Evangel Christian playing our local HS

ECA is a far cry from what they were 5 or 6 years ago. The "play in class" rule, coupled with the church split/Calvary Baptist football program has relegated ECA to a smaller school state power, A VERY good H.S team regardless of class, but far from the national power they once were. They also are different schematically, and curiously enough racially (Since the formation of the Calvary Baptist team, and the departure of John Booty from the ECA ranks to the Calvary sidelines, ECA has been playing with a great deal more black kids than they did from their glory years of ,93-04. Just pointing out a difference, not making any inferences. )

One of the guys I used to coach with is helping out the freshman team there. Its like a small college program. Top Notch. He loves it there.

auburn

Just in case you weren't aware, ECA's enrollment is approximately 250-280 students in grades 9-12. During the schools best years, it was probably less than 250. Hoover's is nearly 10 TIMES that (2251 in 2005-2006)

Curtis is the same.

Prior to the 05 school year schools in Louisiana were allowed to play up in classification.

It was then decided that you could only play up if that class voted to allow it.

This made Evangel go from 5A down to 1A and John Curtis go from 4A down to 2A.

During those two years, Evangel played teams that barely fielded enough players to play. They easily could have rewritten all of the record books that year.

Since I am a coach on staff, I may be able to answer some of the questions that auburn had about us. We are about75 strong on the field. Our enrollment numbers have picked up a lot in the last two years as we did get over a split in which several people followed Coach Booty to Calvary. Last year we had so many kids in our jr high we had to form separate teams (one for the seventh grade and one for the eighth grade). Fully expect our numbers in the next year to grow back closer to 100 players. First time since I have been there that had been done. I have been coaching there since 2002. Before that we had always had one team. The 03 loss to Hoover was a lot closer than you remember, we threw a pick at the end of the fourth quarter that basically ended the game for us. Hoover was a very good football team that year but so were we. That year we had a killer schedule with Longview, Rockhurst, Hoover, and DeLaSalle to put it mildly and we lost in the state title game also.
We are looking forward to our schedule this year as we are playing Shiloh Christian (4A) out of Springdale,Ark, Westgate (5A state semifinalist), Lake Travis (4A state champs from Texas and Bastrop (4A state champs from La and has a 45 game winning streak). Calvary is in our district and gave us our first loss in 17 years last year at the end of the game. So we play a good schedule plus play Airline (5A) in a preseason scrimmage and Arkansas High in a jamboree before the first game. So we have our work cut out for us.
Back when I first got to ECA, we had over a 100 players but due to the success of the other sports in the last 2 years, more kids are deciding to specialize it seems. Our baseball team won the state championship in 06 and was runner-ups to Calvary this past season in the state championship. Our track team took several members to the state meet and our basketball team has been doing pretty fair also. Matter of fact, our baseball team had no seniors this past year so I know they are looking forward to next year.
We lost only one player from defense last year so I figure our defense to be our strength next year. We have a senior QB and has a good supporting cast around him. Several members of our coaching staff played at ECA as players but have returned to coach so they know what it takes to win the state title. Just this past weekend, we won the ULM (University of La in Monroe) 7 on 7 tournament and looking forward to the rest of the 7 on 7 summer season. We are in 2A and I expect our enrollment to possibly go to 3A next reclassification, we shall see. Our school has classes from K5-12th grade. The road to the state championship goes though John Curtis as they won last year's title and beat us in the semifinals. We are in the midst of bulding a new fieldhouse and new weightroom plus just got a new football field totally redone with a new grass field last year. My favorite part of being involved with ECA is the fact that we try to arm our kids with our faith in Jesus and that is better than any state title. Looking forward to a season of trying to win the games on our schedule.

Coach, just to be clear, I wasn't insinuating anything illegal. Simply stating that the environment of the school is DECIDEDLY football. It is all about the hidden curriculum. Your roster back then (and even now) and Curtis's roster look absolutely nothing like any other 2A roster in the state on a yearly basis. Both schools attribute this to "harder work, more school spirit, better coaching, better atmosphere, and students being attracted to the school" My question ..if all of the above are true, and that was the reason for over 100+ boys in the football program with 7 NFL athletes in a few years span...how could those same traits not end up with 7 girls who wanted to play basketball?

Of course, you are darned if you do and darned if you don't. I suppose had you stayed in 1A back then, and won football/baseball championships, along with being competitive in other sports, people would have complained about that too.

Bottom line with regards to football is that ECA does it harder and better than most out there.

AUBURN-- often athletic association classification numbers...are for 3 classes (fresh,soph, jr. or soph,jr, sr ) not the entire school. Not sure how the numbers you reported are gathered, BUT that would make sense (that the 1700 number you gave is a 3 class number, providing of course, that the numbers I got were correct)

I am surprised at the enrollment variances in the top class in Bama. I think 700+ being the top class is not a very good way to do it if you have other schools with 2000+

I think this is actually the attitude that causes some of the scorn from the rest of Louisiana. I know it does down south (originally with JC)

The question that can't really be answered though coach, is if the "build it and they will come" model has produced such EXTRAORDINARY results in football, but..just "ordinary" success in every other endeavor. That is the key. Squads with 100+ kids, double digit scholarship teams, front lines averaging well over 270lbs... but..in all other endeavors, just an ordinary solid small private school, no different than loyola prep, or OC or st martins, or newman...

That is where much of the "second guessing" comes into play.

But folks... the Eagles can flat out play football..and they support their team. I LOVE the halftime at the dome... with spirit groups all the way from the elementary level there performing. Good stuff.

Rush Propst had a great thing there going on at Hoover. The faclities there are awesome. We go to the National select 7 on 7 tourney every year. Hoover, Katy TX, SLC (TX) Byrnes (SC), Delasalle (CA) and many more successful programs come under fire because they win on a yearly basis. Rumors and stories of cheating is always floating around because in our society, folks want to think if you are winning, you must be cheating. Our country has changed in the last 20 years in the way they think of high school sports.

Our non-district schedule always gets us ready for the district and state playoffs. By the time district rolls around we are definately battletested. Hopefully we can stay injury free during this stretch.

Speaking of new schools around Hoover, Spain Park is the newest kid on the block and I heard last year they were thinking of building another new school out there as well so that may cut into Hoover's population. I look forward to seeing what the new coach of Hoover does with the team this next year. I just wonder if they are still going to use the Tony Franklin offense system or go to something else.

When you have success at ANYTHING in the US these days, be prepared for the detractors. Instead of following in the same footsteps, holding the successful up for praise, inspiration and study it is much easier to do nothing, criticize, marginalize, exaggerate to bring the successful down to everyone elses level. Its something we see more and more of every day in our society, we love to see the big dogs fall flat on their faces and pick at any tiny percieved flaw in the successful, it's called the green eyed devil of jealousy and covetousness.

Of course the reason in differences dont have anyting to do coaching, effort or decsion making. The book Atlas Shrugged should be required reading for all the naysayers.

My hat is off to a school like ECA who goes out of its way to schedule teams with 5x to 10x their enrollment, when most coaches have a problem if their school has 1200 kids and they have to play someone with 1500.

Coach, best of "luck" and more importantly great job on fullfilling the more important mission.

No doubt about that at all Dave. I don't think ANYONE, even ECA's biggest detractors have ever accused ECA of not trying to schedule the toughest opponents out there.

Ive seen the roster, it was e-mailed to me.
20 kids 200 or above and one of the biggest kids was their kicker
Only 3 kids above 250 and biggest kid 279

FEWER than the local .500 class B High School (22 kids 200 or over last season)
Small by class A standards here who often have 200+ kids out for football.

Tons of 9th graders suiting up. Including a 5'3" 152 pound defensive linemen. They have a 4'10" 102 lb CB they suit up for varsity, a 9th grader as well as 4 kids 145 lbs or less on a 55 man squad.

Defintiely not huge by most standards if you compare them to their pre-season schedule or the schedule they like to play or the Class A and B teams around here.

As a 4A school.. I would love to have 20 kids over 200lbs.. we have about 11.. out of those 11.. only 6 or so are good looking 200lbs+

Evangel's 220lbs kids are SOLID.. im not saying they are huge.. but they have some good looking kids..

and besides.. chill out.. I was paying them a compliment..

Evangels varsity roster BTW has 9 kids that are Frosh or Sophs that are over 200, so that would mean 11 kids over 200 as Juniors or Seniors. similar to your numbers. My guess is in many HS programs a good number of those underclassmen dont see the field or suit for varsity, they play JV, Reserve or Frosh ball at 5A-4A level ( A and B here). Obviously you are closer to the situation than most, but obviously they seem to be doing a lot of things right.