[RunItUpTheGut]

Thanks for saying the nice things about Highlands and I agree with a lot of things you stated. But I disagree with you about not being able to develop or improve speed (and quickness, which is more important than true speed in my opinion particularly for linemen, whom more than the "skilled players" determine the outcome of almost every game). Take a 300 pound O lineman who spends a whole lot of time working on his bench press, cleans and squats, and have him lose 50 pounds by spending more time running and working on footwork drills, and he will become faster and quicker than he was. I'd call that developing and improving the kid's speed.

sstack is right on point about how a whole lot of Highlands kids changed from chubby, slow frosh to fast, quick juniors and seniors. My oldest son was one of those Highlands players (I'm not from eastern Kentucky). I've probably mentioned this before, but as a sophomore, he was a slow, heavy O linemen. But as a result of him completely buying into Highlands off season conditioning (and working out with a former NFL buddy of mine on the "off" days), he lost a whole lot of fat and weight, got in great shape and he became much quicker AND faster than he was when he was heavy. He changed from a kid that the Highlands coaches never thought would be a varsity player for Highlands (and yes they told me that) to a starter on the O line his junior year. He became very fast and quick for an O lineman and was able to block and maintain blocks on fast Lbers. In his second varsity start, he had an outstanding game blocking an African American LBer for Colerain that received a scholarship to a Big 10 school. My son is a Caucasian by the way. His transformation was not an aberration, as I've seen many, many Highlands kids do the same thing he did. I'll agree that a lot of the other factors you mentioned played a huge role in the dedication it took for him to transform his body.

The point I'm attempting to make is that the lack of success of eastern Ky schools in winning state championships has little to nothing to do with the lack of African American athletes in eastern Kentucky. It does have a lot to do with the style of play of a lot of eastern Ky schools and the type of off season conditioning and lifting being done to foster that style of play.

I cant disagree with you, but in most schools around Eastern Ky, you'd be hard pressed to find any coaches who know how to develop speed out of a player. And the ones who do, obviously dont want to move here.
The one thing i believe a lot of schools need to realize is that speed is the number one thing in todays high school game. You can beat a team on that alone. To many EKY schools are hung up on getting there players to bench and squat as much as possible, when in reality, the players would be better off losing weight and getting lighter on there feet so they can move faster.

The one big difference that remains is that no matter how much you improve a players speed, schools in EKY still dont have the speed that schools in NKY and Lville has. Most of your best EKY RB's wasnt necessarily fast, as far as the track is concerned, but they were very elusive and hard to tackle. However, when playing teams from around the state with speed, there just runned down on every play. A school in EKY may have 3 or 4 really fast kids who are good running the ball, but when there pass game is non existent and the other team has TEAM speed on defense, they get tracked down every time. Which is exactly what happened in the Highlands/Whitley game in 08.


I blame it all on the passing game. They need to do away with passing nicker: