Thank you baller, Are those numbers just off the roster? Just curious because if so they wouldn't include the kids that quit were lost to eligibility. I hope the numbers do go back up though, there are some good athletes coming up hopefully all of them stick it out.

 The thing I just try to get acrossed is if you go into most D-5 schools and look at their rosters and the percentage of boys in the school the higher percentage of the boys play sports and it just seems like at EC its not that way.

Baller correct me if I am wrong but I know in 04-05 EC had 50 kids on the roster and 05-06 there were 40 something and before that I don't remember numbers being in the 20's or low 30's but like I said correct me if I am wrong on that. I hope you are right though and they have success this year as they do have a lot of talent returning and also a lot of expirence on both sides of the ball.

The coaches have meeting every year for any student that wants to play and kids just don't show up because they are not interested in playing sports plain and simple. Kids specializing in one sport? Being a small school is all about having 2-3 sport athletes, there are simply not enough kids in the school even if all of them played to tell all of them just specialize in one sport. There is just no simple solution to the problems at east clinton.

In my opinion EC Sports don't need to be rebuilt... The coaches there are very capable of doing their respective jobs. I am afraid that the sad truth is the school itself can't do anything. It's the athletes and that is not a personal shot at the athletes there because they are all great athletes and even better people. EC has run into the problem in the case of football having low numbers and you would think that maybe it was because no one wants to play on a losing team, but if you go into the school and look around the athletes are playing and it sad to say but maybe there is only 30 some male athletes at EC. The other kids don't have any drive to play sports or anything else for that matter and thats not the coaches fault or for that matter the athletes fault and its not the schools fault either. Another problem is some people think you can be a football player when its football season, a basketball player when its basketball season or a baseball player when its baseball season... The truth is you have to work at it year around, that includes going to the weight room and open gyms in the summer. I know its hard to be motivated to get up and 7 and go to the weight room and then be sore and go to an open gym that night, I have been there and I have skipped my fair share of early morning lifts and open gyms, but to be successful thats what it takes most of the time. But in football the case has become because of low numbers athletes have to play out of position and that never ends well. Basketball is the same way when the tallest guy on the team is 6'1 or 6'2 and he has to play the 5 spot against taller guys game in and game out it never ends well and as I said thats not anyones fault you just have to deal with the cards you're delt sometimes.

Is there any action being taken to clean this up? Either by the league or by the administration at Felicity? Since when has it been acceptable for fans to come out of the stands and approach opposing players or coaches. The parents in Felicity need to grow up and I feel for the kids on the team because this all has to be embarassing for them. I know last year as a player if a parent from my school would have done something like these people are doing I would truly be ashamed. Felicity seems to be a heated game between all league teams but that is on the court not after the game and that is the players and coaches buisness not the fans. This also has to be embarassing for the SBAAC I would expect league to take actions but I guess we will have to wait to see that.

After watching the county tourney this year were there any surprises about any of the teams? I was suprised in just how strong wilmington looked and in comparison how weak they made to other 3 teams look. That group of boys that wilmington has are really good and they can only get better in the years to come. The other 3 teams are really going to have to pick it up if any of them hope to knock wilmington off their throne.

I agree although I am not a taxpayer yet! lol It is very disappointing to see the school spend money on the gym finally and then not protect their investment. Now I can understand still having gym classes on it because there is no where else to have them in the winter. But the dances in there have got to stop... there is a middle school gym which is in pretty bad shape but its been that way since it was built because the floor wasnt layed down right but thats another story and East Clinton has a huge cafeteria that they could hold dances in. I talked to some of the basketball players at the begining of the season about the new floor, saying how it must be nice to go out and play basketball and not be all over the place and they told me that before the season the new floor was almost as bad as the old one already. Now I dont see players slipping and sliding like the were last year but I'm not on it to know exactly what it is like. Disappointing....

Thank you Ms. Clark again I did not mean to attack you if it seemed like I did I am sorry for that. People do appreciate the things you do but you won't ever find a lot of those people on here telling you what a great job on here lol

You know Ms. Clark when I posted my post my aim was not to bash on you personally... you do a good job with the paper. My aim however was to express my displeasure with the New Journal as a organization. The fact that they dont have enough people to cover all the county teams is a little rediculous. Whether that falls on you or someone higher up than you I dont know.
Also I never once said anything about you treating anyone differently, if you go back and read my post I just purposed that all the teams have equal exposure, and that is the only thing I said about exposure.
As for the photography, you don't write all the articles of the games, those people dont know how to work a camera? And just because one of your best pictures is of an EC player that makes it alright? I am not saying that you should be superwomen and fly to 4 different counties but like I said maybe you could add on to your staff. Maybe that would take some pressure off of your "oh so hard" job. No offense

Now I know that academics should always take a front seat to athletics and it very much does so with the eligibilty rules. My question is should school administration care if their sports teams are awful if academically they are in good shape as a school?

In my opinion having graduated and played sports in high school the two should co-exist equally. Education may open up the oppurtunity to life but sports teach you so much more about life. The important things such as character, dealing with adversity and so on. So in my opinion a school's administration should care just as much about how their school is doing athletically as they do academically.

 I am sorry if this post is a little confusing I know what I want to say but sometimes I dont know how to explain it lol

Thanks baller... I did not get to see the sports page today as I am at college now but I hope I did raise someones eyebrow. That is what I was going for.

This post is not about the before post but it goes along with the subject. As I was unable to make my high school's football game this week (and all of you know where I am from) I looked forward to reading about the game in the paper saturday... I picked up the paper and at first struggled to even find the article, once I found it I was done reading it in 1 minute. As I flipped back and forth between the pages thinking the rest of the article had to be on a different page I flipped to the back of the sports page to look at the action pictures (which I normally like very well) to discover that only three teams from clinton county were represented in the pictures. Being graduated now I like to read about all the clinton county teams so I read the rest of the articles. Then I went back to the article I started with I noticed no reporter was credited with the article, this could mean one of two things to me either the person who wrote the article was too ashamed of their work to put their name by it or plain and simple the news journal didn't send a reporter to the game. Now I know East Clinton isn't in the best of shape in football but I think the kids deserve the same amount of exposure as the rest of the teams. And I know the next excuse being in the SBAAC they travel too far... Now I could understand not going to New Richmond... that is a long haul but Mt. Orab doesnt take that long to get too.
 As far as the back of the sports page, as I said I like the new feature this year, but East Clinton didn't even get the infamous file photo. And believe it or not I am not just on here ****ing because I am from East Clinton, personally I would just like to see equal exposure to all the teams. In my opinion not one schools football team works harder than the other, they all practice everyday in the same weather, they deserve to have their hard work reconized equally. I would purpose splitting the front page into four equal sections between the teams and at least give them equal exposure on the front page. If one article is longer than another on the second page or third where ever it get put then so be it. Just give the same amount on the front page.
 If you are under staffed perhaps you should bring that up in your next staff meeting, that you need at least four sports reporters. Its your JOB to bring all the people of Clinton County the news so do it. Send a reporter to every teams game don't rely on the coach or someone else to tell you what happened find out for yourself.

Yes I do realize that it is the responsibility of the school to make up their own guidelines, I believe it was Ms. Clark that said something about the OHSAA. I also realize that every school may have different rules when it comes to this situation... but I do believe that Massie like East Clinton has the 30% rule is place... someone correct me if I am wrong. But thank you for the information you supplied.

Maybe a better question is should the OHSAA be the ones to make the rules for character and disapline instead of the individual schools? If it were that way it might eliminate that big loop hole of "get in trouble, you can just transfer."

I am not so sure that you need something that specialized. If you have atleast one linebacker that can run you can run a 4-3 on defense and cover 5 wide.

The rule was reformed from get caught using tobacco, drinking alcohal, or smoking you were suspended for 1 week of games (so with football that would be a game or volleyball how ever many games are in that week), placed on probation for 1 year to the date of being caught and if caught again while on probation you're finish with all sports. Also the contract that student athletes sign saying that they will obey the rules was only in affect during the respective sport's season. While with the new rule, get caught using the before mentioned you are suspended for 30% of your sport's season (football would be 3 games) put on probation for 1 year to the date of being caught and 2nd offense once again you're finished. Also the contract that you sign is in affect year-a-round.
I believe that is the just of the rule there are prolly some things I left out but that is most of it. I hope I made it understandable, sometimes I have a hard time typing out what I really want to say or mean lol .
I also wanted to add that I am not trying to get anything started by asking what the point of the rule is, just wanting to hear people's opinions. For those of you that know me prolly know that I, myself violated this rule and was suspended for the first game of football my senior year so I kind of understand what the kid from massie is feeling... I couldnt imagine what I would have done having to miss 3 games of my senior year instead of just one.