[charlie22]

This is why HHS fans say you need to play a tougher schedule. I know you get tired of hearing that, but you just admitted that they did not have to practice or use much of a pass defense all year before HHS. Jc was a good team and was fun to watch. I expect to see them up north this year, so I hope they continue to neglect the passing defense and play 1A teams.

Personally I think you are being a little unfair to JC. Keep in mind that unlike Highlands, JC is not located in an urban area with a lot of high schools in a 20 minute drive area and there are still few schools in Eastern Ky (admittedly more than 5 years ago) that emphasize the pass. So in order for JC to find programs with a strong established passing game, it would mean lots of travel I would think. Some JC fan could give us some input on the proximity of strong passing teams to JC. In an era where most schools (I don't know about JC) are having big pressure placed to cut the transportation budget, placing out of area teams on the schedule is frowned upon. It's one of the reasons why Highlands has only one "far" game on the schedule this year (Manual) and why Highlands agreed to play Beechwood (a 1A team I'll point out).

You can make the counter argument that Highlands looked weak attempting to stop the strong running games of JC and Whitley and that was caused by the failure of Highlands to schedule more strong running teams (although I'll admit that Colerain fell into that category this year, but that was the only option/veer team we faced until the playoffs and based on JC and Whitley's success running the ball, Colerain wasn't enough to prepare us adequately for those two teams).

Each offensive system has it's strengths and weaknesses. One can ponder over the winter whether the outcome of the JC game would have been different had we played the game in poor weather conditions that would have made passing very difficult. IF the outcome had been different, we may be responding to posts by the JC faithful wondering why Highlands didn't put more teams that run the option/veer on their regular season schedule to better prepare us for the JC matchup.

Having said that, I do agree with you that not having many strong passing teams on JC's schedule hurt them in their preparation for Highlands and I wish Highlands would put a team like Belfry on their regular season schedule to help them prepare for teams like JC and Whitley. But because of budget issues, I don't think you are going to see that happen.