[Do-double-gg]

Yes and no.

As a Belfry fan there have been times (specifically those championship games mentioned) where I would have loved to see Belfry's passing game execute better or more often.

The reality is this is High School Football...not college.... where you typically don't have control over the talent pool you have to work with. What makes Belfry so good is they are basically one big machine with interchangeable parts. The offense is simple, it is repeatable, it plays to the talent pool at Belfry's disposal, and it is designed so that if an injury occurs or you suffer a great deal of loss with graduation that the drop off is not immense.

This is actually a pretty common practice across the landscape of HS Football Nationally with smaller schools lacking a ton of athletic talent. I just finished a book yesterday called "Our Boys" which talked about a team in Kansas called Smith Center. This is a 2A School in Kansas who widely is amongst the Top 5 teams in their state regardless of classification and had a 71 game win streak. They have a dwindling population, it is one of the poorest counties in the entire country, and have essentially no African American athletes. Yet somehow this school has produced numerous D-1 players and even a couple NFL players.

They run 99% of the time and use maybe 4 plays total (obviously with different options and reads), yet what makes them so good is those 4 plays are engraved by the time they enter High School. The author asked the Coach (whose philosophies are eerily similar to Haywood on a lot of things) how many passing plays are in your playbook? Too which he responded "Too many". In the Championship season the book followed they threw the ball a grand total of 16 times..

The point of what I am saying is Belfry would be a better team if they could go 8 for 8 passing every game for 145 yards an 2 TD. The problem is they cannot without trading off something else. Haywood's offense and defense work in cohesion. There is a reason Belfry converts 3rd and 2 in State Semi-Finals games at a freakish percentage. There is a reason Belfry always peaks at the right time and Sophomore linemen you never heard of step up in place of an injured player and never miss a beat. There is a reason that from 2003 until the present Belfry has only failed to reach a Semi-Finals once. That reason is Belfry is a machine designed to do a very specific job over and over and over with each time being as precise as before.

Belfry's program has always been strong, but the two greatest runs in the program' s history (80's- Early 90's and 2003-Present) came when the Belfry feeder program was at it's strongest. The first run was when Belfry had great coaches at the feeder level..probably as good if not better than anyone in KY.. mixed with an "up" talent pool. The most recent is a direct correlation to the revitalization of the feeder system by Coach Mickey when the Middle School consolidated, competition was upped, and Belfry's offense/defense was universally coached by a great coaching staff.

[COLOR="Red"]In all my years of following HS Football I am convinced that in order to field a highly competitive program it begins and ends with:
- A feeder system working in concert from the grassroots level up with highly skilled and enthusiastic coaches
- A sense of culture and pride cultivated by traditions, coaching stability, and discipline that people want to be a part of
- Community/Adminsitrative support from the Grassroots up
- Coaches who can "recruit" their own school to ensure numbers stay high and the best athletes available are on the football field[/COLOR]
Think about Lawrence County's greatest run in school history and how they accomplished it and subsequently how it has fallen off. It will mirror those points. The single greatest issue that has lingered at Lawrence County was the coaching turnover beginning with Chuke's retirement. The conflicting styles that negatively affected the feeder program from the top down. A decrease in support on the whole and a loss of qualified coaches in the Middle School ranks. Ultimately a sufficient drop in roster numbers and elite athletes who focused on baseball or basketball.

Spot on!!!:Thumbs: