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Missoula has open enrollment which makes this all possible. As I understand it, there are no school boundary lines and all students are allowed to choose which school they go to. This is meant to allow students to pursue their area of interest for education purposes. For example, a student interested in liberal arts would select Hellgate due to their offerings in that area. A student interested in STEM would select one of the other two high schools. This has translated into kids selecting schools based on athletic pursuits.
Interesting...Cataholic wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 11:03 amMissoula has open enrollment which makes this all possible. As I understand it, there are no school boundary lines and all students are allowed to choose which school they go to. This is meant to allow students to pursue their area of interest for education purposes. For example, a student interested in liberal arts would select Hellgate due to their offerings in that area. A student interested in STEM would select one of the other two high schools. This has translated into kids selecting schools based on athletic pursuits.
I am not really clear on the all the specifics, but that was how it was explained to me.
Middle aged high school football fans are worst. They just can't get over the fact that they're not in high school any more.Cataholic wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 12:28 pmThis was a pretty interesting article on a fan’s reaction about the Sentinel - West State Championship game. The guy is a super fan of Missoula Sentinel, but it is hard to tell that they won the game. Amazingly he sees nothing wrong with his monologue.
https://buttesports.com/we-could-all-le ... nP48ms5RFk
I have been an outspoken critic of “bad fans” on this forum. I am sure someone will defend the guy despite the fact that he threw pretty much every fan base and players under the bus to make his point.
Also, given the recent Zac Crews incident, one has to ask if these super fans affect the kids. Have they created a sense of entitlement? They basically recruit football players to go to Sentinel and basketball players to go to Hellgate.
Agree....I feel bad for his kid. He is "that guy"ilovethecats wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 3:58 pmMan that was a funny listen! Gotta be honest, and maybe this makes me a bad parent, but I wasn’t near as passionate about my own kids teams they played for than this nut is about a high school team! Even if he has a kid on the team he’s awful.
In all my years of watching my kids, coaching my kids, and even a little officiating over the years there was always one constant: terrible parents/fans. It’s ironic this clown doesn’t even realize he’s everything that is wrong about youth sports.
So embarrassing.
Great post. My experience has been that the Sentinel fans have become those “rotten eggs”. I know a former coach at Sentinel who performed very well, but quit because he could not deal with the parents. In another instance, the Sentinel fans just don’t want to abide by any rules - whether recruiting or in person. We are all familiar with the predetermined “Visitors section” of each high school stadium. Sentinel shows up and decided that it doesn’t apply to them and they would sit behind their kids sideline - right in the middle of the home crowd. That was a recipe for disaster, but they escalated it further by pretty much challenging people in that section. Many of those people identified themselves as players parents or relatives with shirts, buttons, etc. Talk about elevating the kids to “superstar” level and then showing them that the rules don’t apply. Really sad.tdub wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:03 pmI used to work for Bob Hermes, who ran the little grizzly football program in Missoula and Western Montana Little Guy Wrestling forever. Bob and I are still pretty good friends to this day. I’ll be the first to admit that Bob rubs some people the wrong way in how he does some things. But I know Bob well and his heart was always 100% in the right place in how he tried to run his programs. His programs were built more on participation numbers and not trophies. But I’ve had conversation after conversation with Bob about the views of youth athletics in the development of a kid, and the effects of burnout on young athletes. He literally wrote a book on the topic. It was guys like in this video that created the MYF league in Missoula that idolized their little super stars that ran Bob out of the race.
A lot (absolutely not all) of these people in that program starting putting their kids on these major football star pedestals in 3rd grade! It became a parent run program which is almost always a recipe for not much longevity of a program. Because once little superstar is grown, their interest in the program continuing also goes away. In the video, the guy said his boy will be a senior next year. So after next football season, “Mac Daddy” will disappear too. Unfortunately his kid will be the one dealing with any fallout of the video. If I’m a college coach, unless the kid is head and shoulders better than everyone else, I don’t touch him with a 10-foot pole, knowing this potential is in the background. It’s sad that this stuff exists in youth sports.
Unfortunately every bigger program has “those” guys. Sentinel’s are just visible now because of the program recent success. They tend to come out of the woodwork following success. Which that in itself speaks volumes about those people. So it’s infecting Sentinel at the moment, but it’ll move onto another program eventually.Cataholic wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:39 pmGreat post. My experience has been that the Sentinel fans have become those “rotten eggs”. I know a former coach at Sentinel who performed very well, but quit because he could not deal with the parents. In another instance, the Sentinel fans just don’t want to abide by any rules - whether recruiting or in person. We are all familiar with the predetermined “Visitors section” of each high school stadium. Sentinel shows up and decided that it doesn’t apply to them and they would sit behind their kids sideline - right in the middle of the home crowd. That was a recipe for disaster, but they escalated it further by pretty much challenging people in that section. Many of those people identified themselves as players parents or relatives with shirts, buttons, etc. Talk about elevating the kids to “superstar” level and then showing them that the rules don’t apply. Really sad.tdub wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:03 pmI used to work for Bob Hermes, who ran the little grizzly football program in Missoula and Western Montana Little Guy Wrestling forever. Bob and I are still pretty good friends to this day. I’ll be the first to admit that Bob rubs some people the wrong way in how he does some things. But I know Bob well and his heart was always 100% in the right place in how he tried to run his programs. His programs were built more on participation numbers and not trophies. But I’ve had conversation after conversation with Bob about the views of youth athletics in the development of a kid, and the effects of burnout on young athletes. He literally wrote a book on the topic. It was guys like in this video that created the MYF league in Missoula that idolized their little super stars that ran Bob out of the race.
A lot (absolutely not all) of these people in that program starting putting their kids on these major football star pedestals in 3rd grade! It became a parent run program which is almost always a recipe for not much longevity of a program. Because once little superstar is grown, their interest in the program continuing also goes away. In the video, the guy said his boy will be a senior next year. So after next football season, “Mac Daddy” will disappear too. Unfortunately his kid will be the one dealing with any fallout of the video. If I’m a college coach, unless the kid is head and shoulders better than everyone else, I don’t touch him with a 10-foot pole, knowing this potential is in the background. It’s sad that this stuff exists in youth sports.