[Lambert #1]

Eagles Sports Fan,

I believe that Palmer was trying to prove the point that New Harlan shouldn't be split up into two teams. He was comparing their situation to our situations in Letcher and Johnson Co. We both have pretty big schools and we only have the one feeder program feeding into the high school. I think that he realizes that our situation of only one feeder has paid off for our counties and he would like to see it that way in Harlan County.

I for one think that consolidation does two things that are very important
in building a top notch high school program. First it allows the athletes to develop and grow into one system that should normally be what the high school coaches tell the Junior High coaches to run. The kids will go into their freshmen year with a working knowledge of the offense and defense which allows the high school coaches to just build upon what the Junior high coaches have already taught. I also think (probably not popular) that the consolidated team will weed out those kids that are not really athletes. I know that having (one) team will limit the number of athletes that come out each year but in reality those that don't come out never really needed to be out in the first place. This saves the high school coaches the headache of wasting time on athletes that they could not count on in the first place. I also feel that there does not need to be any in county rivalries which tends to develop gaps that cannot be fixed in the future with the more dominant teams beating up on the weaker teams in the county. On those weaker teams are some good athletes that develop a sense of being inferior to the athletes on the dominant team that has beaten them to death in the past three or four years. We went through that over here in Letcher County and it cost our high school program several good athletes that decided to cross over and play soccer or concentrate on baseball or basketball because they felt like they didn't belong with those other players that had beaten their brains out in the past. Just my opinion and I know everyone has one so take it with a grain of salt but I thought I'd put my two cents in anyway. Ultimately I think that Harlan County needs to do away with the inner county games and concentrate on what is really important and that is shifting all focus on the BEAR team and not the individual middle school teams.