79Tiger wrote: Fri Apr 27, 2018 7:51 pm
Your socio-economic blather is wearing thin. Nothing is static. The Tigers went to the State Finals in 1999 and the city then was nowhere near the same as it was in '73 and '79. Coal Grove is no thriving metropolis but look what they achieved last year. Good things can be accomplished when everyone comes together to produce a positive outcome. To be perfectly blunt, nobody needs nor wants your negativity.
Applicable fact based questions are "negativity?"
You mean to say these applicable facts do not follow your asserted narrative and sentiment therefore your perception of them = negative?
Facts do not care about how you feel or your personal desires to omit them.
Easy question. When your population averages steady decrease and when your overall demographic continues to age - when any living thing stops growing, what does it begin the natural process of doing?
It begins to die.
For Ironton, the most aggressive and pronounced adversity that they face isn't a coaching hire. Or any personel aquisition. It's not X's and O's or a sudden need for "discipline" or for "these kids these days" to do or be A, B, or C. Stop believing in your own assumed and IMAGINARY leverage to judge or critique this generation of young people - including these young men you spend year after year following all whilst you characterize their generation as less than because they do not adhere to your antiquated world view. It's is certaintly not anything as simplistic and short sighted as what occurs in a weight room or on a field or inside an athletic directors office.
The most impactful adversity this program faces is it is located within an area and a community that stopped growing but never stopped aging. A community that stopped generating but never stopped spending and needing and a community that decreased in contribution and increased in competion for less.
It is part and parcel of a community that is slowly dying.
That said. Future expectation for this program in all aspects should go forth with measured caution.
Today Ironton High School enrollment is 400. 400 kids. Irontons average demographic is 40's and male. In 5 years the average demo will be approaching 50 years old and Irontons total enrollment concurrent with Irontons average rate of overall population decline and aging demographic - will again decrease and approach 300 total. As the average rate of population decrease for the city of Ironton carries on with as trending the flate rate of 400 students experiences decrease - the average varsity football roster decreases as well. 40 soon becomes 30 and so on and so on.
Any success Irontons program experiences now, will be a much different, much smaller version of past success.
As for a "return to glory" I regretfully inform you, there is no going back. Ever.
No. You may hope for NEW glory and being a part of witnessing these young men overcome NEW obstacles as they begin a journey on a path they forge for themselves and a path that YOU and the preceeding generations had NO hand in constructing. But you may NOT appropriate it as a "return." All of the old ghosts of the past have finally been exorcised. Bob Lutz and Mike Burcham are NEVER walking through that door.
The past is the past. The old are growing older and the young are slowly vanishing from your community. I do empathize and I understand why that is difficult to come to terms with. All that said if the goal is to truly understand ALL of the challenges this program faces moving forward and then developing expectations accordingly - you need to strive to become more comfortable engaging critical thinking and facts and try to seperate that from any personal sentiment you may be harboring that burdens your present ability to distinguish reality and your emotions.
Easy. You don’t want offend someone.