Athens won at least a share of every TVC title except one

[Jim Ryan]

Size does matter, more so in sports like track, cross country, golf and wrestling. Some of the tvc schools don't have enough kids to even field a team in some of these sports.

[1974Viking]

I like the idea that Athens is in the TVC. It makes sense for several reasons. The cost to transportation to travel hours away vs some trips that take 1 hour or less. Also the rivalry between the in county schools, and the neighboring counties makes for a higher fan attendance. Yes Athens might be the biggest school with their enrollment, but not all the boys play Football. They have other sports they prefer to play. Yes they had a great team last year, but just like every school, except Nelsonville, they never seem to have a down year , schools everywhere have up and down years due to various reasons. But over the years, schools have beaten Athens, so it does happen. Why punish Athens for turning their program around from everyone's Homecoming game, to a team opposing coaches really have to prepare to play because they know they are going to be in a, no pun intended, dog fight . Don't get me wrong, but it seem anymore to much emphasis is put on the playoffs. Which brings up another point. If Athens puts a winning program on the field, and you beat them, that would give the winning team more playoff points than if they were a 2-9 team. Like it has been said before, Athens was playing a lot of the TVC teams even before they left the SEOL. That is not a slam at their league either. It is a great league with a lot of teams I follow and want to see have winning programs, and hope they get into the playoffs. This disagreement will go on and on. But in the end does it really do any good? Good Luck to all the School's Football Programs in the upcoming season. Let the fun begin. .

It just seems like too many people want to slam other school's, when they need to be concerned about their own team .A lot of personnel grudges are aired out on this site, that need to be kept silent. It has turned from being a chat site to talk about your favorite team to attacking everyone your team plays. I guess it is what it is. Their still are a lot of excellent posters on here and have become friends with lot of people and fans from a lot of different schools I would not have met, if not for this great sports chat forum. So could we have more civil discussions instead of arguing most of the time? Thanks Everyone

[Orange and Brown]

I like the idea that Athens is in the TVC. It makes sense for several reasons. The cost to transportation to travel hours away vs some trips that take 1 hour or less. Also the rivalry between the in county schools, and the neighboring counties makes for a higher fan attendance. Yes Athens might be the biggest school with their enrollment, but not all the boys play Football. They have other sports they prefer to play. Yes they had a great team last year, but just like every school, except Nelsonville, they never seem to have a down year , schools everywhere have up and down years due to various reasons. But over the years, schools have beaten Athens, so it does happen. Why punish Athens for turning their program around from everyone's Homecoming game, to a team opposing coaches really have to prepare to play because they know they are going to be in a, no pun intended, dog fight . Don't get me wrong, but it seem anymore to much emphasis is put on the playoffs. Which brings up another point. If Athens puts a winning program on the field, and you beat them, that would give the winning team more playoff points than if they were a 2-9 team. Like it has been said before, Athens was playing a lot of the TVC teams even before they left the SEOL. That is not a slam at their league either. It is a great league with a lot of teams I follow and want to see have winning programs, and hope they get into the playoffs. This disagreement will go on and on. But in the end does it really do any good? Good Luck to all the School's Football Programs in the upcoming season. Let the fun begin. .

It just seems like too many people want to slam other school's, when they need to be concerned about their own team .A lot of personnel grudges are aired out on this site, that need to be kept silent. It has turned from being a chat site to talk about your favorite team to attacking everyone your team plays. I guess it is what it is. Their still are a lot of excellent posters on here and have become friends with lot of people and fans from a lot of different schools I would not have met, if not for this great sports chat forum. So could we have more civil discussions instead of arguing most of the time? Thanks Everyone

Great post!!!

[coach k]

I know this is primarily a football thread, but I figured I would throw toss out my two cents worth of an opinion. I coach cross country and track at Vinton County. The addition of Athens has cost us a league championship in girls xc and in boys track this past school year. Would I have like for our teams to have won those meets? Absolutely...without a doubt. With that being said, we don't compete in a league without Athens anymore. I fully comprehend the enrollment gap, but it doesn't really matter what shoulda, coulda, woulda happpened. As a coach, I can cry and bellyache about them being in the league, or I can use this as an opportunity to bust my tail to put forth the best Vinton County teams I can that can compete with Athens on a yearly basis. If all of the effort that was put into worrying about Athens was put into making one's athletic teams better, then just maybe Athens wouldn't be so invincible.

Good luck to all of the TVC school this upcoming school year!

[Orange and Brown]

I know this is primarily a football thread, but I figured I would throw toss out my two cents worth of an opinion. I coach cross country and track at Vinton County. The addition of Athens has cost us a league championship in girls xc and in boys track this past school year. Would I have like for our teams to have won those meets? Absolutely...without a doubt. With that being said, we don't compete in a league without Athens anymore. I fully comprehend the enrollment gap, but it doesn't really matter what shoulda, coulda, woulda happpened. As a coach, I can cry and bellyache about them being in the league, or I can use this as an opportunity to bust my tail to put forth the best Vinton County teams I can that can compete with Athens on a yearly basis. If all of the effort that was put into worrying about Athens was put into making one's athletic teams better, then just maybe Athens wouldn't be so invincible.

Good luck to all of the TVC school this upcoming school year!

Great post Coach K!!!

[boilermaker]

For the record I for one never said that Athens was invincible, I think for a school their size the football program isnt where it should be.I do think they have a huge advantage over the rest of the league .

[NYBuckeye96]

Here is a way to look at Athens' football schedule.... There are six schools that are historic rivals of Athens going back to the beginning of high school sports. These are the schools that were part of the SEOAL until at least 1970. Today, three of those schools are in the SEOAL and three are in the TVC OHIO. Regardless of league affiliation, Athens has traditionally played these six schools over the past 85+ years...

Nelsonville-York
Wellston
Meigs
Logan
Gallia Academy
Jackson

Additionally, Athens had a rivalry going back a quarter century with Marietta and Warren. Athens played Marietta non-league off and on before Marietta joined the SEOAL. So, for the sake of rivalries over a generation old, we can add Marietta and Warren as the seventh and eighth schools.

Athens developed a rivalry with Alexander over a decade ago as another backyard brawl to go along with the NY rivalry. For the sake of recent rivalry arguement, you could throw Alexander in as the 9th game.

The 10th game - the only remaining TVC OHIO school Athens did not ever have a football rivalry with - Vinton County. It could be argued that would be a neighboring county rivalry.

So with this schedule, every historic rivalry with Athens is taken into consideration as well as realistic, reasonable travel times.

Athens could play Logan, Gallia Academy, Jackson, Warren & Marietta as the five non-league games and the schedule would be about as strong as it has been since at least 1990 and it would still allow for TVC Ohio league play. The only thing that would be different would be which games you call league games and which games you call non-league games. All games would be very reasonable on a travel budget. Athens has kept Gallia Academy on the schedule and brought back Warren. Instead of Logan, Jackson and Marietta, Athens has added Chillicothe, Parkersburg South and Coal Grove. Perhaps, over the next few years, those three schools could be replaced with Logan, Jackson and Marietta.

Now one thing that has changed over time is the size of the schools. Athens High School has not decreased in size at the rate of many other schools in southeastern Ohio. So many of these traditional rivals, while they may not all have been the same size as Athens at any point in time since the days of consolidation, they were in the past much larger than they are today. Example: NY was always smaller than Athens, but NY was closer to Athens size in 1967 at the time of consolidation than it is today. The same could be said for Meigs and Wellston.

[Auburntgrfan]

Athens and Warren play this fall, should be a good game. Not sure if it is at Warren or Athens. Athens I think.