Second round of the playoffs

[hesaias]

We played a barn burner friday night. Had to be the best game I have witnessed. The two teams are cross county rivals from years back, and this was the best game they played ever. Lots of sportsmanship on both sides, hats off to both teams and fans.

Also, some of the players came up to me and complemented me on my pics. The who school seems to check my site each week to find pics of themselves

[JSPhoto]

You also had some very good timing this week Scott. So who won?

JS

[masdog]

Technically, they're not perfect, but then I've never cared about making technically good photographs. These are some wonderfully timed images. Great job.

[hesaias]

Thanks guys
We won. On to the Upper State championship this friday!

I may be getting credentials to the Shrine Bowl and the North South all star games, we have 2 players in each game.

[masdog]

That's awesome, Scott. State Championships and All-Star games can be a lot of fun. I got to go to one on a press pass when I was in High School. The event was a riot, and I still have the pass hanging on my wall.

[JSPhoto]

Thanks guys
We won. On to the Upper State championship this friday!

I may be getting credentials to the Shrine Bowl and the North South all star games, we have 2 players in each game.

hmmm, thats cool Scott. Allstar games are fun, last year we had 5 or 6 players in the East/West Allstar game and one player and one coach in the North/South Allstar game.
Upper State Championship? Does each class have two champions?

JS

[hesaias]

"Upper state" is a hold over from the old days. Division AAAA is divided into 2 divisions. Division 1 is 32 teams across the state, and Division II is the 16 biggest schools in the state. They play in regions to cut down on the cross state travel. The divisions are roughly dividded at mid state. In the old days, there was an "Upper state championship, and a Lower State championship, those two teams played in the State championship.

There are however 2 AAAA champions, Div I AAAA and Div II AAAA. That is another long politics riddled thread!

[JSPhoto]

OK, well I understand it now, your upper and lower state champions are the same as our Semi-State champions. We just had our semistate this past Friday & Sat. Now there are 10 teams left standing. We have 5 classes 1A (smallest schools), 2A, 3A, 4A, and 5A (largest schools). There are (I think) 311 or so schools with football, every school no matter how bad their record gets to play in the tournament. The worst record in regular season to make the semistate game was 0-8. The worst record to make the state finals was my own former high school this year with a 3-6 record! They won 5 straight now and are 8-6 going into the state finals and they beat the #1 ranked team in class 3A with a 14 year old freshman QB. Hard to believe, but in the process they beat 3 straight private schools and will now play Bishop Chatard for the 4th time in the state finals.

I know all about the political issues and sports. We have a battle going on with the public vs private schools here. Basically, the private schools have won all but 1 of the last 19 or 20 3A state championships, but the private schools refuse to accept anything other than "keeping it as it is". Pretty sad though that the few (3 or 4 in fact) out of 311 schools can run the whole show for the entire state and have more influence than the rest of the state...of course they also have the most championships too.

JS