[Hoot Gibson]

I am assuming you bus your students to and from school. Why can't you ask the school board to have a second bussing schedule for students in extracurriculars? You could have the bus pick the kids up at 6:00 . That way kids in football and any other after school activities could have a ride home. Just a thought.

That would be great if the district had unlimited resources but the county covers an area of 264 square miles and operates a large bus fleet. (By comparison, Campbell County covers 159 square miles and is relatively flat.) The Johnson County school district's transportation budget for 2010 is $2.4 million. I don't know exactly what it would cost to provide every county student transportation home on a bus following extracurricular activities, but it would surely be several hundred thousand dollars per year. My guess is that the district would have to offer every student in the district the same level of transportation service from practice, which would mean that dispatching all of the buses at the same time would not be acceptable to all of the members of the various teams. (Girls' basketball teams share the same practice facilities with the boys' teams but on staggered schedules, etc.)

If I could find the mileage for all of the public highways serviced by the JC district's bus fleet, I think that it would be more clear to you why it would be cost prohibitive to bus players home after practices. A plan could undoubtedly be devised to run only some of the buses each evening, but secondary roads in mountainous areas mostly follow rivers and creeks, so they are not laid out in logical grids. Many roads dead end at the "head of a hollow" or are not passable by buses over their entire length. This limits the extent to which routes could be consolidated for a second bus run each evening.

Every school district has its own unique obstacles to overcome to build successful football programs. sstack mentioned funding problems that have kept Highlands from being unable to have new facilities on par with JC's new field - and he made a very valid point. However, practicing and playing in older facilities has probably not suppressed participation in your football program.

Johnson County does not have the most or the least severe student transportation problems among Kentucky's rural public school systems when it comes to sports. I am just offering you one example of why an enrollment advantage can be misleading when comparing two school districts operating in very different environments.

[Eagle_Fan442]

Not to mention that jobs around here are not your normal 9-5. Some parents around this area are simply not able to get their children to and from practices.

[Hoot Gibson]

I agree with you that it is easier for a school like Highlands than a county school like JC , to get players to and from practice. But, Highlands kids would do what ever it takes to get to play, and as you mentioned, winning is the best way to get kids to come out for the team. You guys have been winning and I am sure that has helped you numbers increase. I know there has to be an increased sense of pride in your community over the last few years as your program has been on the rise. This sense of pride is what is going to allow your program (along with continued good coaching) to continue to flurish,as the parents and community throw their support behind the team/school. The younger kids are going to see the pride and excitement and want to be apart of it and the tradition will continue to grow at the school.This is what makes Highlands so good, the 1st graders start talking about playing for Highlands and winning a championship. Highlands players step onto the field and think they can beat anybody, and I am sure JC is alot closer to that attitude than they were 5 years ago. JC is on the right track and I can see a championship in their future. I feel like alot of JC fans are very defensive with anything a Highlands fan says; but there is alot of respect for your program up here in NKY. Highlands fans enjoy good football and has looked forward to the games with JC the last several years. I know you and others get mad with comments about the lack of passing game, but to be honest with you, I think it scares alot of our fans (including me) to think what JC could do to Highlands if they had any passing attack to go with their great running game. Keep up the good work and hope to see you in the playoffs.

I truly do not get mad over comments made by Highlands' fans. Annoyed at a couple of posters constantly boasting and taunting? Yeah, annoyed is probably the right word to use, but never mad. Football is a game in which I have no skin, so why get agitated over a few words? :biggrin:

I think all Johnson Central fans and Coach Matney himself would like to have a little better threat of a passing game in the Golden Eagles' arsenal. As I have said many times, Matney's teams have done more passing when he had different personnel. But I think something that you and other Highlands fans fail to recognize is that northern Kentucky is full of teams that do exactly what you suggest JC should do - run a more balanced offense. How many of those teams have been more competitive with Highlands than Johnson Central has been in recent years?

Another thing to consider, and to try to move back closer to the thread topic, is that Johnson Central's offense has managed to win four straight titles and to put the team into the regional finals three times since 2006. Remember, the year that Bryan Station gave Highlands such a good game, Johnson Central won the district and beat the Defenders 35-31. in 2007, Johnson Central dominated a much more athletic and eventual 3A state champion, Central, while Highlands struggled with the Yellow Jackets that year.

Teams like Ashland, Bryan Station, and Woodford County always have some great skill players and often they have enjoyed an overall team speed advantage over Johnson Central. Coach Matney has obviously decided that the best way to advance in the playoffs is to focus on a power running game, which shortens the game and helps counter any speed advantage that the opposing team has.

In order to have a shot at beating Highlands in the regional finals, the Golden Eagles have to be able to advance past teams like Ashland first. The offense Johnson Central runs has allowed it to win its district championship in four of the five years that JC has been competing in the district, and it has put them in the driver's seat to win a fifth straight district title and home field advantage this season.

[sstack]

That would be great if the district had unlimited resources but the county covers an area of 264 square miles and operates a large bus fleet. (By comparison, Campbell County covers 159 square miles and is relatively flat.) The Johnson County school district's transportation budget for 2010 is $2.4 million. I don't know exactly what it would cost to provide every county student transportation home on a bus following extracurricular activities, but it would surely be several hundred thousand dollars per year. My guess is that the district would have to offer every student in the district the same level of transportation service from practice, which would mean that dispatching all of the buses at the same time would not be acceptable to all of the members of the various teams. (Girls' basketball teams share the same practice facilities with the boys' teams but on staggered schedules, etc.)

If I could find the mileage for all of the public highways serviced by the JC district's bus fleet, I think that it would be more clear to you why it would be cost prohibitive to bus players home after practices. A plan could undoubtedly be devised to run only some of the buses each evening, but secondary roads in mountainous areas mostly follow rivers and creeks, so they are not laid out in logical grids. Many roads dead end at the "head of a hollow" or are not passable by buses over their entire length. This limits the extent to which routes could be consolidated for a second bus run each evening.

Every school district has its own unique obstacles to overcome to build successful football programs. sstack mentioned funding problems that have kept Highlands from being unable to have new facilities on par with JC's new field - and he made a very valid point. However, practicing and playing in older facilities has probably not suppressed participation in your football program.

Johnson County does not have the most or the least severe student transportation problems among Kentucky's rural public school systems when it comes to sports. I am just offering you one example of why an enrollment advantage can be misleading when comparing two school districts operating in very different environments.

It is nice when someone ask a question to get a civil response. It is nice talking with you and discusing football and our programs, unlike some people who want to get nasty(yes I'm talking to you Bob Seger).

[Hoot Gibson]

It is nice when someone ask a question to get a civil response. It is nice talking with you and discusing football and our programs, unlike some people who want to get nasty(yes I'm talking to you Bob Seger).

Thank you. Sometimes opportunities to engage in civil discussions in online forums are few and far between and I appreciate those opportunities when they come my way. But short, sarcastic retorts sure take a lot less time to write. :biggrin:

[Bob Seger]

It is nice when someone ask a question to get a civil response. It is nice talking with you and discusing football and our programs, unlike some people who want to get nasty(yes I'm talking to you Bob Seger).

Well it's nice that you were talking to me, CAUSE I dont believe that I was talking to you personally to begin with was I? Is your name tradition? Also was Hoot not the guy that told you personally to mind your own business , and to stick with your own personal website? Yeah, I think so.

It's also nice that everyone in northern Kentucky is so worried about JC's football program and is kind enough to offer their EXPERT opinions on how Matney can make it better, how the school board can make our system work better, and so on and so on. That's really great of ya'll. But lets get real honest here, there aint a single of ya'll interested in but only one thing, and that is to gloat and make the rest of us down here feel inferior to ya'll.


I remember a bumper sticker from a previous place that I worked that was infiltrated with Yankees during a regional economic boom time while economic situations were similar to what they are right now in the northern industrial areas of the country. The bumper sticker was brief and very much to the point and really much applies to the nose butting of some of you Highlands fans into the Johnson Central program..

It went along the lines of this:

"We dont give a #$%@ how you did it up there"


Now I dont mean to be nasty or rude, because it's really not my style, but I must void this conversation cause just heard that "Mary Lou's getting out tonight". Gotta go. Peace out!!!

[tradition]

Man you really do live in an isolated world there in Ft. Thomas. I will take your comment as one as being ignorant rather than arrogant. I will give you that benefit of a doubt. I drive a bus part time and I can tell you without a doubt that that is an impossible solution to what you are commenting on. I highly doubt my boss or any other bus boss/ superintendent would give that a second thought. You have 50 different extra curricular activities going on at the high school/middle school complex at the same time every day. A You obviously are totally ignorant about the geography and the terrain of eastern Kentucky. Do you honestly think that one single bus would be able to to handle doing what you just said? Your not talking about sending a bus down main street and dropping the whole load of students off on a single swipe. Your talkking about going hundreds of miles to cover this whole county, going up and down one lane roads over this mountain, and then over the next. I cant believe anyone would ever dare have the nerve to come out with a totally assinine statement such as that. sstack just made the comment about Highlands lack of funds, and they dont even have the expense of transporting students. You dont have a clue as to the staggering amount of money it takes to fund a whole fleet of buses and to pay the fuel, drivers, insurance, maintenance, etc. just for a single run. Then you suggest doing this all with 50 more buses and a whole new staff of drivers a second time to cover transportation for extracurriculars. You really muast have lived a sheltered life. You'll probably always have better football programs than everybody else, because obviously that is the only thing in the world some of you are able to focus on and comprehend. Get out of town once in a while tradition, a real world really does exist out there.

Jeeze buddy, relax. Your right I don't know your area just like you know nothing about Highlands. As I said it was just a thought.

Just don't get me started on the Seek formula and how much of my tax money has gone to ya'll. :eyeroll:

[khsgamenight]

Jeeze buddy, relax. Your right I don't know your area just like you know nothing about Highlands. As I said it was just a thought.

Just don't get me started on the Seek formula and how much of my tax money has gone to ya'll. :eyeroll:

I don't think anyone wants to get into a discussion about tax money leaving an area to be used in another part of the state with someone from eastern Kentucky. I would venture a guess that coal severance taxes have paved the majority of the roads in the Commonwealth.

[BellCoBobcats09]

JC just proved why they are one **** of a team!!!

[tradition]

I don't think anyone wants to get into a discussion about tax money leaving an area to be used in another part of the state with someone from eastern Kentucky. I would venture a guess that coal severance taxes have paved the majority of the roads in the Commonwealth.

Your right, your guessing.:biggrin:

[Hoot Gibson]

Your right, your guessing.:biggrin:

All coal severance money was originally supposed to be returned to the counties that are directly dependent upon coal mining to help them diversify their local economies. In exchange, coal companies were promised that property taxes on unmined coal would remain very low because of the difficulty and expense of determining the value of coal in the ground.

Instead, a large percentage of coal severance money was seized by legislators from the Golden Triangle and dumped into the general fund to pay for projects throughout the Commonwealth. In addition, more than a decade ago, a judge decided that it was unconstitutional not to tax unmined coal at its full value. Now, coal companies pay both high coal severance tax rates on coal that is mined and high property taxes on coal that is still in the ground. Campbell County has its hands in the coal severance cookie jar just like every other non-coal producing county in Kentucky. Those are the facts. No guessing is required.

I disagree with the way the state funds local districts and has penalized successful schools like Highlands but do not make the mistake of thinking that coal producing areas have not been getting screwed out of millions of dollars of coal severance funds.

The coal counties of eastern and western Kentucky are sparsely populated and do not have the votes in Frankfort to prevent the state from treating our counties like colonies. KERA was not our idea nor did the idea to steal coal severance money from coal producing areas originate in eastern or western Kentucky.

[Bob Seger]

Jeeze buddy, relax. Your right I don't know your area just like you know nothing about Highlands. As I said it was just a thought.

Just don't get me started on the Seek formula and how much of my tax money has gone to ya'll. :eyeroll:

Tell you what. Let's scrap the Seek formula, and we'll just keep our coal severance money. How's that? We'll see who drives on blacktop and who drives on gravel.

[Benchwarmer]

All coal severance money was originally supposed to be returned to the counties that are directly dependent upon coal mining to help them diversify their local economies. In exchange, coal companies were promised that property taxes on unmined coal would remain very low because of the difficulty and expense of determining the value of coal in the ground.

Instead, a large percentage of coal severance money was seized by legislators from the Golden Triangle and dumped into the general fund to pay for projects throughout the Commonwealth. In addition, more than a decade ago, a judge decided that it was unconstitutional not to tax unmined coal at its full value. Now, coal companies pay both high coal severance tax rates on coal that is mined and high property taxes on coal that is still in the ground. Campbell County has its hands in the coal severance cookie jar just like every other non-coal producing county in Kentucky. Those are the facts. No guessing is required.

I disagree with the way the state funds local districts and has penalized successful schools like Highlands but do not make the mistake of thinking that coal producing areas have not been getting screwed out of millions of dollars of coal severance funds.

The coal counties of eastern and western Kentucky are sparsely populated and do not have the votes in Frankfort to prevent the state from treating our counties like colonies. KERA was not our idea nor did the idea to steal coal severance money from coal producing areas originate in eastern or western Kentucky.

Guys, HOOT knows his stuff
:worthy:

[Hoot Gibson]

I don't think anyone wants to get into a discussion about tax money leaving an area to be used in another part of the state with someone from eastern Kentucky. I would venture a guess that coal severance taxes have paved the majority of the roads in the Commonwealth.

So, we didn't get any new high paying jobs like those that Frankfort attracted to the bluegrass by luring Toyota to Georgetown with tax breaks. Golden Triangle legislators let us have a cookie factory in Pike County!

I don't think most people in Kentucky have any idea what an injustice has been done to the coal counties over the years in the confiscation of tax revenues generated by the coal industry. Most Kentuckians just look at Johnson and counties like it as poor cousins begging for a handout from our rich uncles.

That view is a testament to how effective representatives from the large population centers of Kentucky have been in Frankfort. It is also a statement on how badly the interests of eastern Kentuckians have been protected over the years by our own elected representatives. Self-serving does not even begin to describe most of the people eastern Kentucky has has elected to the state legislature.

[tradition]

All coal severance money was originally supposed to be returned to the counties that are directly dependent upon coal mining to help them diversify their local economies. In exchange, coal companies were promised that property taxes on unmined coal would remain very low because of the difficulty and expense of determining the value of coal in the ground.

Instead, a large percentage of coal severance money was seized by legislators from the Golden Triangle and dumped into the general fund to pay for projects throughout the Commonwealth. In addition, more than a decade ago, a judge decided that it was unconstitutional not to tax unmined coal at its full value. Now, coal companies pay both high coal severance tax rates on coal that is mined and high property taxes on coal that is still in the ground. Campbell County has its hands in the coal severance cookie jar just like every other non-coal producing county in Kentucky. Those are the facts. No guessing is required.

I disagree with the way the state funds local districts and has penalized successful schools like Highlands but do not make the mistake of thinking that coal producing areas have not been getting screwed out of millions of dollars of coal severance funds.

The coal counties of eastern and western Kentucky are sparsely populated and do not have the votes in Frankfort to prevent the state from treating our counties like colonies. KERA was not our idea nor did the idea to steal coal severance money from coal producing areas originate in eastern or western Kentucky.

Thanks for the lesson Hoot.

I understand taxes are unfair all over the state . As far as KERA goes, a school tax that goes directly to schools not roads and factories, it has just been really hard traveling around the state and seeing beautiful new facilities yet at Highlands , with the exception of the field that was purchased with private donations, the place is crumbling. The locker room is a health hazard, and as Johnson Central fans found out last year, the facilities were certainly not what they expected. Far from what you would think a Nationally ranked , tradition rich, multiple state championship team would have.

Just really hard writting that check for my taxes and seeing little if anything going back to my own school.

[Hoot Gibson]

Thanks for the lesson Hoot.

I understand taxes are unfair all over the state . As far as KERA goes, a school tax that goes directly to schools not roads and factories, it has just been really hard traveling around the state and seeing beautiful new facilities yet at Highlands , with the exception of the field that was purchased with private donations, the place is crumbling. The locker room is a health hazard, and as Johnson Central fans found out last year, the facilities were certainly not what they expected. Far from what you would think a Nationally ranked , tradition rich, multiple state championship team would have.

Just really hard writting that check for my taxes and seeing little if anything going back to my own school.

I feel your pain, tradition. I believe that people deserve the government that they can afford, and by government I am including government schools (as Neil Boortz calls them). Am I correct in saying that even if Highlands' football boosters wanted to raise funds to build a new locker room from fundraising activities and private donations, they are barred from doing so? In other words, if they raised the money, they would be forced to share the funds with groups that did not participate in the fund raising effort. Is that correct?

There is nothing fair about the way Kentucky schools and athletic teams are financed.

However, I also would like to add that Johnson Central has always done an excellent job maintaining its facilities, well before KERA forced wealthier districts to cough up more than their fair share of tax dollars for the benefit of poorer districts. The school's original football field was always well maintained by the grounds keeping crew and the school has always had one of the top high school baseball fields in the state.

I have not been inside the school for several years, but unless things have gone awry recently, you will not find a school built in the late 1960s that has been any better maintained than Johnson Central. There are newer schools in eastern Kentucky whose insides look like they are crumbling compared to JC's.

[MonsterMan]

Hey guys, I am an Eastern KY native and an old coal miner and we lost the severece tax thing long ago. Let talk about football. I for one remember the very lean days at JC before Matney and I for one am honered we know have Highland's fan on this site chatting with is. We have come a millon miles!

I love running power football, but I think to take the big trophy we will have to have a passing attack. If Matney had a great throwing QB and recievers we would throw the ball. Not taking away anything from our great players now. We are not developing them in the feeder programs and need to. Look what soccer has done for our kicking game this year. Matney is right to use the running game with what he has and it is impressive. A passsing game also brings a pass defence game as the kids have to face it in practice. What happens to us is we do not have the depth and once a team stops or slows down the run and gets the lead we are gone. A couple of passes keeps the defence honest. I hope we will continue to pass to Cody and Saynor and have this ready by district.

Afain, love the attention from the highlands fan and I think matney is a great coach and has done a fantastic job, just wished we could throw more.

[PaintsvilleTigerfan]

Ashland, and Covcath are talent wise equal or better than JC. But JC runs that wishbone that those teams don't see very often. That is the reason for this success. And really the reason for JC staying within 5 tds of highlands.

[lovinfridaynights]

Good win JC

[NCC41]

Ashland, and Covcath are talent wise equal or better than JC. But JC runs that wishbone that those teams don't see very often. That is the reason for this success. And really the reason for JC staying within 5 tds of highlands.

I've seen all three teams play this year. Though this years JC team is not the JC team of last year they are still light years ahead of Ashland and Covcath.

[lovinfridaynights]

Honestly i think this Jc team is further along than the JC team of last year. Just my opinion.

[Bob Seger]

Ashland, and Covcath are talent wise equal or better than JC. But JC runs that wishbone that those teams don't see very often. That is the reason for this success. And really the reason for JC staying within 5 tds of highlands.

How many times have you seen Ashland or Cov Cath play this year?

[BADCAT74]

It's seems funny to me all these jcc guys complaining about turning every thread into a Highlands thread...... But you guys are the ones bringing them into it most of the time? Highlands seems to be in every other sentence from jcc guys!

[Bob Seger]

It's seems funny to me all these jcc guys complaining about turning every thread into a Highlands thread...... But you guys are the ones bringing them into it most of the time? Highlands seems to be in every other sentence from jcc guys!

Seeing that JCC's program is the program you would most like to see Ashland mold themselves after I can see why you would get on a JCC thread and throw your two cents in.

Welcome to the family!!!