Some Disturbing Trends

[ochoopsfan]

What Clay Kallum has talked about is true in my area, Orange County, CA.
In the past few years several HS teams no longer field a Frosh/Soph teams. 4 or 5 years ago this would never happen unless it was a small private school. I dont think it is a financial problem as the same schools have no problem fielding those level teams for V-Ball. I do not know how Soccer works with JV and F/S teams.
The number of AAU club teams has dropped, as a few of the teams disbanded.
In fact just two years ago the best AAU team in OC, Cal Swish,(Lauren Engelns team) had 5 teams participating in the various tournaments during the spring summer season(about 50-55 girls). This past summer they had only 2 teams. I have no idea what happened to the 30-33 extra players that would have filled those teams.
The amount of top players, those I would consider to get a few offers from various D1 BCS schools, has dropped too. In fact I would be willing to guess that the only girls, from OC, getting D1 offers from a BCS school will be the Samuelson sisters, Karlie(who verballed to Stanford) and her sister Katie Lou. This covers the classes of 2013/14/15.
As far as I understand the V-Ball and Soccer club teams are loaded with teams and players in OC.
Certainly a disturbing trend in my area. I used to have my pick of HS games to see during the season, now there arent as many matchups that have a lot of talented players.

 

[Icebear]

Finances are being pressured all over the country in the country since the 2007-8 collapse. Some held on for awhile but there has been compression in many local sports because of pressure on school budgets. Our local system has suffered extensive fiscal cutbacks and has now put sports on a pay to play basis.

 

[UcMiami]

Finances are being pressured all over the country in the country since the 2007-8 collapse. Some held on for awhile but there has been compression in many local sports because of pressure on school budgets. Our local system has suffered extensive fiscal cutbacks and has now put sports on a pay to play basis.

Yeah - I saw where I think a Steeler player is paying the entire bill for his HS football team - I thought that was a really great action. I wonder if we will now have scandals related to high schools/hs 'boosters' paying the bill for selected ringers on their teams? (I guess we have already had a few questionable tactics at the HS level, but I could see more issues related to this.)

 

[Wonkster]

Interesting thread ... Given UConn's success, I would expect basketball is still the dominant high school sport in that state, but then again I can't recall the last time I had a Connecticut high school team ranked in the top 25.

Clay, you might have to wait until Hell freezes over. Connecticut has just one-tenth of the population of California and only one percent of the whole US population.