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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2018 8:50:35 GMT -6
Has anyone ever done this? It's something I've been thinking about lately.
There are 2 in our area right now, both playing 11 man football after starting as 8 man teams. One actually started as a private school team and the coach kept it going after the school had money troubles, cut football, and was in danger of going under completely. I don't know much about the other one.
Both fill their roster with kids who attend small schools that don't offer football, homeschooled kids, and kids who have been booted off their HS teams but still attend there. They rent fields from MS and local governments to play on. They are Independents and schedule all of their games as non-conference games against other HS and travel around playing other on weekends. In the past, at least one of them has paid to compete in 8-man "National Championship" tournaments in other states.
If you have done this or coached on such a team, what was your experience like? It seems like a logistical nightmare to try and put this together, but it also seems like it might be fun once it's rolling.
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Post by coachcb on Oct 31, 2018 11:25:42 GMT -6
Many small schools in this state are co-oped for all sports and are sanctioned and regulated by our state high school sports governing organization. It's feast or famine; either the programs are incredibly successful or they fall apart in a hurry. I've been an AD under two co-ops and yes, logistics are a nightmare:
1. Where are practices going to take place? Are they split evenly between the two schools or do you base it on the proportion of kids that are out for each school? If one school is providing 25% of the players, then should they only practice at their school 25% of the time?
2. Are games going to be split evenly between the two schools? Again, if a school is providing 25% of the players, should the other school get 75% of the home games? If you split them equally, how are you splitting the gate?
3. Are you splitting all activity bills 50/50 or is each school responsible for their own portion of the gear, transportation, etc..etc..
4. How are you going to pay the coaches? Are you going to come up with a co-op salary schedule so everyone is compensated equally or is each school going to use their own? If so, how do you justify paying one coach more than another? What happens when one school's assistant stipend is higher than the other school's HC stipend?
5. If you have two incumbent HCs before the co-op, who is the head coach and who are the assistants? Who is going to make that determination and how is it going to be justified?
6. Are you going to switch over to a neutral mascot or will you alternate mascots/jerseys between games? See #2 for the potential nightmare this becomes. If you go with a neutral mascot, how are you paying for the uniforms? See #3 for another potential nightmare.
7. Are you going to establish co-op athletic policies pertaining to discipline and eligibility or is each school going to operate on their own? What if one school's policies are lenient in comparison to the others?
8. Are you going to co-op in all of your sports or just the sports that are struggling with numbers? Are you going to co-op your junior high sports?
All eight of these points need to resolved before two schools even think about co-oping. If a compromise can't be found on even ONE of the eight, you're in for trouble.
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Post by bobgoodman on Oct 31, 2018 20:38:41 GMT -6
Blockandtackle and coachcb are writing about 2 different situations. Coachcb's writing about a merged team formed from students of 2 schools. Blockandtackle's writing about a situation of either one school team opening its roster to outsiders, or a team not affiliated w any school at all. Most of coachcb's points don't apply to the situation blockandtackle's writing about.
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Post by freezeoption on Nov 1, 2018 15:12:07 GMT -6
If those are high school age students in our state and go to a school but play in another organization they would be ineligible. Home school can have a team but all athletes have to be homeschool.
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coachood
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Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. -Vince Lombardi
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Post by coachood on Nov 1, 2018 18:11:23 GMT -6
Did it for three years. Had a small private school team that had a few kids from an even smaller school and homeschool kids. First year was a little rough. Wasn't very organized. Played 6 of 8 games on the road(really long drives for several of them). The kids from the 2 schools never quite meshed etc. After that, we got our crap together, started building a TEAM culture as opposed to the school culture and had a blast.
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Post by bobgoodman on Nov 1, 2018 20:26:06 GMT -6
If those are high school age students in our state and go to a school but play in another organization they would be ineligible. Ineligible for what? If I'm organizing a football team or league, I'm determining my own eligibility rules for it. Do you just mean they'd be ineligible to return to a team affiliated with that school if they play on another? |
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Post by 19delta on Nov 1, 2018 21:39:48 GMT -6
Has anyone ever done this? It's something I've been thinking about lately. There are 2 in our area right now, both playing 11 man football after starting as 8 man teams. One actually started as a private school team and the coach kept it going after the school had money troubles, cut football, and was in danger of going under completely. I don't know much about the other one. Both fill their roster with kids who attend small schools that don't offer football, homeschooled kids, and kids who have been booted off their HS teams but still attend there. They rent fields from MS and local governments to play on. They are Independents and schedule all of their games as non-conference games against other HS and travel around playing other on weekends. In the past, at least one of them has paid to compete in 8-man "National Championship" tournaments in other states. If you have done this or coached on such a team, what was your experience like? It seems like a logistical nightmare to try and put this together, but it also seems like it might be fun once it's rolling. Interesting. So what you are describing here is not a school-sponsored team, right? It's basically a club football team? Basically a football version of AAU? I would say the two biggest issues in starting something like this would be costs and finding teams to play. Besides obvious costs like equipment and travel costs, I would imagine that insurance would be quite expensive. I think it would be pretty critical to find corporate sponsors. Would be really tough to run out of your garage. |
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Post by 19delta on Nov 1, 2018 21:43:09 GMT -6
Many small schools in this state are co-oped for all sports and are sanctioned and regulated by our state high school sports governing organization. It's feast or famine; either the programs are incredibly successful or they fall apart in a hurry. I've been an AD under two co-ops and yes, logistics are a nightmare: 1. Where are practices going to take place? Are they split evenly between the two schools or do you base it on the proportion of kids that are out for each school? If one school is providing 25% of the players, then should they only practice at their school 25% of the time? 2. Are games going to be split evenly between the two schools? Again, if a school is providing 25% of the players, should the other school get 75% of the home games? If you split them equally, how are you splitting the gate? 3. Are you splitting all activity bills 50/50 or is each school responsible for their own portion of the gear, transportation, etc..etc.. 4. How are you going to pay the coaches? Are you going to come up with a co-op salary schedule so everyone is compensated equally or is each school going to use their own? If so, how do you justify paying one coach more than another? What happens when one school's assistant stipend is higher than the other school's HC stipend? 5. If you have two incumbent HCs before the co-op, who is the head coach and who are the assistants? Who is going to make that determination and how is it going to be justified? 6. Are you going to switch over to a neutral mascot or will you alternate mascots/jerseys between games? See #2 for the potential nightmare this becomes. If you go with a neutral mascot, how are you paying for the uniforms? See #3 for another potential nightmare. 7. Are you going to establish co-op athletic policies pertaining to discipline and eligibility or is each school going to operate on their own? What if one school's policies are lenient in comparison to the others? 8. Are you going to co-op in all of your sports or just the sports that are struggling with numbers? Are you going to co-op your junior high sports? All eight of these points need to resolved before two schools even think about co-oping. If a compromise can't be found on even ONE of the eight, you're in for trouble. The way I read the OP, this is not going to be a "co-op" in the sense that multiple high schools are collaborating to field a single football team that will represent each school. Instead, this is going to be more along the lines of the AAU model. At least that is how I read it. |
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Post by 19delta on Nov 1, 2018 21:49:11 GMT -6
If those are high school age students in our state and go to a school but play in another organization they would be ineligible. Ineligible for what? If I'm organizing a football team or league, I'm determining my own eligibility rules for it. Do you just mean they'd be ineligible to return to a team affiliated with that school if they play on another? I think what freezeoption means is that if kids played for an organization like what the OP described, they would be ineligible under the state association rules. Or, looking at it another way, it would be like IMG in Florida. IMG can schedule and play games against other Florida high schools. However, because IMG is not a member of the Florida state high school athletic association and does not follow their rules, they are ineligible to play in any tournament or post-season series that is organized by the state high school athletic association. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2018 22:06:29 GMT -6
Interesting. So what you are describing here is not a school-sponsored team, right? It's basically a club football team? Basically a football version of AAU? I would say the two biggest issues in starting something like this would be costs and finding teams to play. Besides obvious costs like equipment and travel costs, I would imagine that insurance would be quite expensive. I think it would be pretty critical to find corporate sponsors. Would be really tough to run out of your garage. Yeah, basically a club football team for HS aged kids that plays school-sponsored teams. AAU is its own thing and they play other AAU teams, so it's a little different. We actually played the first team I mentioned above at a previous stop. They play HS teams, but most of their games are very long drives. I don't think they actually have a "home" stadium. They are considered "Independent" in our state, so the rules for playing them are basically the same as playing an out of state team. The expenses, transportation, and other aspects and how you take care of that were mostly what I was curious about. I have literally no idea how these teams do it. |
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Post by freezeoption on Nov 2, 2018 5:51:13 GMT -6
They pay for it themselves, we played a homeschool team out of Kansas. They came in their own vehicles, didn't have a school building, always traveled because they didn't have a field.
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Post by bobgoodman on Nov 2, 2018 9:25:03 GMT -6
This is a frequent situation in New York City, where a lot of high schools don't have football, or if they have varsity don't have JV, let alone frosh. The slack's been picked up by youth football clubs that extend up past the usual "youth" age teams in this country (although in other countries, teenage sports are considered youth sports), and by adult football clubs that have extended down into school age teams. One club I coached in briefly that already had an adult and a U18 team was recruiting players down to age 9. I know of a team that began as a church-affiliated children's team and stayed together as they grew up and wound up in an adult league.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2018 10:05:11 GMT -6
They pay for it themselves, we played a homeschool team out of Kansas. They came in their own vehicles, didn't have a school building, always traveled because they didn't have a field. The team we played had a bus they'd ride in on. They were about 30 strong. I wonder how much parents pay to do this. I'm thinking that by the time equipment and insurance is paid for it's probably around $1,000 a year for each kid. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2018 10:06:26 GMT -6
This is a frequent situation in New York City, where a lot of high schools don't have football, or if they have varsity don't have JV, let alone frosh. The slack's been picked up by youth football clubs that extend up past the usual "youth" age teams in this country (although in other countries, teenage sports are considered youth sports), and by adult football clubs that have extended down into school age teams. One club I coached in briefly that already had an adult and a U18 team was recruiting players down to age 9. I know of a team that began as a church-affiliated children's team and stayed together as they grew up and wound up in an adult league. The church affiliation aspect is interesting. I suppose that having a church affiliation or some type of corporate sponsor would be the way to go here, just to have some type of backing and support. |
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Post by bobgoodman on Nov 2, 2018 19:23:58 GMT -6
This is a frequent situation in New York City, where a lot of high schools don't have football, or if they have varsity don't have JV, let alone frosh. The slack's been picked up by youth football clubs that extend up past the usual "youth" age teams in this country (although in other countries, teenage sports are considered youth sports), and by adult football clubs that have extended down into school age teams. One club I coached in briefly that already had an adult and a U18 team was recruiting players down to age 9. I know of a team that began as a church-affiliated children's team and stayed together as they grew up and wound up in an adult league. The church affiliation aspect is interesting. I suppose that having a church affiliation or some type of corporate sponsor would be the way to go here, just to have some type of backing and support. The team in question had a church affiliation when they were children. I don't know what age they were when that tie was severed. As an adult team, they relocated from Mt. Vernon to the Bronx, then to Queens when their HC moved there. In general football clubs benefit by, but don't necessarily need, outside backing. They rely on dues from their players for operating expenses. Commercial or other sponsorship is usually just an extra to supplement dues. |
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