[TheBear]

Are there any youth football programs around the state that are not associated with their respective school district? 

Club teams, AAU, travel football? 

I know in Breathitt they have the Lumberjacks youth travel team. Are there any more like that in the area?

I’d love to see some youth AAU, club level football in eastern Kentucky especially. Tackle should start at 5 years old if you do it by age and do it right there won’t be injuries and get kids use to the feel of things early.

The area where I’m from there are several youth programs that are feeders for their respective schools. But there are also neighboring counties that do not have football programs at all.

If there were club teams/aau teams in that area that could draw kids in from 2-3 counties that don’t have football, I think it would be a great stepping stone in creating new programs for these smaller, rural county schools. Specifically the Wolfe, Lee, Menifee, Owsley, Morgan and Elliott county areas. Or areas like that, that don’t have football programs.

Well the premise of what you are saying is spot on. But when you designated you location and named those areas. They do all play for the lumberjacks indeed and continue playing for the Bobcats in middle school and High School. That travel football organization is the sole reason breathitt survived that whole mess when it happened. Kenneth Combs deserves a statue. 

But you mentioned Lee, Owsley, and Wolfe. Each county is so rural that it may produce on average in each grade 2 eventual varsity level football players, not enough to be competitive at the varsity level. So them going and playing for the lumberjacks and eventually Breathitt Co is a good thing IMO.

 I am not really sure if there is such a rule, but if a child wants to play football and his school doesn’t have a program. Can said child play for a neighboring team while still attending his school? Or am I just dreaming. Because I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before. Maybe not.

It is not a rule in Kentucky at the High School Level.  I know Tennessee has the rule.  Would be a benefit to a lot of smaller 1A schools.