[Cactus Jack]

Think the Lexington public schools are going to be cyclic unless there are some major changes.

I don't know that there was ever a time that Lexington Catholic and all five of the publics (Henry Clay, Lafayette, Tates Creek, Bryan Station, and Dunbar) were all going to be "up" at the same time even before some of this happened, but in the past two decades:

- Scott County and now Great Crossing have joined the region, with Scott County being in the same district... this has led to fewer Lexington teams getting to the Sweet 16 and less momentum for their programs;

- Lexington Christian Academy seems to have invested in their athletics programs. They've had some Division 1 players, mostly in football but some in basketball, probably wouldn't have been there when the school opened in 1989 or in the years immediately after;

- Frederick Douglass opens and the talent is now split between six schools instead of five... the success of their football program probably doesn't do anything to help the basketball programs at any of the other publics;

- Maybe just something that's happened lately that will reverse course, but schools like Madison Southern and Sayre also look like they're trying to build up their programs. For instance, Madison Southern has had an eventual Mr. Basketball playing for them and later hired a coach with a state championship and handfuls of regional titles on his resume. Unless the schools (including the Franklins) just beat up on each other all the time, someone is going to have to be toward the bottom;


Don't know that any one of these things alone has just crippled what the publics are able to do, but I can't see how any necessarily helped either.

None of this is to say that any of the individual programs are unable to be successful. There's obviously potential there. At the same time, if I had to hazard a guess, there are a lot more hands in the pie and the slices left for any of the publics are much thinner than they were twenty to thirty years ago.