[Walt Longmire]

It’s interesting to look at Scott’s record versus Chris’s record. They’re literally almost identical, you can say Chris has tougher road because of Pulaski and southwestern but there’s tough teams you have to get past in 3A if you want to make it to the third round of the playoffs, which is something Scott couldn’t do. Chris record might become better than Scott’s just because you automatically get into the playoffs in that district.

 But when he’s hired they are going to essentially be betting on a 5A coach who has more male students to pull talent from to go to a 3A school with less male students to pull talent from and perform better, and to me that’s a big gamble. Chris doesn’t even have a winning record against teams who are classed below 5A. Not saying it’s the wrong hire and I want everyone to succeed but it is just a puzzling logic. 

Also as someone who’s close to coach Blair, I would give it a 10% chance he would leave Madison Central for anything other than a head coaching position, that’s what he wants and he definitely qualified for and ready to be again. 

I don’t know Larkey but he’s perpetually underperformed with the talent he’s had available to him at North Laurel.  Only know Coach Blair by reputation which is that he’s a very good coach…Mark Payne DC from Southwestern and GJ Wooldridge from Pulaski Co could also do well imo, could do really well as a tandem or as the lone head man.  Never thought I’d see Parkey step down at Rock but it’s hard to follow a legend…

Parkey was asked to step down or he would’ve been fired. The problem with that job will always be you have one middle school and one high school for the county and all the other powerhouse 3A teams don’t have that problem. Whoever gets the job will get time, but consistently getting to the third round will be tough. Even the great Tom Larkey didn’t do that over his 27 years there.

 Tom did not coach at Rockcastle for 27 years. He went to Harlan Co., then Perry Central. He did go to the state championship game twice while at ROCK.

No Tom came to the Rock in 1985 and left in 2008. That’s 23 years he was at Rock and during that time he built a dynasty that should have had 2 state championships but it was not to be it just so happened it was during the famous run Boyle County had in going undefeated for like 5 straight years. Had Rock been in the lower class down we would probably have 2 state titles yet we wasn’t and it never happened. During his tenure teams didn’t want to see us on their schedule and for good reason. Tom always had Rock ready and hitting hard was a guarantee even when Rock was down. He coached countless region finals and always seemed you couldn’t keep Rock from playing in 3rd round and most of the time he would reach the 4th round. Parkey took over in 2008 and in his 14 years he never made it past the 2nd round ever. In 14 years he had 1 great team the 2016 team(11-1) and 2 good teams the 2011(9-3) and 2017 team(8-4). He went 84/75 over his coaching career at Rock that is 53% and just isn’t what is expected here. He did however produce 7 winning seasons of at least 6-6 or better which is 50% since he was here for 14 years but that equals out to be 6-6 average and just could never win the bigger games and in everyone it appeared he never tried. He wouldn’t argue over questionable calls and would get out coached in those games. While he is a great person and well respected he appeared to be more of a friend to the players instead of a coach while that’s nice at times it just doesn’t always give you those Wins that is needed to keep your job. While it’s not always about wins and losses at the end of the day that is what coaches are judged by and never being passed the second round of the playoffs is what ultimately was the final straw. Hopefully with the new hire we can get back that traditional mystique that we have desperately been searching for.

I think you need to rethink your definition of a dynasty.  You need to win multiple championships to be a dynasty.  Under Larkey Rockcastle was a quality program.  Usually top 10 in their class, but a notch or two below the true powers in those classes.  They had 2 really good teams but never came close to a championship, losing by a combined score of 70-7 in their two appearances.  Most years they were very good on the district level and had a few regional titles.  Looking back from 1990-99 it looks like they made 3 appearances in the regional championship without winning it and lost in the first round of the playoffs 4 times.  From 2000-08 is when they had their best run with 4 appearances in the regional final with 3 wins that led to the 2 appearances in the state final blowouts to Boyle County.  I don't have their records for 85-89 but I'm pretty sure they didn't win a regional title in that timeframe.  That's 3 regional championships and 4 regional runner-ups in 23 years to go along with a very good regular season record.  Rockcastle under Larkey was a very good program, not a dynasty by any measure.  They've been a middle of the road program since Larkey's departure.