Ranger Football

[Amy Martin]

Time for a new coach. This program is pathetic.

[Michael Deneen]

My game story of the season finale can be found here: http://www.lakewoodobserver.com/read/20 ... son-finale

The team finished winless on the season, which is sad. The kids on the team worked very hard all season.
I caution folks who think that a coaching change will magically upgrade the program.
The program faces some major structural challenges that run much deeper. Mike Ribar is the third coach here since Kevin Fell, and they have all struggled.

[Peter Grossetti]

LHS could probably cobble together an annual independent schedule of patsies and pushovers and flip to a perennial undefeated "powerhouse."

What good would that really do? I learned the vast majority of life's most important lessons while playing on a pretty lousy high school football team back home in Massachusetts in the early 1970s ... and I wouldn't change those experiences and memories for any amount of "winning" seasons.

Coaches come and go ... and rarely at this level of football do they play a major factor in a team's record. What coaches do do is play a vital role in shaping young men of high character.

[tom zigman]

I find it very interesting that individuals who criticize a high school coach may have no knowledge of what it takes to build and maintain a program..
These individuals should be specific regarding the team rather than worrying about a won / loss record.....

[Amy Martin]

This team sucks. Period.

Back when most of us were in school, coaches were teachers who coached on the side. Today's coaches are high paid coaches who might have to teach a health class at the most. If these high paid coaches do not produce, they should be replaced. Period

[Peter Grossetti]

This team sucks. Period.

Amy - I usually appreciate your point of view of many topics discussed here on The Deck, and I don't mean to sound argumentative .... but I'd say that this team's win-loss record sucks. The team is just a group of teenagers playing a game they love. I know this might just be a matter of semantics.

[bentleymike]

To get rid of Ribar would be a HUGE mistake. Don't forget, he's also the baseball coach. I had the pleasure of being coached by Mike when I was in high school. He is one of the drivers behind who I am today. He's a Lakewood Legend, a fantastic coach, and a teacher of men. It takes time to build this. Fell knew the talent was falling off a cliff and left. Mihalik was the perfect person to take over, but Aurora snatched him away.

It takes time to get a system in place, and turnover of the coach isn't the answer. Parents have to let their children play, and you need to have a little luck with talent not getting recruited away by St Eds & Iggys

[Nadhal Eadeh]

Coach Ribar is a good guy, a great mentor to kids and an asset to Lakewood.

Lakewood's sporting woes are structural. When the city and schools decided to roll up the sidewalks and close every basketball court, lock up baseball fields, limit access to football fields and institute the "pay to play" mentality our sports teams began to decline. Remember Lakewood played in the "Lake Erie League". It was an athletic powerhouse.

We have lowered the bar to compete and we can't even get that right. The elephant in the room is this: most families in Lakewood have working class backgrounds. They can't afford open gyms, indoor coaching, etc. How are you to develop a love for a sport as a child when you can hardly access any of the fields? Healthiest city in America right?

Instead of locking out kids in Lakewood, open up the fields, put security cameras in place and patrol them. Let's get kids moving and off of the couch.

Nadhal

[Matthew Lee]

As one who has attended almost every Ranger football game, home and away, for the past three years (daughter is in the Lakewood Rangers Marching Band), there are three obvious things that have come up time and time again for the team:

1) The kids are definitely playing their hearts out to the very end. The team does not quit and is still trying their best.
2) Our kids are completely outmatched before the take the field. Our opponents' teams suit up anywhere from 50 - 100% more players than we do. Average height is taller for our opponents. Average weight is bigger. The Rangers are just already in the hole from the moment the leave the bus.
3) Combine (1) and (2) and I have no doubt that nobody else could do a better job coaching the team than Ribar has done for the last two years. Do I agree with every call? No. But whatever he is doing has the kids playing hard and trying their best.

Where did Lakewood go wrong? I think it's a combination of demographics (fewer people to choose from as we lose population), fewer options for recreation (as mentioned upthread) and leaving the conference we were in for the Southwestern Conference. The SWC is NOT the place for Lakewood. It is the home of high school kids who are being recruited, and getting offers from, the MAC, Big Ten and SEC. The boys are HUGE. They are mini-colleges compared to Lakewood. Midview. Avon. Steele. North Ridgeville. They live for football and are just flat out better than our kids. No coaching can solve that in high school.

We should have stayed where we belong and could win some games. Rocky River. Fairview. Bay. Those are towns with similar makeups and aren't churning out college athletes. Honestly, if Lakewood had just remained in the conference they were in, Ribar and this team would have won more games each year. Our team matches up much better with the high schools around us than who we are playing now.

[Michael Deneen]

Peter and Matthew have raised some questions about conference affiliation.
Here are a few points to consider:

*Remaining in the West Shore Conference was literally NOT an option. The league no longer exists, with former members going in different directions. Lakewood joined the Southwest Conference along with other SWC schools Midview, Avon, and North Ridgeville.

*Other WSC members Rocky River, Elyria Catholic, and Bay joined the Parma public schools and Holy Name in a new league called the "Great Lakes Conference". This may have been an option for Lakewood. HOWEVER, this new league is perpetually on the verge of collapse, particularly since the fate of the Parma Schools is up in the air. Any consolidation of the Parma schools makes them too big and breaks up the league.

*Being abandoned by a collapsed league is the ultimate fear, because "going independent" is not a viable strategy for Lakewood. Scheduling is an absolute nightmare for all sports, especially football. Most of the mid-sized Catholic schools have joined the North Coast Conference due to these concerns. Ignatius and Ed's are stuck without a conference because there is noone willing to play them....they have grown too large for even the other Catholic schools. (there's a lot of demographics and other factors involved there).

Some of you sports buffs may have already noticed that "independence" has died off at the college level, too.
Once Penn State joined the Big Ten, the stampede started. Even Navy and Notre Dame of Indiana have given in.

[Matthew Lee]

Thanks, Michael,

Good info. Either way, the new conference affiliation is not doing our team any favors. The teams we are playing are seriously good teams and we just don't measure up physically. Those teams are generally destined to beat us.

[Patrick Wadden]

Both Mike Ribar (Football and Baseball coach) and Atti (Andrew) Toth (Soccer coach) are friends of mine and are 1985 grads from LHS. Atti Toth was in my wedding and we go back as far as Madison Elementary in the mid 70's. I haven't talked to Ribar in a few years but knowing him in high school and then at Kent State I can tell you that he is a guy of high character and a true leader. Lakewood High is lucky to have them at the helm of their varsity sports programs.

I would offer up that the problem with football in Lakewood is a numbers game. There is simply not that many kids playing football anymore. The feeder system is what it used to be. In 1970's and 1980's in Lakewood you had football programs at every single school. 8 or 9 Elementary schools, 3 Junior high schools, 5 catholic k-8 schools. Each and every one of them fielded multiple teams. Today you have less than half of that number of schools and not all of them field teams. Mike Deneen might know the actual numbers for the public schools but I can tell you that Lakewood Catholic Academy just teamed up with St Christopher in Rocky River in order to have enough players to have a tackle football team. Keep in mind that LCA has all the students that would have attended and played at St. Rose, St. Cyril, St. Clements, St. James, and St. Luke's. All of those catholic schools had football teams for grades 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. Today, in order to form just one tackle football team for the 5th grade, LCA and St Chris had to combine programs. You might be thinking, Those kids would have attended St. Ed's or St. Iggy. Not all of them, in fact, in the mid 80's some the best players LHS had were kids that came from Luke's, James, and Clements.

I'm not saying this is the only problem with the football program. I'm sure it's an amalgam of both structural and numbers.

I have to go to meeting or I would add more to this. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

Patrick Wadden
1986 Graduate of THE Lakewood High School.
Captain of the 1986 LHS Soccer team.

[Stan Austin]

This might be part of the discussion. Has the sport of football become less popular over all? Witness the decline in viewership for the NFL. And, concurrently, have other sports been gaining in popularity such as soccer and rugby and the continuing success of cross country thereby attracting athletic talent?

[Michael Deneen]

This might be part of the discussion. Has the sport of football become less popular over all? Witness the decline in viewership for the NFL. And, concurrently, have other sports been gaining in popularity such as soccer and rugby and the continuing success of cross country thereby attracting athletic talent?

Football continues to be the dominant sport in terms of popularity...the so-called "ratings decline" is largely hyped by conservative media, which tries to blame Colin Kapernick.
In reality, TV ratings this year have been hurt by too many televised games (London games, for example) and increased competition (presidential debates and Cubs in the World Series).

Concerns over concussion have definitely impacted youth participation.
Other sports have become more popular over the decades, too. Soccer boomed in the 90s, lacrosse and rugby are growing right now.
However, these trends are not limited to the borders of Lakewood....so they don't really explain why Lakewood has struggled so much in recent years relative to other communities.

[Michael Deneen]

I would offer up that the problem with football in Lakewood is a numbers game. There is simply not that many kids playing football anymore. The feeder system is what it used to be. In 1970's and 1980's in Lakewood you had football programs at every single school. 8 or 9 Elementary schools, 3 Junior high schools, 5 catholic k-8 schools. Each and every one of them fielded multiple teams. Today you have less than half of that number of schools and not all of them field teams. Mike Deneen might know the actual numbers for the public schools but I can tell you that Lakewood Catholic Academy just teamed up with St Christopher in Rocky River in order to have enough players to have a tackle football team. Keep in mind that LCA has all the students that would have attended and played at St. Rose, St. Cyril, St. Clements, St. James, and St. Luke's. All of those catholic schools had football teams for grades 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. Today, in order to form just one tackle football team for the 5th grade, LCA and St Chris had to combine programs. You might be thinking, Those kids would have attended St. Ed's or St. Iggy. Not all of them, in fact, in the mid 80's some the best players LHS had were kids that came from Luke's, James, and Clements.

I'm not saying this is the only problem with the football program. I'm sure it's an amalgam of both structural and numbers.

Excellent analysis....this is right on the spot.
For example, George Harouvis played CYO ball at St. James before going to Lakewood in the early 80s.
That feeder system has been decimated.

In addition, the more recent waves of immigrants to Lakewood are coming from places less amenable to American Football. A sizeable chunk of the male student body (at least 10 percent) had no exposure to the sport before coming here.