This week's bizarre high school football score

That is absolutely amazing stat to me. That's three, almost four generations of swimmers dominating at one school. Southern California is a place where kids swim all year round, so even if you've got a huge pool (heh) of talent from private swim clubs compared to other schools -- and I don't know anything about the Moore League -- how somebody didn't outperform them just once since Nixon was President blows my mind. Water-gate.

 

The Moore League is always very good in water sports, boys and girls.

The fact Millikan or Poly (or even Lakewood in a freak year) couldn't break through once in 49 years, till now, is what's amazing.

 

In Mississippi's private school association there was a school (Jackson Prep) that had a similar streak snapped a few years ago. IIRC, they won 43 years in a row.
Jackson Prep dominated because the meet was absolutely set up to favor them. Because only a handful of schools give the faintest shit about swimming, at least enough to have more than a few good swimmers at least, all of the association's schools compete against each other at the state meet instead of it being broken up into classes. So a school like Jackson Prep with maybe 800 students was going against schools with 100 students. They might not win every individual event, but they had more than enough depth to cruise to the team title in most years.
And then, up until recently, there were no qualifying standards and no limit on how many people each school could enter. So Jackson Prep flooded the entry list and had any kid who wanted a day off from school competing in the state meet. There were 280-pound offensive linemen from the football team who couldn't even swim a 50 or a 100 freestyle competing in those events. They'd pick up enough of the scraps points from sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-place finishes to pad their lead and win easily.
The school that finally knocked them off had about 20 swimmers in the meet to Jackson Prep's 50 or 60, but won almost every event they were contenders in and barely squeezed past them for the team title.

 

Things I just learned: Swen Nater is a Wilson grad. But I don't know if he was on the swim team. Also, Bobby Grich and astronaut Bruce McCandless.

And yeah, the school's just 1 1/2 miles from the Pacific so it ought to draw good swimmers, but geez, something like 75 percent of homes in Southern California have backyard pools and if it's anything like the other end of the state, there are year-round swim teams out the wazoo. To go almost five decades without having a down year against comparatively equal competition? Even the Globetrotters have lost to the Washington Generals during that time span. Hell, the Soviet hockey team lost to a bunch of college kids in 1980.

 

IMO that would be a fun long-term or ongoing project, to find and feature these uber-successful leagues or teams. Five decades of swimming dominance in California? Unreal. Shitty scoring pickups to continually win in Mississippi? Deserves a story (outlining the methods). Success, hazing and dictatorial control of football at Mater Dei? Yes, more about that, please.

Football, swimming, tennis, running, whatever. Those kinds of stories and the people who have been in them, like Maumann noted, is cool to read about. Or, perhaps, to expose if underhanded crap is going on.

 

Tennessee pitcher throws a no-hitter to keep his team alive in its playoff series. Only problem is he threw 121 pitches and the limit is 120.
Losing team lodges a protest, no-hitter kid's team has to forfeit, season over.

https://usatodayhss.com/2023/tennessee-high-school-baseball-pitch-count-violation-forfeit-no-hitter?

 

Golly, are they strict.

Who was keeping the book??

Following the links it develops the final score was 5-0, so there's really no excuse. If there's an ironclad pitch limit of 121, once you get above 90, you better be thinking hard about it.

 

It’s unsporting to lodge a protest for pitch 121. It’s separating fly shit from pepper.

But the couch had to know better. Was the kid at pitch 115 when he started the new batter? 110? If you’re even close, you have to account for a kid going deep in the count. If there’s a chance to go over, you have to go get him.

Feel terrible for the kids. An arm isn’t going to fall off if you go one pitch over, but you have you know the rules and limits.

 

In Ohio, the single day limit is 125 but you can go over if needed to finish an at-bat.
Closest I've seen this year is 121 pitches with two outs in the 6th. Coach pulled the kid, but he'd also walked two batters, hit two others and threw three wild pitches in the inning.

 

Ever since the limits were enacted nationwide, every team has somebody in the dugout (either an assistant coach or one of the bench players; it's normally separate from the person doing the book or scoring app) whose job it is to keep up with the counts for both pitchers. They use a clicker to keep track. A lot of teams also use a scoring app called Gamechanger that keeps up with it as long as you enter it in as you go.

And before you scoff at the players doing it, you need to understand dugout culture. Everybody in there has a job of some sort and the good teams I've seen take them seriously. Being on the clicker is a pretty good job, since it would mean you don't have to spend half the night chasing foul balls.