My beloved RBHS Bulldogs won their first regional title since 2003 beating NON ATTENDANCE BOUNDARY St Francis of Wheaton in Wheaton last nite.

Little Timmy Brasic, remember him, played on the 2003 team and is now an assistant bball coach at RB.

Head Coach Tom McCloskey started his coaching career in the local jr high and I was priviliged to be the 7th grade coach with him. He later went to Montini and did well and is now back at his alma mater.

It's good to be a BULLDOG today. 'Dawgs host CHGO Marshall next week. Yikes !!!

Cybes I'm happy for RBHS (have a 1st cousin who graduated from there in 74) but St Francis enrollment is only 760 compared to how many at RBHS? 3K plus I would imagine.

According to IHSA website the enrollments for both schools are:

RBHS 1482
St Francis(co ed) 1285

There is no comparison to make when non attendance boundary schools compete against schools with attendance boundaries. It's simply an unlevel playing field across the board in most instances.

Witness the dominance of Driscoll in football, Montini in wrestling and now football with addition of Driscoll players and St F in vbball and football for successive seasons. Four of the eight teams playing in the top four classes of the 2009 state football championships were Catholic schools.

Imagine what would happen if the same concept of no attendance boundaries was applied to public schools. HSs in towns like Naperville, Wheaton, Aurora, Rockford, and Joliet plus many districts like E & W Proviso and the Thorton schools could then also stickpile the better athletes into a few schools just like JCA - regardless of how many schools the athlete passed traveling to the HS of choice to play sports.

All one needs for evidence is to compare the number of private schools to public schools across the state and then look at how many private schools advance deep into tournaments and regularly win titles in volleyball, football, bball etc.

It cannot all be credited to prayers, greater discipline, better coaching and all the explanations I have heard to minimize the advantage of recruiting by non attendance boundary schools.

I asked the Montini girls assistant coach at halftime of the RB sectional game how many of those girls on the floor come within 8 miles of Montini since I live in Lombard. He said he did not have a map with him , like he did not know the home towns of all those 6-3 and 6-4 underclassman on Montini he recruited.

My bad Cybes I though RBHS was much larger than that. The other side of the equation that isn't talked about much though are the large number of public high schools that not only coop for football but increasingly are doing the same for hoops. THere are groups of 2 and up to 3 high schools combining to form one basketball team that cover large areas especially in central and southern Illinois. Being able to draw talent from more than 1 public high school is an unfair advantage especially when those programs are not penalized with a multiplier when they draw students from multiple school districts.

All coop programs should have a multiplier as well, since they like the private schools and the non attendance boundary CPS are drawing students from more than 1 district.

The enrollment listed for St Francis includes the multiplier penalty of 1.65 which means their actual enrollment is about 760 or half what RBHS is.

why apply multiplier if it's a coed school?

Because it's private and that's the rule. Also, it's not like public schools are limited. I believe if you are in the Glenbard district you can go to whichever of the directional schools you want. Which is why Glenbard South has always been poor to mediocre in sports. Most of the athletic kids go to West.
Additionally if a kid wants to go to a public school not in his district he can pay tuition, just like private school kids.

Montini didn't even have their big star, who is going to UCONN, for the girls tournament.

Bottom line IMO.

GENERAL RULE OF THUMB BORN OUT BY STATS;

Schools without attendance boundaries have an advantage over those schools with boundaries, and it creates uneven competition vs attendance boundary schools.

Ever since the 1950's when single HS district Lyons Township built a second campus across town , the Lions have operated athletics as one school not two. The decision was NEVER about money, it was mostly about winning consistently.

The once separate Morton East and West progams have merged into one.


BTW: GSouth has gained respectability in sports and now wins its share of games and titles.

The biggest crime IMO is that in each school year and in each sport hundreds of HS kids who COULD be playing or make the roster are denied the opportunity to particiate in HS sports when two schools form one stronger team.

Here's a cut and dry idea, do what they do in Ohio. In Ohio, they go bythe number of boys in the high school to classify what class you'll be in. The same also applies for the girls. So if St. Francis in Wheaton had 400 boys, they would be classified as Div. 2 or 3 in Ohio, or 2A, maybe possibly 3A in Illinois.

In Michigan, it's the total number of students in the high school that determines what class you are in.

It would be more spread out and then the majority of the catholic high schools would be 4A, rather than in 1A and 2A.

This multiplier thing in Illinois is just bad.