Down in the hills we also ate minced ham. Tastes a lot like baloney. Tastes better when fried.

My dad and uncles, products of the great depression in the 30s, called baloney and minced ham sandwiches "WPA Pork Chops"

Have you ever neen to Bolivar, Mo where they have the statue of Simon Bol'i var. How about Versailles, Mo-pronounced Ver Sails--spelled like and named after Versailles in France. And then theres New Madrid (Mad Rid) named after Madrid (Ma drid) in Spain. Before television came to the hills, they spoke better Queen's English then the the English in the UK.

Fried bologna is good, but I haven't had it for so long. Unfried bologna sandwiches with mayo, lettuce, and garden grown tomatoes was awful good, while baling hay, along with a cool glass of iced tea. And once I got old enough to partake of adult beverages, which was about 6th grade for me apparently, a cold beer washed it down well also.

Contrare, I respect your service to our country. One of the things I regret, after getting to know some vets, and hearing their stories, is that I didn't take time from my party years to serve the country in the armed forces. I guess coaching kids' wrestling, which might produce a heck of a special forces, hand to hand combat soldier, is gonna have to suffice. Along with supporting wholeheartedly the thankless jobs that our men and women do so you and I have the opportunity to yell at each other and make fools of ourselves.
I don't know how you vets put up with the lack of respect from the anti war crowd, and our current admistration's lack of a sense of reality when it comes to being a superpower. His latest stupid statement about "whether we like it or not, we are a superpower" was another indication of his dismissiveness of our role as a "mother hen" to those that can't fight for themselves. There are times when I want to say "screw you ungrateful SOBs, be it Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever" but I guess we have to look at the broader picture of what it would mean to world security if we allow idiots to be in power. Hell, we have idiots in power, so I guess these other countries think we are hypocrits for telling them who should be their leaders!!

This doesn't mean I agree with much of what you say, so don't get a big head. Since you are a vet, I'll just be nicer.......

Nice words Doug but not necessary. Actually kind of embarassing.

You did say you would shine my combat boots, didn't you? Nah, just kidding.

How about cutting up some green onions and baloney (from Bologna), fry them up, and then scramble a skillet full of eggs on top. Can't wait till my onions are big enough to pull.

There are two possible items that would provide the private schools with a benefit that the public schools do not have.

1. The private schools recruit
2. The private schools have a bigger pool to draw from

While number 2 may be a concern, it doesn't appear to be the real issue. It has been pointed out that the Olathe school district allows students to choose which Olathe high school they attend, thus having a bigger pool to draw from.

The heart of the issue is whether the private schools, mainly Catholic, recruit. Recruit meaning that an athletically gifted student, non-Catholic, was recruited by another parent or coach to attend. The second piece of the recruiting is the financial piece, ie were they given any type of tuition relief. It is important to distinguish between the two.

Recruiting to Catholic schools happens. It can happen via parents and coaches. It happens directly and indirectly.

It happens directly by parents talking to other parents about the school, possibly the athletic program, and promoting the school. It seems the Moeder kid would not have looked at SJA if the Cokely kid weren't there. To be fair, this also happens with families where the kids do not play sports. It's normal. In some areas people have moved into different school districts for the same reason.

There appears to be a second type of direct recruiting that appears to be more blatant. Of course no one can provide proof. Examples of this would be the two older Rush brothers who added Pembrooke Hill (one of the most expensive HS in KC metro). After growing up in KCMO, they went to Pembrooke Hill and lived with a family in Mission Hills (pretty expensive) while their mother continued to live in KCMO. There were articles in the KC Star about it. The younger Rush, the one that played BB at KU, bounced around HS in KC and ended up in some academy in Virginia I believe. Miege has had a few exceptional athletes n the past 5 years who were not Catholic and attended Miege - Rellefords and Justin McKay (D1 kids).

To be fair, there is also indirect recruiting that occurs. This happens when a program has success and people want to attend to be part of it or to benefit from it. An example. If you live in the KC area, think your son has the ability to be a major college football player, and can afford Rockhurst HS tuition, many parents would consider it. Rockhurst has a stellar football program and has a large number of kids play D1 football. There are a lot of Kansas Catholic kids who go to Rockhurst to play football. IF you live in the KC area and have a daughter who plays soccer, volleyball or basketball, the Catholic schools have the best programs. If you thought it would give your child an opportunity and could afford it, most would consider it. This also happens with families whose son or daughter is not an athlete and happens in public schools. Blue Valley is a great school district and people will move their for the education. An acquaintance of mine sent their son to a Catholic school because he had some problems and they wanted to get him away from his crowd and were hoping it would help him. He did not play sports and it was apparently a great experience for him.

With all that said, it's hard to believe the private (Catholic) schools are ONLY successful because they recruit the non Catholics that would otherwise attend the local public school. Catholics have a deep tradition in sports and have strong youth programs. I would guess if you look at the majority of the Catholic HS rosters, you will find the majority of kids grew up going to Catholic schools and participating in Catholic youth sports. I would challenge someone to do that with a roster from one of the recent state championship teams. IF the majority, 95% plus, of the students went to Catholic church or school, than the argument that they have a bigger pool and recruit is not as strong. They are pulling from a pool of students (primarily Catholic) that creates a student body that is approximately the same size as the public school.

You could argue that if the Catholics wanted to dominate in sports, they would limit the number of HS in a metro area to 1, similar to Lawrence High for a while. Combining Bishop Ward, Miege, SJA and STA would probably be a pretty dominant 6A program. You could also argue that if you had multiple Catholic HS in one metro area (Miege, SJA, STA, Rockhurst, etc...) that they are competing for Catholic students and that could be a disadvantage.

I believe there is recruiting that happens with Private/Catholic schools. I don't think it is as significant as people would like to make it out. I don't think the majority of the Catholic schools have a significant benefit. As stated above, there are some obviously blatant examples and those examples give credence to the argument. I also believe it happens in the public schools as well.

The unfortunate thing is that I'm sure there are some Catholic schools that have won state championship teams with full rosters of Catholic kids, only to be criticized for recruiting by people who really don't know.

It is a good debate, but one that won't end regardless of the potential rule changes. It's a chicken and egg discussion.

rejones,

I like your post although I do not agree with very aspect of it. I believe you are giving both sides of it unlike the article in the Kansas City Star yesterday. I also felt this about another post you made on this issue in another topic. I wish the KC Star reporter could read your posts on this subject.

You say that private schools have a bigger pool to draw from which implies to me more students to draw from and realistically I do not believe that is true. Private schools do have a bigger area to draw from and that would be a more fair statement. The reason I say it is not more students to draw from is that not all families can afford to send their students to private schools and that severely limits the pool that private schools can draw from. It has more to do with the high tuition that private schools charge. There are other costs too like the travel and time parents need to invest to transport their kids longer distances to school. Not all families would qualify for financial aid at a private school and even if they did there is a stigma for some in accepting it and they do not consider it for that reason. Another thing that takes a lot of families out of the consideration of a private school is that many families would not send their children to a religious schools because they do not want their child exposed to that religion.

I am not positive about this but I thought that besides Olathe that the students in the Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley school districts also had the option to choose the school they wanted inside their school districts. Perhaps someone within those districts could either verify or correct me on that.

Direct recruiting of an athlete by a coach or other school official that involves an offer of a financial athletic scholarship or other type of financial incentive is no doubt a violation of KSHSAA policies and if proven should be sanctioned. I would be fine with that type of sanctioning of a private school if they gave a scholarship or other financial incentive to an athlete that was strictly based on his or her athletic skills by the school or booster of the school. I also think a public school should be sanctioned if an athlete or their family was given some financial incentive for their son or daughter to attend the public school by the school or booster of the school.

The indirect recruiting by parents and others happens at both public and private. It will always be there at both. Personally I do not think that it is that big of a deal and I really don't know how you can legislate it or why you would want to. If some wrestling parent from SM West tried to talk me into sending my son to SM West and if I tried to instead convince him to send his son to Aquinas, is that really something that the KSHSAA should be trying to prevent as long as we were not offering money to do that? Is that type of conversational recruiting between parents something that the KSHSAA should be sanctioning the respective high schools for. I really do not think so.

The majority of students at the Catholic private schools are from the Catholic high schools in the immediate area of the school. I think you would find that to be true on most of the teams at the Catholic high schools too. Catholic schools do let non Catholics enroll and it is definitely not just athletes. Catholic students do sometimes attend a Catholic school that is not as close as another Catholic high school so that they can be on a particular team. I know that happens but it is not a violation of any rules and I know it happens at public schools too. There are a couple of recent examples in wrestling in the Kansas and Kansas City Missouri area of it in public schools. The point is that this type of thing definitely happens at both private and public schools.

You are doing very good posting on the subject even though we are not in complete agreement.

Thank you Mr Nowak. I agree with your post. I was probably too verbose. It is a very emotional topic. Here are my key points:

1. Some schools are impacted by recruiting, both directly and indirectly (both private and public, TYPICALLY BECAUSE OF THEIR SUCCESS, both in academics and extracurricular activities.

2. The impact of this "recruiting" is not as significant as you would think. There are exceptions and those exceptions tend to be very big names that do impact a particular team and everyone notices.

3. The larger pool is a debatable argument, particularly if the schools are providing Financial assistance. There are examples in the public districts where kids have more choice. It is easy to argue this both ways.

4. The impact of a multiplier on some schools would be significant. There are valid examples of that in Missouri. While STA or Miege may have success even with a multiplier, others would struggle to compete in some sports, particularly football. But, if I were a 5A football coach in a private school, I might vote for it to get out of 5A dominated by Hutch .

5. The majority of the Catholic school players, including the better players are Catholic kids. If you look at some of the Rockhurst kids, Temple, Belfonte, Teahan, they came from Catholic grade schools. The Catholic schools have tradition, large participation rates and some good youth and high school programs. Rockhurst suits 100 kids for their home football games. With that tradition comes expectations. This also can be seen in successful public schools, pick a sport.

6. Just like MLB, the NBA and the NCAA, people like to see parity. They don't see it sometimes in HS sports, so it must be unfair. There are some valid examples of why it appears to be unfair with recruiting. There are probably more valid examples where they just got beat by a better team or someone that worked harder.

7. I saw Husker Fans post on coaching and it does play into the equation SOMETIMES. Examples are Miege girls basketball, Rockhurst football, Hutchinson football, There can be no denying that these programs are where they are because of the coaching. There are cases where the coaching may actually negatively impact a team's success, including the private schools. Anyone who has been a parent has seen this.

I'm done

Everyone needs to read the post under the 6A and 5A Moving Topic.

6A 5A Not goin back to the Intrust in Wichita.