[RunItUpTheGut]

Yeah, I know our Harlan County guy brought up football. I was just making sure that was the sport you were referring to when talking about starting off great and then falling off.

You're right about Mercer, but they timed that consolidation it appears to get good players from Harrodsburg and Mercer at the same time. I don't know about Collins.

OK, as far as examples.
Bell opened in 1984 and lost to Cawood the first three years for the district title and got progressively better. They have dropped a little the past two years, but they've been pretty consistent.

Perry Central wasn't very good in football when the school opened. They've had a few decent seasons but there's been no pattern of starting strong and falling off.

Shelby Valley has never been very good in football, the same for Pike Central and East Ridge as far as the Pike consolidations.

Harlan County had struggled in football the 20 years before the consolidation but they had a strong tradition of success before that. It will be hard to keep up the pace they set the past six years, because there have been very few eastern Kentucky schools with a strong start like they've had, but I think they will remain competitive. They have a very good freshmen class this year

Here is the problem with consolidation.
When you have 4 or 5 high schools or more in a county, than each one of those teams have full rosters. What happens is some of those kids don't blossom until there junior years and become stars. When schools consolidate, those kids are weeded out a long time before they blossom.

That brings me to my point. Harlan County was so good those first three or four years (not counting the first year) because they had a large pool of players to choose from. And im sure you can see that HC wasn't as strong last year, and wont be this year as they were in those years.

That's the point im getting at. I read an article in the Herald about a guy talking about the basketball talent in this state dropping off tremendously in the past 20 years, and he attributed it to this, which I think is dead on.