SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Girls Varsity Soccer JL Mann vs Wando Predictions

You two are nothing, if not persistent.

Sandman, please let the 2 schools thing go. It will happen soon enough. My guess: 4-6 years. Then, the 33rd-66th best boys H.S. soccer players east of the Cooper will get a varsity uniforms, and parents can find another reason to gripe about their kids not getting to "play" varsity. One final time, for the five years I've been involved with Wando soccer and the 14 years with East Cooper soccer in general, I can't recall this issue raised at games or board meetings. Doesn't mean it HASN'T been raised. Just isn't seen as a major issue in the overall context of H.S. soccer in Mt. Pleasant.

Pjay: Nobody argues the apparent advantage of enrollment and privilege (in some sports). The point remains, there are FAR better predictors of H.S. sports success. Who's the coach? Does he/she run a great PROGRAM? Do he/she have a couple of genuine difference-makers on hand to decide close games?

As to the statement that football is an urban sport ... Wow!!! Guess that's why the SEC recruits so heavily in urban areas.


Those are far better predictors than simple enrollment.

its weird how basic math concepts get your panties in a knot. sorry to take you off your whining about the refs topic like the uninformed parent you are. you cant even do the math or connect the dots of your own post 3 messages back. very strange.

Here's basic Math. A few years ago, over 1200 kids turned in physicals to play varsity sports at Wando. Your basic argument is "opportunity." Heck, at Wando, more kids PLAY sports than ATTEND most schools in the state. That ain't a lack of opportunity.
Now, any idiot can make a simple numerical argument that a second H.S. would double the opportunity for deserving kids. Despite no longer having school-aged children, I'd be willing to pay higher taxes to see a second H.S., IF AND ONLY IF there is ACADEMIC and/or FACILITIES justification. My guess is MOST of the whiners -- are you one, or just a neutral observer? -- would not share my POV on taxes.
I've always been quite open here about my axe to grind: Parent of a former Wando student/athlete who played a fair bit and gained some recognition. When he was a freshman, the coach pretty much told me he was the last player kept. He had to EARN the uniform and every minute of PT.
Had he been cut, neither he nor I would have whined about it, although he clearly could have played varsity at any other school in the Lowcountry, and, as it turned out, Wando.
No, I would have encouraged him to play jayvee, improve his game, and make the varsity team the following year. Then again, I'm of a generation that believes making a highly competitive varsity team is a privilege, NOT an entitlement.
THAT'S my position. Wish more parents followed it.
If you want to call me names and refer to my "panties," please get it straight -- I prefer boxers or briefs. I'll leave the thong to you.

again like the 6 or so pm's you sent me, you are taking this personal & off point for some reason. this is not an indictment of wando by any stretch, great school, teachers, programs, athletics, blah blah blash blah, whatever....that's not the topic. the topic is that this 65k community got shortchanged in hs athletics by having one big school...all the other sc communities of like size have 2 or more hs to fit the bill (twice the hs student athletes!). you keep trying to personalize it by bringing up parents whining about their kids not making wando for some reason. again wando is a great school blah blah blah, but having that ONE big school comes with a cost & that cost shortchanged the mt. pleasant community in hs student athletics participation percentages. you have also pointed out the boys varsity carries 30 or so & even pontificated on the downside & fairness of that...I agree, a lot of good players were rotated out of minutes earned because that coach was trying to be inclusive...other communities don't have to do that & its not fair to the top 16 on that team...so again, you keep trying to make this personal about sour grape parents/kids which is not the case...just numbers & the screwing mt pleasant community takes by the large number of kids who are excluded every year by having a school the size of wando. count all the wando student athletes. that's the number of kids screwed out of playing for their high school teams in mt pleasant if we had another school like every other community in sc. it really sucks when you add the fact that mt pleasant is huge in all club sports. I also like how noble you pretend to be regarding hs sports, parents will always whine about something etc, didn't make the team? suk it up etc, yet you are the biggest whiner over on the ref thread. whining about refs in school sports is the most petty parental dik move btw. its not pretty.

Simple math.

Wando: 3300 students 20+ varsity girls and 20+ JV girls

Fort Mill school district: 3000+ students 40+ varsity girls and 40+ JV girls.

Apply that across the board and you will see two towns with similar demographics and number of students and yet one has twice as many people playing sports as the other.

So the real losers are the kids who never get a chance to play sports. But that is really a Wando/Mt Pleasant issue since the only people who suffer are the local kids.


As for how this effects the rest of the state.
Again simple math. Take two schools with similar demographics, but one school has 3300 student the other 1600 (JL Mann) simple statistics will tell you that the school with twice as many students will have more top notch players than the other.

Even if we said that a student that attend JL Mann is 50% more likely to be a good soccer player Wando would still end up with more quality players just due to their sheer size.

And this isn't about whether or not Wando is a good soccer program due to its size. ( FT Mills, JL Mann and Riverside are all good programs in much smaller schools) This is about why Wando is so dominate. 7 lower state championships and 5 state championships in 7 years.

Are there any other schools in any other sport showing this level of dominance over this length of time??

I see Byrnes has won a ton of Football championships, but what about on the girls sides? Any school show this much dominance in any other sport?

Sandman: The referee and enrollment threads are different at every level. Why? Officiating affects every aspect of play, including (and most importantly) player safety. I think most here believe it can and should be improved. I have made multiple, constructive suggestions. If that's a whine, so be it.
As to your basic argument, I simply disagree. When a kid doesn't make an athletics team, for WHATEVER reason, the complaint should NOT be that the school is too big. Especially NOT when many, if not most, parents choose to reside in Mt. Pleasant precisely because of the schools, fully knowing that Wando is an attendance monolith that presents certain academic benefits and opportunities because of its size. Now THAT'S a whine, and I'm guessing you're one of the whiners.
Pjay: If size and privilege are such giant advantages, why hasn't Wando's boys' team won a string of state championships? Before 2012, I'm thinking the last was 10 years earlier. Obviously, there are other factors.
Seems to me that Bamberg-Ehrhardt's baseball team, under David Horton, ran off a string of state championships some years ago, and nobody griped about size or privilege. THe predictor was a great coach, who ran a super program that kids WANTED to play for.
I am quite certain there are numerous other examples.
As to the thought of kids suffering for lack of athletic opportunity at a school that fields tons of sports with well over 1,000 total participants ... I prefer "disappointment" to "suffering." Harsh as I'm sure this sounds, you overcome disappointment through personal improvement; not by declaring yourself a victim of a numbers game that your parents helped to create by choosing Mt. Pleasant as a place to live and educate their kids.

one school can't serve mt pleasant hs athletes as two schools would.
chas. county school super even named wando as problematic in that area for the mt pleasant community...all your other ramblings don't even apply to this simple math problem. keep trying though.

The simple point, that you have been patently unable to grasp, is that it's not JUST a Math problem. I've worked for/with big schools, small schools, public schools, private schools, with boys and girls. The one thing they ALL have in common is a small, vocal cadre of parents who complain that their kids didn't make the team OR don't play enough. Heck, that's part and parcel of H.S. athletics.
The irony here is that the very parents who complain are the same ones who chose Mt. P precisely because they wanted to send their kids to a great public school like Wando, fully KNOWING the numbers.
When you pick your poison, you shouldn't gripe about the flavor.
The cool thing is, if you're an East Cooper parent and are dissatisfied with the numbers game, you can send your child to such soccer schools as: Academic Magnet (if you're willing to compete in THAT numbers game without whining at the outcome); Bishop England, Porter-Gaud, First Baptist, Pinewood Prep, etc. MANY PARENTS DO, though generally NOT just for better odds of making the team.
Or, as a typical "privileged" Mt. P parent, you can move to Summerville (oops, big enrollment) or any place you choose.
As I've said, though, don't assume that being cut (or not even trying out) at Wando is a guarantee you'll play for, or even make, other teams.
I might add, if your kid chooses TO NOT EVEN TRY OUT because of perceived long odds, the credibility of your complaint suffers enormously.
Reality: If you don't buy a ticket, you can't win the lottery.

By the way, as a club/rec coach, when a kid complains to you about how hard it is to make a highly competitive H.S. team, the correct, positive response is: "Yes. And what are you going to do about it?"
(GET BETTER!)
Not: "You're right. There are just too many kids there. Why waste your time trying?"

You have 1000 students playing sports at your school???

Find that hard to believe. Perhaps you meant you had 1000 students WANT to play sports?? And keep in mind that you have the same number of teams and sports as most other large 4a schools so there is no way you have more athletes than the two Fort Mill schools even though you have more total students.

As for boys vs girls. I think there are two factors.
1. I am guessing there is a higher participation level for boys so more boys playing rec. soccer and club soccer means more boys trying out and more quality boys for the teams. That also means more depth and less weakness when you have subs on the field and from what I saw on the girls teams depth is the biggest issue.
2. The boys game is different than the girls game. Far more athletic and at a much faster pace. I think this helps to even things out as well. I also think this means that the star boy players are far more impact-full than star girl players. So I think that evens things out as well.

Overall I think you see far more parody on the boys side than the girls side. The boys 4a state championship was a 17-8 school vs a 17-10 school. The girls side was 20-1 v 24-2. Also on the boys side there were only 5 teams with 4 or less loses while the girls side had 8.