Dear dimwit on the phone

Oh, there was no way I was gonna be messenger boy for one or the other ... at least on a high school firing. One wants to question if the other is offspring of canines or inquire if a particular parental unit ever donned military footware, do it FTF.

 

Dear Grandad of not-so-great golfer,
Our Sophomore of the Year award is given each year to someone who's in their second year of high school, not someone who's in their second year of playing. In other words, your granddaughter is not eligible to win that award.

And no, we aren't going to do a story on her now that the season is over. You basically want us to do a story because she's a fifth-grader playing varsity.

Well, guess what? One of the top girls golfers in our area has been playing since the second grade. We're not going to do a story just because you think it's great that she's playing as a fifth grader.

Thanks for the call, though.

KY

 

Wait..... there is a fifth grade girl on the high school varsity team? That sounds kind of interesting.

 

Considering many before her -- and many more after her -- have played varsity golf as a middle schooler, it's really not.

 

Not really.

Lots of teams around here have young players. And if she played for a program five miles away, she wouldn't sniff varsity.

During the summer junior circuit, she rarely broke 70 for nine holes played on the closest tees. And that's with the circle-9 rule.

So she didn't make the team because she's good. She plays for a program which has no middle school/freshman/jv teams because it is varsity only. And despite being a school with 800+ kids, it has three girls' golfers.

Another program in the same system only has three girls golfers, albeit one of them is one of the best juniors in the country and will be our area's most recruited athlete next year for any sport or gender.

The rant was more about PaPaw reading our postseason awards section (which came out a week ago today) and then requesting a story on his granddaughter who plays a sport that's been over with for longer than a month.

Sorry gramps, but since the four winter sports (basketball, bowling, swimming, wrestling) have all started their regular seasons, the time for features on fall sports athletes has come and gone. Unless they play football.

All-Area football comes out Christmas.

That being said, for next season, there is a storyline involving the girl, but not because she's a fifth/sixth grader in her third year with the sport.

 

I guess it's different parts of the country.

I don't even think a fifth-grader can be on varsity anywhere in the Northeast.

Heck, in Rhode Island and other states, it's 9-12.

If we had a seventh-grader here in New York doing varsity anything, it would be a story.

 

In Kentucky, only sports eighth-graders and younger can't play varsity are football and soccer.

Many 103 and 112 pound wrestlers are middle schoolers. Many good girls' cross country runners are in middle school.

Of the eight girls' basketball teams we cover, six have middle schoolers on their varsity teams. And the two programs that don't aren't very good, although they've both used middle schoolers in the past.

However, none of the seven public school boys' basketball programs we cover have middle schoolers.

 

In Mississippi, there is no minimum age for playing varsity sports. One of the area's best small-school soccer teams has a kid who was one of their best players as a sixth-grader. And the state's Mr. Baseball in 2010 was a six-year starter for his team and led them to three state titles. He reportedly turned down a $2 million offer from the Astros in order to play (and start as a freshman) for LSU. If you're good enough, you can play here no matter how young you are.

 

We had a baseball team up our way (also in Mississippi) that won back-to-back state titles a couple years ago. The core of the team was about three players who were in the starting lineup since seventh grade. The first year, the catcher was a five-year starter. A couple other guys saw playing time as seventh or eighth-graders.
One of those deals where a new coach took over, saw where the talent was and decided to sacrifice a couple years early to build a champion later on. By the time they were juniors and seniors, the team was a juggernaut that won something like 125 games in their six seasons together.

 

Wow that's really weird. I've never been in a state where you can play high school sports when you aren't in high school. It also sounds like for girls' golf, at least. This is a product of a lot of small crappy programs so anyone can play.

 

Dear angry parent,

I am a freelance sports writer for a small weekly paper in a town that's getting smaller by the second. I have a hard time recognizing my editor on the street, let alone knowing why the paper doesn't include JV baseball scores. Oh wait, does the coach send them in? Didn't think so...

 

When I was in high school, one of our rival schools had a sixth-grader run girls varsity cross country. She was the fastest in the area, and was one of the elite runners in the state.

Then she got burned out and quit by 11th grade.