So now that I have two wonderful daughters they want to go to the highschool games because aa I had assumed that is what kids did on friday nights. Thats what i did on friday nights. But I have one big question, where was everyone?
Going to the last few games was such an odd experience and not just because the last time I was at a highschool game I was in high school and now they all look 12.
The high school my girls will go to is twice the size of the one I went to in WV, however it looked like the stadium would have held a fourth of my high schools stadium. And that might be generous based on how short this press box was. The stands never filled, which is odd as you didn't have a seat unless you were 30 minutes early back home. That included the visitor stands too.
The other thing that stood out beside lack of crowd was lack of size on both teams. I looked up and there are only two 247 rated players on the schedule. I didn't expect a ton, but I had always thought loudoun county had good football teams and would have multiple players go to division 1 each year. But even if they werent D1 players, there wasn't a single player on the field that looked like they should be playing football at any level. Walking by the team I dont think any one was over 6' tall. My senior year I think only RBs, WRs and DBs were under 6'. At 41 I think I could have out muscled the lines (but probably not cause im out of shape). I know I would have been the best reciever on the team, I've never seen so many drops of balls that were in between the recievers hands. I walked away from the games wondering what am I watching if there are single A WV highschool that would just maul these teams.
Am I just living 10-15 years in the past or is loudoun county football just small and not that good? Or did these games just happen to not have great opponents.
Also was odd to see a band with less members than my highschool drum line. I guess when you have ~40% of the school (220+ in band, 100 in football and another 20 cheerleaders) every shows up to watch their kid and fills the stands.
Comments
I would say most schools in Loudoun probably have a few guys capable of playing some level of college football (D1-3, with more suited for the lower levels than D1-FBS obviously). So two 247 rated guys sounds about right. The top schools may skew those numbers a bit. Stone Bridge's record right now is bad because they played a lot of elite private schools OOC but I'd guess they're probably still one of the better teams in the county.
As for crowd, I think it's a partially LoCo towns being made up of almost entirely transplants to the area so most adults without kids don't feel any real affiliation to the school/community and therefore the local game on Friday isn't their first thought. And kind of what you see with the student section at Tech games. Sport events are more a social event for most of the kids than a game they truly care too much about.
I'm 33 and never went to a high school football game until going to one of my BIL's games a couple years ago.
I grew up outside of Annapolis MD. Went to some lacrosse games, which were always sellouts that charged money. Football - even in years we went to playoffs - was never as big of a deal.
I grew up on Bowie, MD, in the C section.
I live in Loudoun County. The teams have gotten smaller over the past 5 years. Loudoun is not a football stable. Stonebridge is our "powerhouse" and that's about it.
My son played at Woodgrove (he turns 25 in November). Those teams were by far bigger than the teams from the last 4 years and the teams seem to be getting smaller by the season.
As for attendance and participation....welcome to NOVA. However, when a team plays a "cross town" rival the crowds can get into the 2,000+ range. For example, always a big crowd when Loudoun Valley and Woodgrove play each other. Battle of the Burn is another - Stonebridge v. Broad Run
I do want to point out I have lived in NoVa for 20 years now. So thanks for the late welcome /s
LOL. I moved to a small little town in Western Loudoun that doesn't have any stop lights in 2005. You probably have heard of it - Lovettsville. I will work in NOVA and I will visit friends and family in NOVA but I definitely didn't want to live there after 4 years of doing so (Sterling & Leesburg).
1836 is a favorite spot whenever we're out Lovettsville way going to wineries or breweries or whatever. The banana pudding is legit and they always have a good selection of local beers on tap.
No doubt. My daughter works there. We were there last night. Had the banana pudding. Sooooo good. I've had just about everything on the menu. I have not been disappointed once and there specials are usually top notch.
Yeah that's me!
Having grown up in Fairfax County, VA - HS football is *not* a focus. I can't speak specifically for Loudoun, as it's blown up and changed significantly in the last few decades but...no one cares about HS football around here, and hasn't in my lifetime. I personally find caring that much about 16 year olds playing football a little weird but maybe that's just me?
The DC area has very few good HS teams, very few high end recruits etc. HS basketball, on the other hand, is a different story.
I went to Fairfax HS (I'm 33), and we were fucking awful at football. So bad we got relegated to a worse conference lol... Now they are decent against the current competition and have pumped out a few highly related D-1 players, a couple of them to, wait for it...
PSU... woof
Were they brothers?
And this is why I am not editor-in-chief for TKP
I went to Woodson HS around same time frame you would have been at Fairfax. I feel like outside of Westfield there weren't many real powerhouses in Fairfax County at the time. We had 1 good year at Woodson when I was there, and maybe 1 or 2 players who went D-1
Westfield was for sure a powerhouse back then... watching Royster, Eddie Royal, Glennon x2 (I'm sure I am missing other few big names) was fun to watch
I'm a few years older than you and went to Forest Park in Woodbridge. Holy hell was our football team awful. I never went to a single game.
I graduated high school in 2005 (Richmond - Hermitage High) and I would say the majority of our starting players went on to play in or at D1 colleges. The quality of play was legit, soI share the same feelings as the OP. I live behind a high school here in Roanoke (William Byrd) and when we would walk to check out the games on a Friday night, we had nothing to do, I was pretty unimpressed at how small the players were and how poorly the play was.
The four top schools in Loudoun are pretty dominant but there are definitely the haves and have not. Stone Bridge as previously stated played some top tier schools and took early losses but likely runs their schedule the rest of the season. Briar Woods is really the only other top team that counters Stone Bridge. Tuscarora dominates the Dulles District. Think they are 7-0 right now. John Champe is the top school in the Catoctin District.
This season is a light year for senior class. The junior class plays a bigger role in terms of 247 level talent. There will likely be 7 or 8 rated guys.
Freedom is struggling this season but typically fields a pretty dominant team.
Not sure which school you are cheering for but outside of the ones above its very hit or miss on talent or competitiveness. A big part of the problem is that several of those top teams essentially recruit the best players and kids get driven to school each day so they can play on those teams. Loudoun has a pretty flexible policy on parents requesting their kid attend a specific school.
Loudoun schools have won 7 state championships since 2010. Broad Run won 2, Stone Bridge 2 and Briar Woods won 3. They have lost 6 more state championship games as well in that time period. That essentially means at least one Loudoun team reaches the state final each year. The majority of the teams play at the Class 4 and Class 5 level. Freedom is the only school at the Class 6 level. So all in all the Top teams do very well compared to the rest of the state but the rest of the teams tend to struggle year over year.
Yeah the winning state titles and playing for state titles is all I knew so I thought it would be a big thing for high school kids to go watch. Again nothing better to do in WV which is not the case here.
I saw Broad Run, Loudoun Valley and Loudoun County and they just all seemed small. So I guess I just saw the struggling teams. I was more surprised the matching bad had like 30 kids. It seemed really small for a school with like 1500 students. They did well for the size of the band.
I think there is a Covid effect to some degree and of those three schools only Broad Run has consistent success so that plays a role. Another big factor is how many other sports that overlap. Kids going to tournaments for travel sports like baseball, softball and soccer in some cases leaving on Thursdays or as soon as school is out on Fridays for weekend tournaments.
WV was a combination of nothing else to do and also a historical competition between communities from different coal mining towns. Football is also a primary sport there.
As for school bands I think a big factor there is that each kid has to foot the bill for their instrument so cost has become a reducing factor there.
I grew up in north central wv so not really coal mining towns, but every time we played one of those more rural towns in playoffs and they would always play tough.
I can tell you that the Loudoun County HS band practices a lot because I live across the street and it seems like they're always out there.
I'm haven't been to any games at County yet, but I did go to a Tuscarora game with a friend who's a teacher there. They have one kid who's like 6'8" and clearly the best athlete on the field. County has an OL who already has a VT offer and he's a sophomore.
Looks like the practice paid off. They recently won a national championship.
https://www.loudountimes.com/news/loudoun-county-high-school-marching-ba...
That's probably the only championship-level team I'm going to see this year after the week Hokie sports just had.
Slightly off topic but we played at John Champe when it first opened and they had the nicest facilities I'd ever been in for a high school, they hadn't finished the away locker rooms but it was as nice as some D3 schools. We beat the breaks off of them and then the next year they jumped 2 classifications and looked like world beaters
yeah they are going to destroy us in the next couple weeks whe ln we play them, there freshman team will be in by halftime.
I don't think this issues is isolated to Loudon County (my family is all from Leesburg).
I make it a habit to attend high school football games and they simply aren't as well attended as they used to be. I think there are a number of factors, not least of which is that many areas that are growing and, as mentioned above, full of transplants who have no roots in the area and no attachment to the school/community.
Additionally, I think people simply have too many other things going on (here's looking at you travel ball parents) to faithfully engage with "traditional community events".
The only caveat I might add is that in smaller communities in the mid-atlantic and the southeast (which is where I tend to visit games) the smaller the school & community the more excited the community is about Friday Night Lights... Maybe because its the only thing going on? I don't know. But I do know it isn't a Loudon County specific issue.
HS football doesn't seem near as popular and fans not as rabid/intense as they were n the 1970s and 1980s. think 'Remember the Titans" . Or even anecdotally, in my sophomore year at Freeman(1980-81) , the football team was 7-0-1 going into the game with 8-0 Highland Springs; that game-held at Freeman- had about 6000 fans ; Freeman won 8-7.
In the rematch in the regional semis-held at City Stadium- attendance was 12-15,000(sorry- my memory has fade on the exact #) and Freeman won that as well as the Final the next week against Petersburg before losing to eventual State Champion Hampton in the state semis (ironically played@ Highland Spring HS) to finish 10-1-1.
Where did you go to HS that had 220 in the band and 100 on the FB team?
just south of Morgantown WV
University High in Morgantown had similar numbers to this. That's where I played HS football. Games between University High and Morgantown High were regularly played at WVU's field starting a few years after I graduated and could have crowds of 15K or more.
Fairmont senior and east side would get pretty big crowds too as well as Bridgeport/RCB and those schools weren't quite as big as the morgantown schools. And they didn't have mountaineer field to play on so 15k isn't happening for the other rivalries, but they are standing room only.
My high school had 750 students and over 200 in marching band in swva
https://www.loudountimes.com/sports/loudouns-varsity-football-postseason...
Two State semifinalists out of Loudoun. Both had to beat other Loudoun teams in the Regional final.