In anticipation of the question and because there hasn’t been much controversy on this site in awhile …
Kickapoo and Glendale have not yet played their District/Ozark Conference game. It is scheduled for Monday October 27th at Cooper #1. JV will play at 5:00 pm, Varsity at approximately 6:45 pm. Seeding and final schedules will be determined on October 29th when the Coaches have a free evening (these are hard-working, underpaid folks)
Monday’s game will determine the Ozark Conference Champion, with Glendale at 8-0 while Kickapoo is 7-0. The Chiefs face the Rolla Bulldogs tonight in a game that offers Rolla a chance to reach #2 in the Conference and play spoiler for the Chiefs hopes of a fourth straight Conference title.
As to seeding and schedule, here’s my educated guess:
1. Winner on Monday
2. Loser on Monday
3. Parkview
4. Nixa
5. Ozark
6. Branson
Games are being played at Kickapoo this year, and will likely follow the model used recently of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.
RANT – I’ve been lobbying some of the high school coaches regionally, hoping to see Thursday kept open so that we could attract a large crowd to the Missouri State Bears game against #11 Tulsa on November 6th. Missouri State is actively searching for a new Athletic Director. We have a responsibility to get out and support the team now and send a message to the Search Committee that increased support for Soccer is part of the discussion.
In the meantime, I’ve gotten a lesson in how Soccer scheduling is secondary to football for the majority of High School AD’s in the region. How many Soccer programs have seen any support from the football players and their parents at their home games? Have your players been out to support the football team? Yet what I’m hearing is AD’s don’t want to upset the football crowd by possibly distracting from that game by allowing a Soccer game to be scheduled in ‘conflict’ with a football game (on Friday, instead of Thursday). And there are still two District games left in football, meaning there is uncertainty. It’s a small sample that I polled but it was a consistent response.
What do you think?
PS – and wouldn’t it be great if the Class 1 AND Class 2 Finals were played as a double-header at Cooper #1. Bring the schools to the media. Give TV a reason to get out and see a couple of games that otherwise won’t be covered at all when you schedule them in conflict with the larger schools that are also playing on Thursday. Play them on Wednesday. And let’s get a Class 3 double-header going on Thursday if that’s the day we are going to play, bring the District 11 and 12 Finals to Cooper for the same reason. Even I can only be in one place and a game won’t get covered. Let’s pump up the volume and work together around here folks!
I’ll bite.
SPS does not have school on Friday, November 7 so the D11 hosts would prefer not to play on Friday night because it will be difficult to get the necessary personnel to staff the match
The week of the D11 tournament is the same week as the Class 5 football playoffs, but there would not be a conflict with Friday night. The top two teams now advance out of district play and the first games will be on Wednesday, November 5.
I have only been out to see the Falcons twice this season, but I did see a number of football parents out to support the soccer program at the Kickapoo match and the soccer parents were going to return the favor later in the week.
With the myriad of things on high school calendars, I’m not sure that high school coaches and athletic directors have an obligation to schedule around MSU’s soccer program.
Okay…this is my pet peeve with Missouri. If MSHSAA would move soccer to the spring(yes, girls and boys in the same season which creates an ideal girls first boys second night of soccer) you would not have any issues. Neither program would not have to worry about numbers(and the stealing of quality “athletes” on both sides), college soccer could be supported without conflicting with HS schedules and every sport and program would have the opportunity to support each other without compromising their own goals and scheduling issues.
It wouldn’t be ideal because you’d be playing 4 games in a row (including JV), so even if you started at 4:00 you wouldn’t end the last game until about 10 p.m. Plus in this area most high school coaches coach boys and girls, so they would not be able to do that anymore. Of course I agree that it’d be nice to not have to share soccer players with the football team, that is an obvious bonus to your idea. Maybe they could just make girls soccer in the Fall and boys in the Spring, but I’m not sure if that would just create a new set of conflicts or not (and I’m SURE that MO wouldn’t be up for the change anyway).
Actually, JV would be another night. Similar to the way football does it. Then if you have swing players, you do not have to deal with the exhaustion level. As for the coaching, it is easier to coach both programs in the same seasonal year rather than asking one coach to coach 365 days a year. You would see less burnout….but MO is not open to change.
Why not move football to the Spring. No conflict and three months to recover from the injuries. Nothing sacred about Fall football but the National tournament for club soccer starts in May/June so the coaches want time with the players before that. Kids that play three sports would not risk basketball and track season.
Well if the point of the discussion is to support all sports equally, the better choice would be to move soccer because of two reasons: 1) the soccer athlete and the football athlete are very similar and it is two of the few sports that the basic athletic skills involved are very much alike. Therefore, if they were opposite seasons, then both programs could prosper from the top athletes. 2) football needs many more players that any other sport….that is just a fact. So if you moved it to the fall, you would put baseball in the same situation soccer is with having less/more due to football. It is just a numbers game.
As for the club situation, the girls have to prepare for the state tournament in the spring on a short notice and they are still successful. Why could the boys not due to same?
I am a soccer person to the core but I am also a teacher and I hate hearing the students complain about the poor planning of high school sport seasons. It’s really about the kids.
Soccer used to be a winter sport. In 1972 or 73 the ice storm in St. Louis caused the state tourney to be delayed weeks due to frozen fields. Shortly after that they moved the season to the fall. The St. Louis coaches may have assumed that the good soccer players weren’t going to risk injury by playing football and the good football players could play club soccer in the off season, so the choice wouldn’t matter. They also didn’t want it in the Sping for the reasons already mentioned. Can’t answer why it doesn’t seem to matter with the girls accept the concern with over taxed facilities if both varsity teams tried to participate in the same season and limited number of officials trying to handle twice the number of contests.
Since the responses here are addressing a number of issues, how about a soccer version of the Greenwood Blue and Gold? This would give a venue for an all classification tournament, and once in a while, the small division schools might surprise a few folks. Call it the Southwest Shootout, and allow MSU to host.
Hogan, you raise a good question, but the suggestion is easier said than done. For small schools moving another sport to the spring could cause a logistical nightmare as they have a limited amout of busses for transportation and with your suggestion of a separate JV/Varsity night you may find it very difficult. Plus many small schools only have boys or girls soccer, not both so the concept of a double header would not exist. Another very serious issue is the lack of referees in the area to cover the additional work load. We are already under pressure to try to figure out how to get a third official on the field with some nights already using up all of our officials using just a two man system. As for MO not open for change, the sport of swimming just two years ago took a season change arguement to MSHSAA and sucessfully moved the boys from the winter to the fall and the girls from the spring to the winter, so MO is very open to change and has allowed it in the recent future.
soccer is a sport that all people have to know how to play.some time soccer will be the best sport in the world.the soccer isa sport that all spanish people have an idea how to play but the us has no intention to lern how to play so come an enjoy the soccer like we are enjoy waching soccer.