Cooper DeJean!

On the one play Coop was out and his replacement knocked down a pass near the sideline, if Coop had been in and had been a half step faster than his replacement, he might have had a second pick six, and well on his way to the Super Bowl MVP!

Even without that, what a great day for Coop, his family, his hometown, home state and his college!
 
This is absolutely crazy to wrap your mind around:

Saquon Barkley's Birthday - February 9th
Cooper DeJean's Birthday - February 9th
Super Bowl 59 Date - February 9th

Barkley's jersey number - 26
DeJean's jersey number - 33

26+33=59
 
As a proud Chiefs fan I was disappointed in the effort and lopsided game, but my son and I both high-fived when we saw it was Coop who made the pick. He is a special talent and made us NW Iowa folk very proud last night.
 
Fryowa said:
Odebolt got real loud last night, and I'm guessing NFLshop.com is wondering why the hell there's tons of Eagles jerseys going to some little Iowa town of 1,000 people, lol.
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I bet Ida Grove claims him too since that's where he played HS football at. They have about 2k people or so. Back when I was in HS. BCIG was one school and OA was another. I'm not sure when they consolidated. A couple yrs ago I found out that Galva Holstein had consolidated with Schaller-Crestland (Early) to become Ridgeview. My hometown of River Valley hasn't even had football for awhile due to not enough kids. Sounds like times are getting tough up there for sports teams makes me sad to see
 
Hawkfnntn said:
I bet Ida Grove claims him too since that's where he played HS football at. They have about 2k people or so. Back when I was in HS. BCIG was one school and OA was another. I'm not sure when they consolidated. A couple yrs ago I found out that Galva Holstein had consolidated with Schaller-Crestland (Early) to become Ridgeview. My hometown of River Valley hasn't even had football for awhile due to not enough kids. Sounds like times are getting tough up there for sports teams makes me sad to see
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Yep NW Iowa is in a pickle in a lot of places.

Our 2A school had the lowest participation numbers in every boys sport last year since they started keeping track. Football was terrible, I remember when I was in HS (same place) the sidelines were full. Baseball, basketball, track, same thing.

Track was really crazy, I remember in the 90s pretty much every boy went out for track. It was expected if you played any other sport...and if you were out for football it was an unwritten requirement. I think 9-12 we had 19 boys out for track total this year. We scratched a ton of events all season long which is bonkers. It also hurts the ones who do go out because they get stretched thin by coaches trying to fill events. For example, my son's a state qualifier distance guy and the 3200/1600 are his bread and butter. This year our numbers are going to be even worse and his coach already told him he's going to have to do some 800s and the 800 leg of the distance med. The 3200 is one of the first events and the 1600 is naturally at the end so that's fine, but throwing a couple 800m runs in the middle of the meet isn't good. What ends up happening is you don't enter wither the 3200 or the 1600 which sucks as you get ready for districts. His coach did compromise a little and the last 3 weeks of the season he's strictly 3200/1600 which is nice, but then you throw some poor schmoe freshman out there in the 800 to get fed to the wolves.
 
Fryowa said:
Yep NW Iowa is in a pickle in a lot of places.

Our 2A school had the lowest participation numbers in every boys sport last year since they started keeping track. Football was terrible, I remember when I was in HS (same place) the sidelines were full. Baseball, basketball, track, same thing.

Track was really crazy, I remember in the 90s pretty much every boy went out for track. It was expected if you played any other sport...and if you were out for football it was an unwritten requirement. I think 9-12 we had 19 boys out for track total this year. We scratched a ton of events all season long which is bonkers. It also hurts the ones who do go out because they get stretched thin by coaches trying to fill events. For example, my son's a state qualifier distance guy and the 3200/1600 are his bread and butter. This year our numbers are going to be even worse and his coach already told him he's going to have to do some 800s and the 800 leg of the distance med. The 3200 is one of the first events and the 1600 is naturally at the end so that's fine, but throwing a couple 800m runs in the middle of the meet isn't good. What ends up happening is you don't enter wither the 3200 or the 1600 which sucks as you get ready for districts. His coach did compromise a little and the last 3 weeks of the season he's strictly 3200/1600 which is nice, but then you throw some poor schmoe freshman out there in the 800 to get fed to the wolves.
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Apparently some HS's had to scrap varsity girls' BB this year...participation was already going down, and then girls' wrestling finished it off at a few schools.

Youth sports is so broken. Everything has gotten too intensive, too expensive, and too not fun. Everything junior high and below should be about teaching skill and encouraging participation. A successful coach at that level is one who gets the highest percentage of their players to come out the following season, not one who wins the highest percentage of their games.

If by the time winning and losing does kind of matter (varsity) you have lost 50% of your talent pool, the ceiling of what you can become has lowered a great deal. Beyond that, we are a less healthy nation because a bunch of kids that could have eventually learned to love sport and recreation were chased away by some probably well-meaning coach who just doesn't understand the assignment.
 
CP87 said:
Apparently some HS's had to scrap varsity girls' BB this year...participation was already going down, and then girls' wrestling finished it off at a few schools.
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Sibley scratched girls basketball last year but had a team this year.

Sheldon didn't have a girls track team last year which to me is totally wild. Heard they had a single freshman girl show up to the preseason meeting. Feel terrible for that one girl, and it's pretty tough as a program to bounce back from. I don't know the coach but to me if you're paying someone 3 grand or whatever to coach the season why not let that one girl participate and enter meets on her own? Seems like easy money to me and how cool would it be to have one on one training?
CP87 said:
Youth sports is so broken. Everything has gotten too intensive, too expensive, and too not fun.
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I see the baseball side of it pretty close up, with that sport travel ball is killing it. Coaches out there doing it independently for the money tell parents the only way their kid will be any good is to play travel ball and get individual coaching. So you have kids playing (not exaggerating) 60-70 games a spring/summer and getting 3 coaching sessions a week all year round. And every single tournament weekend can cost a couple hundred bucks plus gas/hotel/food for parents. 5% of those kids actually benefit and are decent, and in the end most of them spend a hundred grand over 6 years for their kid to play a couple years at some shitty NAIA school. It's more for the parents' egos so they can tell people their kid is an awesome "college" baseball player who probably rides the pine or gets to play 2B at the end of a doubleheader during garbage time.

Basketball, wrestling, and volleyball are exactly the same with AAU. Which is why I love track and XC more than any of those sports nowadays.
 
CP87 said:
Apparently some HS's had to scrap varsity girls' BB this year...participation was already going down, and then girls' wrestling finished it off at a few schools.
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A lot of that is volleyball too. AAU starts Jan 1. Girls use that as an excuse not to play basketball even though a lot of girls do it. Mine do and it's not really a big deal. In basketball you actually have to run up and down the court. You don't get to stay on one side of the court and even play half the way around like VB. Not saying it's an easy sport, but compared to BB, it's a cake walk. I'll be surprised if my HS has a JV team next year. We'll just have a really bad varsity, like so many others in our area.
 
99topdawg said:
A lot of that is volleyball too. AAU starts Jan 1. Girls use that as an excuse not to play basketball even though a lot of girls do it. Mine do and it's not really a big deal. In basketball you actually have to run up and down the court. You don't get to stay on one side of the court and even play half the way around like VB. Not saying it's an easy sport, but compared to BB, it's a cake walk. I'll be surprised if my HS has a JV team next year. We'll just have a really bad varsity, like so many others in our area.
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Adding soccer hurt a lot of schools around me in baseball/softball.
 
Chickenlounge said:
Not gonna lie...I loved watching my son play basketball, but I was secretly ecstatic when he said he didn't want to play after his freshman year.
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I don't know what the hell I'm going to do when my son graduates from high school. He's played something year round since he was a kindergartner and I've used every bit of my PTO either going to watch sports or coaching. I'll figure something out, just don't know what yet.
 
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