the vast majority of concussions are suffered by skill players (usually offensive) who are the targets of tackles by faster moving players who are trying to stop them. Once again, doesn’t fit the profile of helpless defensive players being concussed by behemouth linemen. </p>
<p>Now if LA was running student-body-left (the standard USC pitch to the tailback 10 yards deep who then gets a head of steam going before he hits the line of scrimmage) using these 300 lb kids as battering rams knowing well that they will never do this in college, I’d pull my kids and walk off the field. However, these 300 lb kids are playing positions that are appropriate for their builds.</p>
<p>And further, it isn’t like LA suddenly decided to change its formula. They’ve been dominating for years and St. Georges chooses not to compete. I personally think the ISL should call it a forfeit and put them on notice that if they do it again, they will be dropped from the league for football. If you are going to play in a league, don’t schedule a game you are going to consider forfeiting.</p>
<p>BTW, this is coming from a parent who let’s his daughter play in the men’s league here with and against current and former minor league and collegiate players who outweigh her by well over 100 lbs. And anyone who knows hockey understand that goalies are often in very vulnerable positions. She knows the risks and understands how to play safely. I think she would have played football at prep school if they’d asked her. And if after looking at the coaching, I thought that she was properly instructed, I’d let her play - even against the 300 lb. players. There are risks to any athletic endeavor. If properly coached and reasonably skilled, a player who understands the risks of the position they play can manage the risks quite well. </p>
<p>The players at St. Georges have nothing to be ashamed of except their athletic staff and headmaster who failed to adequately recruit and prepare a team for a forseeable opponent.</p>
<p>Goaliedad, thank you for making me painfully aware of how completely unqualified I am to offer any opinion on this specific matter! :)</p>
<p>goaliedad, i need to disagree with you a bit. a good 300 lb offensive lineman, even in high school, is not just a static lump of lard. the good ones move fast and frequently, like penetrating into the defensive backfield and flattening a linebacker. I should know. i was flattened by one of those guys. my leg was not just broken, it was shattered. the orthopedic surgeon said it was one of the worst things he’d seen. multiple screws were required to hold it together while it healed. they’re still in there. </p>
<p>i was a growing sophomore and the leg was shattered at a growth end. for the rest of my life, i deal every day with that leg being shorter than the other. it’s never a pleasant thing, i can assure you.</p>
<p>therein lies perhaps the biggest danger. most high school kids have growing bodies and bone injuries in these years can have truly serious lifelong consequences.</p>
<p>so i applaud the st. george’s coach. he made a diificult decision in defense of the health of his growing young charges. i think he made a good and wise decision.</p>
<p>and by the way mass multiplied by velocity is not force it’s momentum. score two errors for you!</p>
<p>I’m sorry if I came off as a know-it-all. It is very easy to feel bad for this situation and actually I feel bad for the players on both teams because they didn’t get to compete that week. </p>
<p>My problem with the whole story really isn’t athletic, but about a school administration that is hiding the fact that they did a poor job of managing its competing missions of academics, arts, athletics and other things in its admissions and FA process, creating an athletic schedule they couldn’t fufill. They are hiding behind a safety issue, which they could see coming late in the summer (I’m sure this isn’t the first batch of 300 lb players to play ISL football) when their incoming class didn’t have the football players necessary to schedule LA and yet they scheduled them and acted surprised when they had D1 recruited players on the O-line (not a new phenomenom, from what I’m seeing).</p>
<p>At other boarding schools (even those with very small endowments like where goaliegirl attended), when they find themselves in a crack with regards to fielding a competitive team, pony up a few shekels for a kid who has the brains and brawn to complete the team, but lacks the bucks. To be brutally honest, I believe it is why goaliegirl got generous FA late in the spring during her recruiting year. The school did not do a good job of recruiting goalies (had none incoming or returning) that year and she was the last quality one available for the money they had. And they had to dig deep for her. She had plenty of brains (did quite well in their top level classes) and braun for the school, but we definitely lacked the bucks. </p>
<p>I do like you and hope I didn’t offend, neato!</p>
<p>I’ll give you credit for correcting the formula JayPee. My thoughtless error. </p>
<p>My condolences to you on your injury. That type of injury can occur with 300 lb kids and also if you get your leg pinned and a pile (stacking up the ball carrier) of people fall back on you as well. I don’t know how you were coached in football, but even in the south where hockey isn’t big, at checking clinics they spend as much (if not more) time teaching kids how to take a check as how to give a check. Teaching athletes how to protect themselves in contact sports is critical. When I talked about proper coaching above, that is what I was referring to. Knowing how to give ground without getting injured. Knowing what is a safe way to deliver a hit and what is unsafe and applying the proper discipline to ensure that only safe hits are delivered. It doesn’t eliminate risk, but it makes what is inherently an unsafe activity as safe as it can be.</p>
<p>And 10th graders should probably not be playing varsity football (or men’s hockey for that matter) in a league that allows PGs. Too much difference in physical maturity. Don’t know if that was the case where you went to school, but St. Georges should recruit accordingly.</p>
<p>There are no PG’s in the ISL.</p>
<p>Someone posted on the Boston Herald’s website that one of Lawrence’s linemen was expelled from a local Catholic school, but was brought in to Lawrence as a repeat Jr. </p>
<p>SG is doing two things here: ostensibly protectintg their players, but clearly trying to send a message to the rest of the ISL. In spite of the St. Mark’s coaches comments, fif guesses that St. Paul’s, Brooks, Middlesex, Groton etc. are on board with that message.</p>
<p>Sorry, goaliedad, but it seems to me that you may have things backward here. You’re faulting the St. George’s coach for not doing an adequate job of recruiting, etc. while at the same time you acknowledge that LA has long dominated the ISL (because of its more aggressive recruiting, etc.). To me, it seems that LA is really the “outlaw” here, operating in a manner alarmingly different from the rest of the ISL. To me, the best way to level the playing field here is either for LA to join a different league or for all of the other ISL schools to follow St. George’s example. There really are some serious safety issues when there is so much consistent disparity between the physicality of one school’s team and that of all the others.</p>
<p>Oh no! I’m not offended. It takes a LOT more than being more knowledgable to offend me.</p>
<p>LA has not long dominated the ISL. Until recently BB&N was the dominant team. BB&N has lost only 3 games in the last 4 years & LA’s victory over BB&N last fall was by only two points. The year before BB&N beat LA 20-13.</p>
<p>Actually, Mainer95, I was faulting the entire administration at St. George’s. Coaches can talk up a program all day long, but when it comes to top level talent, it is the administration that ultimately gets the job done. That is usually done in the FA department. I’ve known a few very good coaches at some very good schools where that particular sport was not a “priority” (i.e. they play with what shows up). I also remeber a rival of goaliegirl’s school that never had a long bench on their girls hockey team and for that matter was rather uncompetitive in all of their women’s sports. I had the opportunity to talk to the hockey coach last year when I noticed that suddenly he had a very long bench and a much stronger recruiting class than in previous years. He was very blunt in saying that the school recognized that it had been shorting its girls teams for a number of years (the boys teams OTOH had been doing quite well in league across the board) so the headmaster decided to change the priorities to make it a more balanced approach. Point here is that it is the priorities of the school administration that leads to these situtaions. </p>
<p>As to LA operating as an outlaw, I didn’t see the mention of any rules being violated anywhere, although seeing the above reference to a student expelled from another school perhaps the ISL should ban that practice (require second chance students to play 1 year of JV before promotion to varsity which should eliminate the “bad boys” who are just there to play varsity sports) as they don’t want the league to be know as the home of “second chance” schools. They decided a while back to prioritize their efforts and resources to field a top football team. Other schools choose to favor other sports. And St. George’s chooses to schedule games they know they can’t compete in and then walk away to make a political statement. IIRC they are not required to schedule every team in the league (they didn’t play last year IIRC).</p>
<p>Funny this is still going on but I have to say that I played left gaurd, and every play we didn’t pass or go up the middle we pulled. We were fast and brutal and I remember it like it was yesterday but I was no 300 lbs… To have a 300 plus pounder coming around the corner can be somewhat intimidating to say the least, especially with the objective to take down anyone standing within reach. I don’t know where you get the idea that they just block on the line. I also don’t understand where FA comes into any of this. SG does not recruit jocks. Athletes have to have something more between their ears and they do exist. A lot of these kids may never get the opportunity to play team sports at all if they went to their local PS. One of the terrific benefits of boarding school, everyone plays. SG made the right call. So they forfeit, big deal. My guess is that this will all be history by next Fall.</p>
<p>Coming from a family including cousins and in-laws of current and passed boarders with many from the ISL, not to mention SG, I am being pummeled on this issue with emails and phone calls asking who’s my daddy. Geez louise, nothing else going on in New England these days. I can’t wait until Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Goalie Dad,</p>
<p>What would you do, as a football, boys hockey, or boys lacrosse coach, if you found yourself in the position where your team physically could not compete, and you felt that there was a significantly higher than normal risk of serious injury to your athletes? Would you play the game, with the downside of putting athletes at risk, and the upside of teaching yourself a lesson about the inadequacy of your recruiting?</p>
<p>I think the answer is different if you are talking about non-collision sports, (baseball, golf, tennis, hoops, girls sports) but when you coach high school or prep football, hockey, lacrosse, you often don’t get to take them all home with you on the bus. The assumption of risk of injury is part of athletic competition, and moreso with regard to collission sports, but that risk should be rational and measured. Coaches and athletic directors are charged with the responsibility of assuring that the risks taken by athletes are within the reasonable boundaries. I am not familiar with these teams but I applaud the sentiment.</p>
<p>Furthermore, recent studies have shown that offensive and defensive linemen are more susceptible to concussion than other position players as a result of the repeated head trauma phenomenon. Repetetive head traumas, unfortunately, appear to cause more debilitating long term brain injuries than singular high impact concussions.</p>
<p>St. Mark’s did not appreciate being lumped together with St. George’s. I went to visit St. Mark’s on the day they played Lawrence in most sports. I’ll admit I spent more time at the field hockey game where they lost 3-0. I did however go to the football game and yes they did have players that are huge. We lost 37-0 if I remember correctly, but I am almost 100% sure nobody got injured. I left the game a bit early so maybe somebody got hurt after I left, but while I was there everyone looked okay. </p>
<p>Also, despite losing the game, I spoke to some of the current SM football players and past players and ALL of them said they would rather play the game and lose than not even try. </p>
<p>I know SMS football is planning on showing St. George’s that they are not the same as them and that they are a team worth playing even if they are team you’d beat by a large amount.</p>
<p>
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<p>If you read my post carefully, I was quite clear that the recruiting issue is actually not a coach issue, but a school issue, as last I checked coaches are not the only ones involved in admitting a class of students, so please leave off the inadequacy of recruiting by the coach. </p>
<p>There are perfectly legitimate reasons to call off a game for safety concerns. I think there was a game played recently where the game was forfeited at halftime because the team couldn’t field enough healthy players to play the second half, due to injury and illness. The coach there gave his players the opportunity to play in the first half and upon further review of the healthy headcount at halftime, decided that they would not be able to complete the game and that halftime would be a better stopping point.</p>
<p>I’ll give him credit for giving his kid the chance to play. St. George’s was a 2-0 team coming into the contest if I read the article correctly, so I’m guessing that there are at least 2 other teams that should be forfeiting to LA if they are on the schedule? In any event, he didn’t even let them play the first snap before pulling the plug. He looked at uninjured kids in their street clothes and decided they weren’t healthy enough to play.</p>
<p>Your statistics on concussions and linemen deal with players who played the game in the old days when “head slaps” were legal and players were allowed to lead with their heads when blocking and blitzing and now they look at the long term damage to these players. This is not valid to compare to today’s players. If you look at the rules today, head contact is always a penalty and coaches get in trouble if too many of those pentalties are called. The game has changed and if you look at the players missing games in the NFL these days for concussions, you will find the vast majority of them are not linemen.</p>
<p>And one last thing, you clearly are uninformed if you think girls sports don’t have trauma risks. I know there were multiple concussions on my daughter’s hockey team last year. I’ve seen collar bones broken on legal contact in “no-check” girls hockey. There were also concussions on her lax team last year as for some stupid reason girls don’t wear helmets playing lax (while the guys do).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>ops,</p>
<p>I’m going to have to disagree with you here. Schools that field varsity athletic teams recruit “jocks”. And yes, FA is a part of the game here. As much as you think all FA is given out to the needy kids who raise the academic stats of a boarding school, you seem a bit naiive to the reality of situation. Alumni and a lot of prospective students care if the school has sports teams that compete effectively in a league. And football always seems to be one of the bigger draws (although hockey does quite well in NE boarding schools) .</p>
<p>And yes, everyone at BS plays sports, but not varsity. I can understand a JV game being called off because of a safety concern as many of the kids on the team are “required” to play on a “team sport”. Last I checked all varsity players are volunteers.</p>
<p>Your as free to disagree as I am to say it was the right call to cancel the game. I can reiterate that SG does not accept a student solely on his or her athletic ability unless they’re up to speed with the academics. I know SG is not alone in that respect. Taft comes to mind when having rough football seasons. Granted I’m sure SG and others role the dice once in a while on a student. This particular issue has been on going since last November 2009. It was presented to the ISL over this past year and was not acted upon by the ISL. The ISL is still out on the forfeit decision. The fact that the circumstances have been out for so long and had someone been seriously hurt the legal ramifications would not have been good. Three players were hurt last year and out for the season. One from a broken leg, another from a broken or dislocated shoulder, I don’t know which but I do know he still has issues with his shoulder. I don’t know what injury was sustained with the third player. I do understand injuries come with the game. SG had tried to alter the game since last year and legally would have been foolish to pursue. In the end were talking about High School football at a small NE Prep school and the welfare of teenagers who already think they’re indestructible. Nope, no flag on that play.</p>