On another note holy shit those things have gotten expensive!
The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group . . .
- Thread starter CO. Hoosier
- Start date
Where the **** does one even find an Irish possum to skin? This is murica, bitch.
The curriculum is based on growing up in the middle of nowhere and trying to keep yourself amused without enough friends close enough to field a decent baseball game.
In my neck of the woods, I don't see the boys into sports playing as many video games as the kids who are not.
I completely agree that the religion of sports and focus on it in the US is incredibly out of whack and have complained about the debate/robotics club not getting as much play as I thought it would in my relatively affluent community. It is bizarre to me. I thought sports was important in my school growing up because it was such a poor, backward one. Not so, apparently. The size of a community/school district is probably more important than the wealth since it just means you have more kids who might fit the bill of being willing to do those academically minded extra-currriculars (excepting the Chicago Lab Schools of the world, populated by the ultra wealthy or kids of U of C profs).
All that said, my kid is firmly implanted in this sports world, even though I completely understand he is not a great athlete. Kinda bums me out, although this might be the last year for it--he didn't make JV hockey team, so I'm spending 3 times the money on a higher level squad to get him more/better coaching in the hopes he makes it next year (on the advice of the HS coach). On the pro side, though, it keeps him busy, takes up a ton of time where he might be playing video games, and it gives him practice at being goal oriented with focus on real world results. That last part is hard to get in schools nowadays where everyone gets an A and we don't want to hurt any kid's feelings.
Oh and Lars all those out of town soccer trips. Those were memories made. It’s not like you would have scheduled other trips during those days.
If you can afford them. My kid's new hockey team is playing in a tournament in Tampa this winter. Tampa! For hockey! Insanity.
Yeah no shit. Ecnl is an absurd amount of travel. I love nationals. It’s like 10 days. They just assume parents can take off.
The hell i wouldn't....oh wait, yeah. Great times. I keed.
But even soccer. She doesn't care about soccer in the sense that she follows it, etc. Some days I believe her only motivation for getting better was to stay on her friends' teams as they progressed. Which is hilarious b/c had she actually loved it.........
But she didn't. So I'm glad she stopped doing it. I just wish she'd find something else to occupy her time. She does work and she does get reasonably good grades but she doesn't LOVE anything. She obssesses over nothing of any real purpose.
The recruitment is not going to get better. We have a severe shortage of kids that is about to get much worse:
morassociates.com
The second cliff reflects our earlier discussion of “the” demographic cliff—a peak of 3.5 Million HS graduates in 2025-2026 and a decline of as much as 15% over the next 18 years.
The third cliff reflects the Census Bureau’s 2024 revision of its previous 2017 forecasts for 18-year-olds. In 2017, the Bureau forecasted the 18-year-old population in 2045 to be 4.5M (Wow!); its new forecast for 2045 is now 3.6M, a 20% drop. They say we will not see 4.0M 18-year-olds again this century.
Enrollments - Cliff After Cliff After ??? - MOR Associates
I hope you love numbers as much as I do. Let me offer some, to understand Higher Education's future enrollment and revenue streams and their impact.
morassociates.com
Yep same boat here. Just friends. What are they doing etc. no sports hobbies nor school subjects.
In my affluent school district, it’s not uncommon for parents to hold their athletic boys back a year to maximize their chances of excelling at sports.
Won’t tech replace the need for so many thoThe recruitment is not going to get better. We have a severe shortage of kids that is about to get much worse:
The second cliff reflects our earlier discussion of “the” demographic cliff—a peak of 3.5 Million HS graduates in 2025-2026 and a decline of as much as 15% over the next 18 years.
The third cliff reflects the Census Bureau’s 2024 revision of its previous 2017 forecasts for 18-year-olds. In 2017, the Bureau forecasted the 18-year-old population in 2045 to be 4.5M (Wow!); its new forecast for 2045 is now 3.6M, a 20% drop. They say we will not see 4.0M 18-year-olds again this century.
Enrollments - Cliff After Cliff After ??? - MOR Associates
I hope you love numbers as much as I do. Let me offer some, to understand Higher Education's future enrollment and revenue streams and their impact.
I worked with someone who was trying to to land a high school social studies teaching position. He kept finding the jobs requiring coaching, he wasn't athletic. Randomly met a school board member who said a lot of the big landowners paying property taxes no longer had kids in school. Their connection was sports. So it was important to prioritize sports.
I do not know if that is everywhere or just that one district.
But I discovered my two marching band kids learned all the same things we say sports provides from band.
This is my only caveat and I can only speak to soccer. But with the explosion of the size of these soccer clubs for the kids who truly love it it has become a viable career path. And you do not need to have been a pro or even worth a shit.
The problem is so big I don’t know how to even think about it. I took a stab at it with post #133, but that isn’t the answer. I don’t think male fragility is the problem, as you suggested, although it might be for a few.
Using my son as a data point, he did the education thing and worked in office cubicles for several years. His company was bought out and the new company moved him a thousand miles to a new cubicle. He hated all of that. Quit. Now he works in a dirty industry, outside, and loves his job. He is lucky enough to be one of the minority of workers who really like their job. But he cudda gone the other way if he stuck with the cubicle. My point is, for a number of males, there is a huge mismatch in occupations and personality. That mismatch starts in k-12 education and with many parents who look down their noses at dirty jobs.
I was struck by a point made by Sean O’Brien at the GOP convention. He said during the pandemic, the teamsters (and many others) couldn’t work from home, and the public regarded them as heroes for showing up for work and keeping the country going. Now nobody gives a damn about those workers, they are part of the background. Somehow we need to flip that script.
Good point on personality. My dad drove a dump truck after Vietnam and bounced around with other shit. Did night school. Got his mba from wash u. Worked for a big co. Despised it. I left for college and he was in his early/ mid 40s and he quit to do construction. Did it for 25 years. Made him happier. Fit his personality
I was going to post the same thing. Guy in the top on my bunk came in very chunky. Definitely not in shape.
They made him a road guard and he had to change uniforms 3 times by the end of Basic because he'd lost so much weight.
These kids are late teens/early 20s. It's not that difficult to whip them into shape.
I see you're responding to Aloha. I'm sure he's used to serving with gays.
Just for the record, my best friend in HS was gay, and we knew it. It wasn't a big deal, but he wasn't 'celebrating' it. He just was. That was enough for him and he was one of the most popular people in red-neck Indiana.
Gays, per se, are not a big deal. But the fruit loops in the LGBTQ+ 'community' take it way too far. Be who you are and stop acting the victim and few will give a shit.
My dad said that if you were skinny, they beefed you up. If you were fat, they slimmed you down. Either way, they treated you like meat.
Indiana HS basketball is filled with such players.
I had bought a pair of jeans before I went in. Waist 32". I weight 169. Not fat, but I was starting to put on weight (I had just turned 18).
When I got out of Basic, I put those same jeans on and the fell down - I had to really tighten the belt to get them to stay up. I still weighed 169, exactly.
When I got sent to Monterey, with all those hills, I could run up and down them without breaking a sweat. But we had little mandatory PT after that - it was up to us to stay in shape. I ditched running in the combat boots.
Boys that age are a mess though. The ones who are small and haven’t are deprived of that puberty strength and speed bounce that those other kids get. Brad’s kid can make a massive jump in just a year around that shit
@mcmurtry66 carry on. I'm heading out into the freaking hurricane to go to Indiana to help the Hoosiers go 5-0.
Scalps are going at a premium. Get ya some!
Mom says the only real change in dad was body hair. She swears that somehow the army in general, and vietnam specifically, made my dad hairier than he was before. And he already looked like a gorilla from family pics before he was enlisted. LOL
Totally agree. Michael Jordan is a classic example.
So much of it is just repititions. If you do something often enough, there's a pretty good chance you'll get good of it. it's tough to keep up the regimen if you are a freshman and get cut because you can't cut it. You really have to have great mental toughness to continue on.
Hell, my niece was pretty good basketball player at average height and then didn't pursue it any past HS. She grew 2 inches the year after HS and probably could have been a decent small college player.
Not sure I’d want to be driving in this stuff. We’re 80 or so mile east of Atlanta and people are freaking out. We’ll likely get 6-8 inches of rain and winds around 40 mph.
My neighbor and I are sitting on our screened-in porch drinking bourbon. We each have a 50-dollar bill for anybody playing the course by sneaking on and playing a hole or two. The rain has slacked off the past few moments.
We’ll likely lose power but we have the essentials.
Maybe her role will be making White babies.....
In my high school it seemed like every male teacher coached some sport. Some of them definitely seemed to be there just to coach sports and teaching is how they filled the time until practice started.
All except my calculus teacher... He was a full blown pocket protector wearing, coke bottle glasses prototype. But I think even he might have coached tennis. Not surprisingly, learned a lot more from him by far than any of the rest of the jock teachers.
How'd you graduate high school without algebra? I think you have to pass algebra 2 at minimum to get a diploma in Indiana.
No idea. I never passed it in college either. I’ve never passed any algebra course. I was the team player liaison with the AD in college and he loved me. He somehow arranged origami instead. AD > Math Dept
