Club Sports Good or Bad

Lots of parents put their children in club sports because the child likes to play—and if your children don’t play club sports, they will probably fall behind their peers. Is that a valid concern?

Because youngsters are starting earlier, they’re better at the age of 10 and 12 than they have ever been. Their skills are refined at an earlier age. But we also see them starting to leave sports at the ages of 12 and 13 because they’re burned out.

Early specialization, too, leads to earlier burnout—and to more injuries and tired joints by the time they get to college.

At the college level, we’re also seeing less of a competitive edge in our athletes. I think the reason is that teens used to play one or two games a week. Now, because of the club scenes, they’re playing two to three games a day. When you do that, losing isn’t a big deal because you still have two games scheduled later in the day. But when you play one game, you really pour yourself into it. As a result, today’s college athletes are more athletic and skilled but don’t have as much competitiveness and grit as college athletes used to.

For us, at a small college, the ideal student athlete has played two to three sports in high school and no—or very little—club sports. If they do that, they don’t have wear and tear on their body and are really just falling in love with their sport more and more as they go through high school.

I’m not the only one saying this. There are mountains of research proving that starting early is more likely to wreck than to jump-start a professional career or Division 1 scholarship.

Full article here

Hope for the New Year

As we get ready to start a new year, we make New Years Eve resolutions. We have Hope to do it better in the New Year.

I wrote this talk just after Thanksgiving. Two weeks later a young guy was at our home doing some work for us.

We did not talk about the weather, football, sports or his faith, we only talked about the work he would be doing. I can still see his face as he walked by me for the final time, on the way to his vehicle. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and by the time he got to town, it would be time to quit working for the day. A week later he was gone, he committed suicide.

We men, when someone asks us how we are, we usually answer, “Good.” We don’t want to get into the specifics of how we really are. We keep that inside of us.

In reality, we are unhappy at what is happening in the world around us. We are unhappy about some of our relationships. We sometimes feel as though we have failed. We feel like church is for little kids and women. We don’t want to go. We would rather cuss, drink, talk to pretty women and watch fist fights.

But the greatest fight, we will have, will be against satan. He wants us dead and with him in Hell.

The following table shows deaths in Kansas only. Unintentional deaths were vehicle wrecks, falls, drowning, etc. Drugs were heroin, cocaine and opioids. These stats came from a Kansas website. These numbers have slowly increased over the last twenty years.

Year                    Unintentional           Suicide              Homicide           Drugs

2002 1,125 346 126 168
2021 2,031 555 182 679

The table below, from Gallup polls, tells us what Americans over the entire country believe in and how often they go to church. The less you go to church the less you believe in the almighty Father in Heaven and the Devil and Hell also.

Attendance         Belief in God             in Heaven       in Hell              In Devil

Weekly 98% 92% 84% 86%
Monthly 94% 90% 80% 77%
Less often 57% 48% 41% 40%

I believe people are losing hope. The meaning of hope is ambition, expectation, desire, wishing, dreaming, longing and anticipation. Where does hope come from?

Viktor Frankel was an Austrian psychiatrist who was put in a concentration camp during WW II. He survived and wrote a book shortly after the war called, ‘Mans Search for Meaning.’ While he was in the concentration camp he studied the other prisoners. Why did some survive and some did not? Below are some of his most famous quotes.

“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.”

The men that survived had a meaning and purpose. Some wanted revenge on the guards and Nazis. Some wanted to see family after the war was over. Those who could see no purpose or meaning to life died in the camps. And these were men who had been selected to work in the camps, not those who on arrival were sent to the gas chambers immediately.

The Bible says hope comes from the Lord.

Psalm 62:5-6 Yes, my soul finds rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

Job 8:13 So are the paths of all who forget God; and the hope of the godless will perish.

The Westminster Catechism was written for the Presbyterian Church in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1648. What follows is number one on the list of 196 questions.

What is the chief and highest end of man?

Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church in #27 puts it this way:

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.

Over the years, if I have gotten into a conversation with someone who I think is struggling with life. I tell them, when they reach the bottom of the pit and they feel they are about to lose hope. I tell them to call out in Jesus name and say, “Jesus I don’t believe in you, but if you are real help me somehow right now.”

Mark 9:23-24 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

We come to church each Sunday to be filled again with the Holy Spirit and we take it out into the world. The world sucks it out of us and we need to be refilled, regenerated, and redeemed over and over again.

I don’t believe in the ‘once saved, always saved’ and now I never have to go back to church again nonsense.

We should live our lives in such a fashion as people wonder what we have? Why are they so filled with hope?

Our hope is in Jesus; to save us from this life of sin we are born into.

So live your life each day with hope and be ready to share that hope with all you meet each day of the week. Because as the tables above show, people are losing the battle, they are losing their hope.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

There is the real hope to life. Memorize that verse if you have not.

Final Rankings November 28, 2023

The final rankings are in for the football season of 2023 and the overall grand champions of Kansas High School football is the Gardner-Edgerton Trailblazers!

The Trailblazers only loss of the season was to Olathe East 21-7. Olathe North gave the Trailblazers a good game, but North trailed at the end of the game 21-14. Derby gave the the Trailblazers a great game in the state championship game with the final score 22-19. Other than those three close games G-E ran over the opposition.

We visited family a few weeks ago in Gardner and my little nephew had on his G-E t-shirt and was telling us how he wanted to go to the next playoff game, but wasn’t sure they would make the game because of other family obligations.

His mom told us how the school had just sent out a flyer encouraging parents not to just drop off their kids at the game and not come themselves. My home town used to tell the parents that also and most parents just ignored it and dropped the kids off anyway.

How about that Andale vs Cheney rematch? Estimated crowd at 6,000. At one point the video had just under 3,600 people watching the game online. Today, that website says 17,000 people have viewed that game. Here is the link.

KCMC Sports did a great job broadcasting that game. I think KSHSAA should stay out of the business of doing video on games and let the market take care of it. KCMC sports

It was another fantastic finish to a great football season. Thank you for visiting our website and thank my ranking team if you see them around the state at other sporting events. We do it for the players and their moment in time, when they get to play the best sport ever, the game of high school football.

Super Top 10 All-Classes
1.   Gardner-Edgerton
2.   Derby
3.   Manhatttan
4.   Washburn Rural
5.   Mill Valley
6.   St Thomas Aquinas
7.   Blue Valley SW
8.   Bishop Miege
9.   Kapaun
10. Junction City
11. Blue Valley
12. St James

6A
1. Gardner-Edgerton
2. Derby
3. Washburn Rural
4. Manhattan
5. Junction City
Others: Blue Valley

5A
1. Mill Valley
2. Blue Valley SW
3. Kapaun
4. Goddard Eisenhower
5. Topeka Seaman
Others: Maize South

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

4A 
1. St Thomas Aquinas
2. Bishop Miege
3. Andover Central
4. St James
5. Tonganoxie
Others: Wamego

3A
1. Cheney
2. Andale
3. Clay Center
4. Hayden
5. Collegiate
Others: Scott City, Wellsville

2A
1. Nemaha Central
2. Hoisington
3. SE of Saline
4. Sabetha
5. Norton
Others: Silver Lake, Ellsworth, Garden Plain

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

1A
1. Conway Springs
2. Marion
3. Jeff Co North
4. Medicine Lodge
5. St Marys Colgan
Others: Olpe, St Mary’s, Jackson Hts

8-man D-I
1. Lyndon
2. Wichita Co-Leoti
3. South Sumner
4. West Elk
5. Cair Paravel
Others: Hoxie, Atwood, Ell Saline, Chase Co

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

8-man D-II
1. Axtell
2. Frankfort
3. South Central
4. Victoria
5. Osborne
Others: South Barber, Canton-Galva, Minneola

6-man
1. Cheylin
2. Ashland
3. Cunningham
4. N. Valley
5. Tescott
Others: Waverly

Long time Ranking team members
Rich Epp OpenSpacesSports Colby
Dusty Deines KDNS Beloit
Conor Nichol Sunflower Sports SolutionsHays
Jim Misunas Great Bend Tribune Great Bend
Adam Kadavy KSKL Scott City/Garden City
Brock Kappelmann KSCB Liberal
Tim McGonagle KSKL Scott City/Garden City
Rocky Downing KFRM 550 AM
Pat Strathman ESPN Wichita 

New Coaches for 2024

Topeka High School will have a new coach

Salina South is going to have a new head Football coach

KC-Piper is open

El Dorado is open

Monetuzma-South Gray is open

Beloit St John’s /Tipton is open

New Coaches for the fall season of 2024 has begun. The new coaches page is one of the most popular pages on this website. We have our first opening already listed. If you know of any openings please let us know of them. We do like confirmations, such as newspaper, radio, or school board meeting links to resignations.

Check our the New Coaches page here.

Rankings October 24, 2023

Today is our final rankings for the football season. We will have a final ranking after all the playoff games are finished and the new champions have been crowned. Then we can see how close the games were during the playoffs and get a better picture of who should be number two through five in each classification.

Also, it gives us a better idea of was the East or the West side of the bracket the best football in the state in that particular classification?

The high school football season is not over yet, but I am dreading the eventually Friday night when there will be no more football games until next year. Professional football is rigged in my opinion. The choose who they want to win and who they want in the playoffs and Super Bowl. College football with the new NIL, will soon be the team with the most money, that can buy the best players, will be the top dogs. To be honest, I think that has been going on for years anyway. No, give me high school football, where our guys in our town, against your guys in your town and lets see who wins.

Thank you to the school boards, the superintendents, the principals, athletic directors, football coaches, officials, band members, cheerleaders, drill teams, ticket takers, concession stand workers, PA guys and gals, clock and score keepers, camera crews, equipment staff and trainers, chain gang crews, water guys and gals, EMT’s, and finally the players for making high school football the greatest sport that it is and ever will be.

Super Top 10 All-Classes
1.   Washburn Rural
2.   Manhattan
3.   Gardner-Edgerton
4.   Olathe North
5.   Bishop Miege
6.   Kapaun
7.   Mill Valley
8.   Derby
9.   Olathe East
10. Blue Valley SW
11. St Thomas Aquinas
12. Wichita NW
13. Goddard-Eisenhower
14. Cheney
15. Liberal

6A
1. Washburn Rural
2. Gardner-Edgerton
3. Olathe North
4. Manhattan
5. Derby
Others: Wichita NW, Olathe East

5A
1. Kapaun
2. Mill Valley
3. Blue Valley SW
4. DeSoto
5. Goddard Eisenhower
Others: Goddard, Liberal, Maize South, Hutchinson

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

4A 
1. Bishop Miege
2. Aquinas
3. Louisburg
4. Tonganoxie
5. Chanute
Others: Wamego, Buhler, Atchison

3A
1. Cheney
2. Andale
3. Hayden
4. Collegiate
5. Clay Center
Others: Scott City, Wellsville

2A
1. Nemaha Central
2. Hoisington
3. SE of Saline
4. Sabetha
5. Norton
Others: Silver Lake, Ellsworth, Garden Plain

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

1A
1. St Marys Colgan
2. Smith Center
3. Centralia
4. Sedgwick
5. Marion
Others: Olpe, St Mary’s, Conway Springs, Jeff Co North, Jackson Hts

8-man D-I
1. Wichita Co-Leoti
2. Lyndon
3. Moundridge
4. Central-Burden
5. Meade
Others: Hoxie, Atwood, Ell Saline

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

8-man D-II
1. Axtell
2. Minneola
3. Victoria
4. Canton-Galva
5. Osborne
Others: South Barber

6-man
1. Cheylin
2. Ashland
3. Cunningham
4. Waverly
5. N. Valley
Others: none

Long time Ranking team members
Rich Epp OpenSpacesSports Colby
Dusty Deines KDNS Beloit
Conor Nichol Sunflower Sports SolutionsHays
Jim Misunas Great Bend Tribune Great Bend
Adam Kadavy KSKL Scott City/Garden City
Brock Kappelmann KSCB Liberal
Tim McGonagle KSKL Scott City/Garden City
Rocky Downing KFRM 550 AM
Pat Strathman ESPN Wichita 

Rankings October 17, 2023

Hard to believe, but there is only one more vote by the ranking team. Next weekend is the final time for rankings and then the real rankings begin…..the playoffs. Then we get to see who the best teams in the state really are.

There was some movement this week with several of the ranked teams losing a game last weekend. Doesn’t mean that those teams won’t make a lot of noise in the playoffs, just means they lost a game in regular season. And sometimes, the loss of a game in regular season is one of the things that motivates a team to play with more emotion, with more discipline and with a sense of urgency.

Yes, the sense of urgency, because the high school game of football, for 2023, is quickly coming to an end.

Super Top 10 All-Classes
1.   Washburn Rural
2.  Gardner-Edgerton
3.   Manhattan
4.   Bishop Miege
5.   Olathe North
6.   Mill Valley
7.   Kapaun
8.   St Thomas Aquinas
9.   Wichita NW
10. Olathe East
11. Goddard-Eisenhower
12. Derby
13. Blue Valley SW
14. Cheney

6A
1. Washburn Rural
2. Olathe North
3. Gardner-Edgerton
4. Manhattan
5. Olathe East
Others: Wichita NW, Derby

5A
1. Kapaun
2. Mill Valley
3. Blue Valley SW
4. Goddard Eisenhower
5. DeSoto
Others: Liberal

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

4A 
1. Bishop Miege
2. Aquinas
3. Louisburg
4. Buhler
5. Tonganoxie
Others: Chanute, Wamego

3A
1. Cheney
2. Andale
3. Collegiate
4. Hayden
5. Scott City
Others: Clay Center

2A
1. Nemaha Central
2. Sabetha
3. Hoisington
4. SE of Saline
5. Ellsworth
Others: Norton

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

1A
1. St Marys Colgan
2. Smith Center
3. Marion
4. Centralia
5. Sedgwick
Others: none

8-man D-I
1. Wichita Co-Leoti
2. Lyndon
3. Moundridge
4. Meade
5. Atwood
Others: Central Burden, South Sumner Co., Hoxie

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

8-man D-II
1. Axtell
2. Victoria
3. Minneola
4. Canton-Galva
5. Osborne
Others: South Barber

6-man
1. Cheylin
2. Ashland
3. Cunningham
4. Waverly
5. N. Valley
Others: none

Long time Ranking team members
Rich Epp OpenSpacesSports Colby
Dusty Deines KDNS Beloit
Conor Nichol Sunflower Sports SolutionsHays
Jim Misunas Great Bend Tribune Great Bend
Adam Kadavy KSKL Scott City/Garden City
Brock Kappelmann KSCB Liberal
Tim McGonagle KSKL Scott City/Garden City
Rocky Downing KFRM 550 AM
Pat Strathman ESPN Wichita 

Rankings October 9, 2023

Super Top 10 All-Classes
1.   Gardner-Edgerton
2.   Washburn Rural
3.   Bishop Miege
4.   Olathe North
5.   Mill Valley
6.   Manhattan
7.   Free State
8.   Kapaun
9.   Andale
10. St Thomas Aquinas
11. Wichita NW

6A
1. Gardner-Edgerton
2. Washburn Rural
3. Olathe North
4. Manhattan
5. Free State
Others: Wichita NW

5A
1. Mill Valley
2. Kapaun
3. Blue Valley SW
4. Goddard Eisenhower
5. Liberal
Others: DeSoto

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

4A 
1. Bishop Miege
2. Aquinas
3. Louisburg
4. Tonganoxie
5. Buhler
Others: Atchison, Wamego

3A
1. Andale
2. Cheney
3. Collegiate
4. Hayden
5. Scott City
Others: Clay Center, Wellsville

2A
1. Nemaha Central
2. Sabetha
3. Hoisington
4. SE of Saline
5. Ellsworth
Others: none

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

1A
1. St Marys Colgan
2. Marion
3. Centralia
4. Smith Center
5. Sedgwick
Others: St Mary’s, Valley Hts

8-man D-I
1. Wichita Co-Leoti
2. Lyndon
3. Moundridge
4. Meade
5. Atwood
Others: Central Burden, South Sumner Co.

www.kansasprepfootball.com/

8-man D-II
1. Axtell
2. Victoria
3. Minneola
4. Canton-Galva
5. Sylvan/Lucas
Others: Osborne

6-man
1. Cheylin
2. Ashland
3. Waverly
4. Cunningham
5. N. Valley
Others: none

Long time Ranking team members
Rich Epp OpenSpacesSports Colby
Dusty Deines KDNS Beloit
Conor Nichol Sunflower Sports SolutionsHays
Jim Misunas Great Bend Tribune Great Bend
Adam Kadavy KSKL Scott City/Garden City
Brock Kappelmann KSCB Liberal
Tim McGonagle KSKL Scott City/Garden City
Rocky Downing KFRM 550 AM
Pat Strathman ESPN Wichita 

The Fix is in (Pro Sports)

When the NFL was sued by fans after deflate gate that successfully argued in court that they were a SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT company and not a sports league. As Sports Entertainment it was not against the law to have pre scripted games, the courts agreed and ruled in the NFL’s favor. (This is a quote,)

This is one of the reason why I love high school football. Our guys in our town against your guys in your town and may the best team win. Although, we have heard stories even in high school sports of problems.