[Colonel Kill]

Colonel,

I respect your response. It makes sense. As I explained to the young canoeman, we all have the same situation with regards to baseball, 4H camp, family vacations, etc. Do you think the children of Floyd County, KY are the only active children in the entire Commonwealth?

As for "small schools" and budgets and such, I say if your coach doesn't want to take your middle school players to a Division 1 college, play on their facilities in front of D1 coaches, interact with those players, get tours inside the facilities, compete against teams from all over the state, and have an all around awesome time, well then I say you should ask your coach why he is coaching. That is my personal opinion.

I know there are coaches out there who only want to play if they think they can win. That is the truth. Personally, we are taking the kids that are able to go. We are a county with 2 stop lights. I don't feel sorry for you if you have 4 middle schools in your county. We have 1. Our player's parents are toting the kids down, the kids came up with $16 to spend the night in the dorms the night before, and our program covered the $150 entry fee. I don't think that is too extravagant.

FYI, I called about reservations today at the state park resort in Prestonburg and they wanted $89 a night (+ tax) for us to come there and stay the night before the 7 on 7 there. You do that math?

So, in closing, I have slowly but surely realized that this board has a lot of Eastern KY folks on it. I don't expect you all to know what is going on in the other parts of the state. However, for you all to say you are the "best" at things, I feel you should compete with teams from across the state to measure that.

Again, that is my personal opinion.

I also respect your opinion as you have some good points. I'm sure other places have the same problems but I think the point you are missing is during the season our Floyd County teams only dress 20-24 kids for a 7/8th grade game. We do have four middle schools but they are all very small and all except one are in elementary school buildings so not even a true middle school. Three of the four high schools are single A schools and the other is a AA school.

I know each of our middle school coaches and all would love to take their kids and compete at UK however our travel in not up to the coaches it is the school admin that makes the call on travel and we are required to take a bus. You have one middle school and what is the enrollment? I bet it is close to twice as big as our largest. Why are our coaches coaching? To teach kids the game of football and prepare them for high school. Two of our coaches are in their second season as coaches and one was just hired in the past two weeks. I do not think any of our coaches are the type to play only where they can win.

The Brookeshire will have better rates. And where are all the Central, Northern, and Western KY teams comitting to Pburgs 7 on 7? No one wants to travel to Eastern KY for 7 on 7. Probrably due to travel expenses.

I do not think anyone is on hear saying that we are the best football teams in the state. Everyone was just talking about what a great day of football we had and as you said I don't expect you to understand about what has happened around here, but Floyd County was at on time down to only one competitive football team but because some good coaches and volunteers have taken over they are starting to turn things around and to have all of our teams being competitive Saturday has excited a lot of our local fans and coaches as well. A lot of hard work has gone into building the programs and work still needs to be done but there are several individuals giving their all to building quality teams. Our teams have come a long way in a short time.

This board does have a lot of Eastern Kentuckians partly because it was started by an Eastern KY guy.