[Waitaminute]

My 60 years of experience and enjoyment of wating mountain foot leads me to believe there is a 90% probability the Mountain  Crown will be one of the following three teams.

1) Corbin

2) Belfyey

3) Bell

1) Great coaches at all three schools

HE FACT is coaches are the most part of any program.

Where ever they go they  win.

A  good discussion topic for the future.

2) These  schools have excellent feeder programs  and feeder coaches that start making players in 1st grade.

Scheduled practices that consist of staktions each designed teach technique. Each drill runs 10 minutes.

This type of teaching brings in the 1st and 2nd grade leagues.

No one is standing and watching , every player is always in a drill or moving to a new station.


3) Stability and Cohesiveness

These schools keep their  best players on the team not walking the hallways. If a player quits hat visit the players.  Chat with mom and dad, the player returns to the team.

So many coaches especially assistants work on it is a an honor to be on the team if the player walks away , let him go , his loss.

That is stupid as hell and childish on the coaches part.

The team, the player and the coach benefit with the kid on the team.

Make a big deal out of the freshman and JV squads. Make sure they each  have at least a ten game schedule.

Do not play varsity starters in JV games. The purpose of JV games is provide playing time for those don't play varsity

Discipline is important. Most important are  good grades being at practice on time and exerting 100% effort in practice. 

The old school tactics don't work.

What does work is ensuring every kid in the school is

4),Conditioning like the pros.

5), Legal or illegal, does it matter.
Hold backs make much better players.

6) It is no accident that Bell and Belfry are on the state line. Their feeder programs play a lot of out of state games where good players are identified early and recruited into the program. Just a fact.

Corbin isnalso well known as a poaching team.

Personally, I think kids should play where they want to play but being able to select an excellent player when you need one is an advantage and any smart coach will do so.

5)Tradition and  Fan base


The big 3 and why they ate

None of those three will win state but the one team you didn’t name, Pikeville, likely will.