[Coach Howard]

OldBobcat,

Your real wrong. I'm not even from Harlan County and I can vouch for them that they are not an all-star team. I'm from Letcher County and we played them last year and was fortunate enough to get a win against them. However, the team is not an all-star team in the terms that you are putting it. Yes there are some all-stars that play on it but there are two other teams in the county (Cumberland and Evarts) and both of those teams are also very good. The New Harlan team is a team that is made up of three small elementary schools that would not be able to field a team if they were forced to. The schools are within a few miles of each other and that is why they formed the name New Harlan, also because there is already a Harlan team but it is independent, thus New Harlan was chosen as the name for this team. The New Harlan team does not have any of the kids that goes to the Cumberland or Evarts schools playing on their team. If they were to combine the three teams and be a consolidated team they would be unreal and be in contention to win the middle school state tourny year after year. It's not used as a recruiting tool because all of the kids go to the same high school as freshmen. I don't have a dog in this fight but I do respect the three coaches that coaches the New Harlan, Cumberland and Evarts teams and hate to see someone that's not from the area accusing them of fielding an all-star team and that would be the reason that their team lost to them. I guess I just take offense to the notion that the only way a true mountain school could beat a Corbin team would be to cheat, give credit where credit is due, on that given night New Harlan was better than Corbin.