Why are Iowa public city schools failing to produce any D1 players?

[eyekwah]

I was looking over the current Iowa roster of players with ties to Iowa high schools. Few or none are from the public high schools in the cities of Des Moines, Davenport, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City, Council Bluffs. Why are the public city schools failing to produce any D1 players? You would think you could get at least 1 or 2 d-1 players per year given the size of the school districts.

 

[spliff45]

I saw a report about this on KCCI news here in Des Moines. IIRC, they were talking to the coach of Hoover or North or whatever and he was saying that they lack youth football programs to get kids started at an earlier age to develop their skills. So by the time they get to high school, they are typically already behind where the kids in suburbs are at. Not sure how accurate that is, but seeing how more often than not I see how lopsided the scores between schools like Valley/Dowling and metro schools like North/East/Lincoln are, I would lend some credence to it.

 

[ssckelley]

Waterloo used to dominate high school football and produced many athletes that went on to play D1. But now most of those kids are interested in other things besides sports. There are some years they barely have enough kids to field a team lets lone compete in 4A. I think the lack of youth programs hurts and you see that is the difference even in the smaller schools.

 

[DP5555]

The size of the school districts still pale in comparison to bigger cities outside of Iowa. So obviously population still plays a big role.

I think there's something to be said about kids now days not putting as much emphasis on sports. Heck, in the 10 years it's been since I graduated high school things have changed drastically. My older brother and I were practicing year round for football (speed training, weight lifting, mandatory track practices). That was what all of the cool kids did at our school. They were football players. Even if you weren't a great player you went out for the team.

Now, we have a little brother who is 16 years old and it's been several years since he played any sports. His passion is video games. Which, as older brothers, is hard for us to relate to, but the kid does get straight A's and wants to be an engineer so we can't exactly be hard on him about it. I think it's fair to say there a lot of kids like him today. Both my older brother and I had opportunities to play football at the D3 level, and I don't think there's any reason our little brother wouldn't have had he put in the effort it takes to play high school football. He just didn't have the desire to.

 

[1hawkeye1]

Times are a changin'.

 

[DodgerHawki]

The size of the school districts still pale in comparison to bigger cities outside of Iowa. So obviously population still plays a big role.

I think there's something to be said about kids now days not putting as much emphasis on sports. Heck, in the 10 years it's been since I graduated high school things have changed drastically. My older brother and I were practicing year round for football (speed training, weight lifting, mandatory track practices). That was what all of the cool kids did at our school. They were football players. Even if you weren't a great player you went out for the team.

Now, we have a little brother who is 16 years old and it's been several years since he played any sports. His passion is video games. Which, as older brothers, is hard for us to relate to, but the kid does get straight A's and wants to be an engineer so we can't exactly be hard on him about it. I think it's fair to say there a lot of kids like him today. Both my older brother and I had opportunities to play football at the D3 level, and I don't think there's any reason our little brother wouldn't have had he put in the effort it takes to play high school football. He just didn't have the desire to.

You are correct in that the size of the districts pales in comparison to those in other states.

In a reverse way, the emphasis on uber-competitive sports at a very young age id driving overall youth participation down. If you are not good enough to make a competitive basketball, baseball, etc. team by about the age of 11-12, your opportunities to be a high school athlete in those sports are basically gone. Football is a bit different as those communities that have the strong youth football programs tend to thrive.

 

[nationalchamps]

I know in the DSM metro area most of the good kids end up transferring to either Valley or Dowling so the transfer effect is an issue as well.