INDIANAPOLIS — High school baseball rules now will require a pitching restriction policy based on the number of pitches thrown in a game.
The revised pitching policy in Rule 6-2-6 was one of six rules changes approved by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) Baseball Rules Committee at its June 5-7 meeting in Indianapolis. The rules changes were subsequently approved by the NFHS Board of Directors.
Each NFHS member state association will be required to develop its own pitching restriction policy based on the number of pitches thrown during a game to afford pitchers a required rest period between pitching appearances.
Colorado was one of the first states to adopt a pitch-count limit, which was implemented prior to last season.
“We’re pleased that the rules committee worked in conjunction with the NFHS Sports Medicine Advisory Committee to find an acceptable and reasonable modification to this rule in order to emphasis the risk that occurs when pitchers overuse their throwing arm,” said Elliot Hopkins, NFHS director of sports and student services and staff liaison for baseball.
The Baseball Rules Committee also revised Rule 2-32-2 regarding sliding into home plate. The revised language states: “At home plate, it is permissible for the slider’s momentum to carry him through the plate in the baseline extended.” The committee altered this rule since the physical design of home plate makes it difficult for a runner to break momentum on a slide – as opposed to the other three elevated bases which are elevated.
The committee also revised Rule 3-3-1, which states the umpire has the ability to give three warnings to a coach or player before he or she is removed from the game.
“Officials now have the opportunity to provide a tiered warning system for coaches or players,” Hopkins said. “It provides the coaches or players with a teachable moment to change their unsportsmanlike behavior in order to stay in the game.”
A new article 6 was added to Rule 8-3 to provide a rules reference for an existing ruling in the Baseball Case Book. The new article reads: “When a plate umpire hinders, impedes or prevents a catcher’s throw attempting to prevent a stolen base or retire a runner on a pickoff play, if an out is not made at the end of the catcher’s initial throw, the ball shall be dead and all runners shall return to the bases occupied at the time of the interference.”
The rules committee also approved an addition to Rule 8-4-2, which states that any runner is out when he is physically assisted by a coach. This rule change supports a revision in Rule 3-2-2 Penalty, which states that the runner shall be called out immediately when he is physically assisted by a coach.
A complete listing of the baseball rules changes will be available on the NFHS website at www.nfhs.org. Click on “Activities & Sports” at the top of the home page, and select “Baseball.”
According to the 2015-16 NFHS High School Athletics Participation Survey, there are 486,567 boys participating in baseball at 15,899 schools across the country, and 1,203 girls playing the sport in 260 schools.
INDIANAPOLIS — Gary Musselman, executive director of the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA), is the new president of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) for 2016-17. Musselman, the 57th president of the NFHS, began his one-year term July 3 following the NFHS Summer Meeting in Reno, Nevada.
Jerome Singleton, commissioner of the South Carolina High School League (SCHSL), was elected by the NFHS Board of Directors to the position of president-elect for the upcoming year.
In addition, the following individuals were approved by the NFHS National Council for four-year terms on the NFHS Board of Directors: Jack Roberts, executive director, Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA), Section 4; Mark Beckman, executive director, Montana High School Association (MHSA), Section 8; and Pamela Foegen, pupil services director, Regis Catholic Schools in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, at large, Sections 1 and 4.
Musselman joined the KSHSAA staff in 1988 as assistant executive director, a position he held until being promoted to executive director in 1996. A graduate of Ness City (Kansas) High School, Musselman earned his bachelor’s degree in secondary education (cum laude) from Kansas State University in 1974 and his master’s (with honors) in secondary school administration from Wichita State University in 1987.
Musselman began his teaching and coaching career in 1974 at Independence (Kansas) Junior High School. He then held teaching and coaching positions at Andover (Kansas) Junior-Senior High School, Beloit (Kansas) Junior-Senior High School and Halstead (Kansas) High School. Prior to joining the KSHSAA staff, Musselman was the principal at LaCrosse (Kansas) High School.
In addition to his current service on the Board of Directors, Musselman has served on numerous NFHS committees, including the Football Rules Committee, the Citizenship/Equity Committee, the Marketing Committee and the Appeal Board. Musselman served three terms as chair of the NFHS TARGET Committee (1992-95), which was involved with drug and alcohol prevention/education programs. He was a member of three different NFHS Strategic Planning Committees and has presented at numerous meetings including coaching education programs conducted at the U.S. Olympic Committee campus in Colorado Springs.
Throughout his career, Musselman has been involved with other national organizations, including the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association and United School Administrators of Kansas.
In 2014, Musselman represented the NFHS Board of Directors on the NFHS Concussion Summit, which was appointed to develop recommendations for minimizing risk of concussion in sports and to develop best practices for schools and state high school associations. In June 2015, Musselman completed six years of service on the Board of Directors of the NFHS Foundation. Musselman was elected chairman during the 2014-15 term and led a major reorganization and expansion of the Foundation Board and its governance structure.
Musselman is beginning his 29th year with the KSHSAA and 21st year as executive director, and he is the second Kansan to serve as president of the NFHS.
Singleton has served as SCHSL commissioner since July 2005 after 10 years as the organization’s associate commissioner and one year as assistant commissioner. During his time as associate commissioner, Singleton was responsible for the administration of football, basketball, track and field, and cross country. He formulated and implemented SCHSL policies for boys and girls athletic programs and also supervised the publicity of the SCHSL athletic activities and services.
Singleton has been a member of the several NFHS committees, including the Equity Committee, Citizenship Committee, Coaches Education Committee, Track and Field Rules Committee, and the NFHS Strategic Planning Committee.
Prior to joining the SCHSL, Singleton was an assistant principal at Irmo (South Carolina) Dutch Fork High School; an assistant athletic director, teacher and coach at Charleston (South Carolina) Burke High School; an assistant principal at Greenwood (South Carolina) Northside Junior High School; and a teacher and coach at Greenwood High School.
Singleton graduated from Newberry (South Carolina) College in 1981 with a degree in physical education, and he earned his master’s degree from Clemson (South Carolina) University in 1987.
Roberts, who has been executive director of the MHSAA since 1986, is the longest-tenured active state association executive director in the NFHS membership. He oversees one of the largest state associations with more than 1,500 senior high schools and junior high/middle schools and is one of the nation’s most articulate advocates for education-based activity programs.
After graduating from P. J. Jacobs High School in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and Dartmouth College and attending graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Roberts taught English and coached football at high schools in Milwaukee and Denver until 1973, when he joined the staff of the NFHS, which at that time was located in Elgin, Illinois.
From 1973 to 1980, Roberts developed the NFHS’ volleyball, swimming and diving, and ice hockey rules programs, and re-codified the Soccer Rules Book. Later, as assistant director, he was in charge of public, legislative and judicial affairs for the NFHS.
Roberts joined the staff of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) in 1981 and was named executive vice president of the FCA in 1984. He served in that capacity until 1986, when he was named executive director of the MHSAA.
Roberts served a previous term on the NFHS Board of Directors from 1996 to 2000 and has been chairman of the NFHS Network Board of Directors since 2013. He also has served on two previous NFHS Strategic Planning Committees and is past chair of the board of directors of the Michigan Society of Association Executives.
Beckman was named executive director of the MHSA in 2004 after seven years as MHSA assistant director and many years as a high school administrator, instructor, coach and official.
Beckman’s association with educational administration dates to 1983, when he served as chairman of the Butte (Montana) School Board for 2½ years. He was a basketball official and a member of the Montana Officials Association for several years, and he coached boys and girls basketball at Butte Central High School and Anaconda (Montana) High School. He also coached Babe Ruth and American Legion baseball in Butte and Anaconda.
Following his coaching and officiating tenures, Beckman was a member of the MHSA Basketball Rules Committee and was athletic director at Butte Central. Prior to joining the MHSA office, Beckman was a teacher and activities director at Anaconda High School.
Beckman was chair of the Programs Subcommittee for the 2011-2016 Strategic Planning Committee and recently completed terms on the NFHS Network Board of Directors and the NFHS Appeal Board.
Foegen, who is president of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) Board of Control for 2016-17, is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and she earned her master’s in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Prior to her current position with Regis Catholic Schools, Foegen taught middle school special education in the Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau School District in Galesville, Wisconsin, for four years, and served in a variety of roles with the La Crosse, Wisconsin, School District from 1983 to 2014.
Foegen was a teacher, coordinator and program support teacher in charge of special education programming in La Crosse for 21 years, and was director of special education for the La Crosse School District from 2006 to 2014. She directed a suicide prevention group for several years, and for two years served as state consultant for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders at the Department of Public Instruction.
Foegen was co-director of a program of the National Foundation for Improvement in Education that was targeted to prevent student dropout by starting at the elementary and middle school levels.
AURORA — We’ve given CHSAANow.com a redesign. If you’re reading this, that’s probably already apparent.
Why? Well, for starters, we wanted to. But we also felt that the site, launched in July 2013, needed to change its look after three years of existence. We are always striving to keep our content and ideas fresh on this site, and we felt the design should match that philosophy.
We’ve tinkered with CHSAANow.com’s look and feel in the past, but those have been small changes. Still, those changes have been adding up over the years, and it began to resemble a layering of duct tape. Without getting too much in the weeds, this new design allowed us to clean up some of those things, and, more importantly, it has also allowed us to speed up how quickly the page loads.
Fret not, everything is still in the same spot. We’ve left our navigation intact, and the URLs still point to the same places they did last week — or last year. Should you need to get to CHSAA.org, that link remains prominent in the menu.
Finally, our site’s goal hasn’t changed. We’ll continue to strive to provide the best coverage of Colorado high school sports and activities. The only difference is the way it looks.
We’ve got some other exciting projects in the works, stuff we can hopefully announce in the next few weeks. Until then, should you have any questions, concerns or comments about anything we’re doing here on CHSAANow.com — including this redesign — please feel free to drop me an email at rcasey@chsaa.org.
Pugh, a UCLA recruit, emerged on the national soccer scene early in her high school career. She has played on a variety of youth national teams throughout her career, including the under-20 squad at 16-years-old. She debuted for the senior national team at 17 in January.
The national high school soccer player of the year as a junior, Pugh didn’t play her senior season at Mountain Vista because of that national team commitment. Still, she was a major part of the team, attending games and practices, and was in uniform on the bench at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in May when the Golden Eagles played for the Class 5A championship.
Pugh will be 18 years, 3 months and 5 days old when the Olympics begin on Aug. 3, according to U.S. Soccer. The youngest U.S. women’s soccer Olympian ever was Cindy Parlow at 18 years, 2 months and 13 days old at the 1996 Olympic Games.
Lindsey Horan, a 2012 graduate of Golden High School, was also named to the team. Horan didn’t participate in high school soccer.
Mikhail Sands was going to bench press 185 pounds, darnit. It didn’t matter if he had to physically tape the weights to his body to do it.
The bench was intimidating, and Sands didn’t know how he was going to lift the bar, or if he even could. All he knew is if he tried and failed, it wouldn’t hurt him nearly as much as if he didn’t try at all.
Sands was at the Kansas City Chiefs Training Center in April when he was assisted in connecting his left hand to a barbell with athletic tape. It was not a time to back down in the face of challenge — he was there to do what all the nation’s other top high school players were doing at the Blue-Grey All-American Heartland Regional Combine.
But the 15-year-old Prairie View cornerback did it all with one hand.
“It was pretty tough and a little bit scary,” said Sands, who was born without any fingers on his left hand. “I was going against kids older than me, and the one thing I struggled with the most was the bench. It was a big thing to try, and I got it up halfway, but I didn’t complete it. Better luck next time.”
His “next time” came soon after at the Blue-Grey West Coast Super Combine over the second weekend in July in Oakland, despite Sands’ doubt of scoring an invite. Even though the one-handed cornerback struggles to get playing time at Prairie View, he continues getting invites to elite national football camps across the country and adds to the list of courageous athletes defying what people deem possible in sports.
“Why are you taking in a little boy who you know is going to die?”
(Morgan Dzak/CHSAANow.com)
Heather and Mike Sands decided to adopt kids because they couldn’t have any of their own. After searching through different adoption agencies, they landed on Nevada Foster Care in Las Vegas in 2000, and found foster brothers Mikhail and Matheu, who were nine and seven months old, respectively.
Originally, Heather and Mike were only going to adopt Matheu, until Heather saw Mikhail for the first time, off in his own world, chewing on his digit-less hand she affectionately refers to as “stubby.”
“I asked if I could hold Matheu, and as soon as he was put in my arms I knew he was mine,” Heather said. “I called back a few days later and asked if I could have Mikhail too.”
Both Mikhail and Matheu were born with various birth complications, including fetal alcohol syndrome and an addiction to crack. Mikhail was missing his fingers because either the amniotic band or umbilical cord wrapped around his hand in utero — much the same as former MLB pitcher Jim Abbott.
Heather was also warned that Mikhail had brittle bone disease and a life expectancy of five years. But that didn’t matter.
“All of my family was like, ‘Why are you taking in a little boy who you know is going to die?’” Heather said. “I couldn’t let Mikhail die in this system. For someone who has a baby born with cancer, do they say, ‘Oh I don’t want him,’ and turn him over to the state? No. They take the baby home and give them as much love as they can for their lifetime.”
After Heather and Mike brought the boys home and set Mikhail down on the living room floor, he was off — gone — just way too fast for a baby.
“As soon as he got stability on his legs, his feet would move so fast, he’d get tripped up and fall,” Heather said.
It was then Mikhail began falling in love with sports and becoming an athlete.
Inspiration from the Olympics
Mikhail was 4 years old living in New Mexico when he decided he wanted to be a professional athlete. Sands remembers watching superstar swimmer Michael Phelps win his first Olympic gold medal in 2004 in Athens in world record time.
“I saw him and wanted to be him. I wanted to do that,” Mikhail said.
Since then, all Mikhail has wanted to be is an athlete, regardless of sport. If he had two hands, swimming would have been his sport. But his entire life has been an athletic quest, and some parts have not come easy, and not just because of his disability.
“He came home in the first or second grade and said, ‘Mom, I don’t want to be black anymore,’” Heather said.
Michael was quiet about it, but he was being bullied at his Albuquerque elementary school because he was black and his mom was white.
“His identity as a young, black male can sometimes be tough,” Prairie View football assistant coach Nate Howard said. But Howard said growing up in a biracial family is a big a part of what makes Mikhail really special and interesting.
“I asked him if he wanted to see a picture of the fastest man in the world,” Heather said. “So I pulled up a picture of Michael Johnson (former Olympic sprinter), and Mikhail was like, ‘He’s black… And he’s the fastest man in the world?’”
Heather explained that Johnson is an Olympian like Phelps — only he runs.
“I run. I could do that in the Olympics,” Mikhail said.
Fighting for a spot on the football field
(Morgan Dzak/CHSAANow.com)
After trying a slew of different sports growing up — soccer, track, rugby, basketball, lacrosse, football — the Sands gave Mikhail a choice: Olympics or football. Mikhail chose football.
“I want to be the first NFL player with one hand,” Mikhail said. “The minute I get drafted, the message goes out to all those players like me: if I can do it, you can do it.”
The Sands moved to Colorado when Mikhail was starting seventh grade at Prairie View Middle School. He played football, basketball and track. Mikhail shined in track, but got no playing time in football, which drew much frustration and grew worse the older he got.
Mikhail was ready to quit football freshman year at Prairie View, but he stuck it out with perseverance and support from players and coaches, especially Coach Howard.
“He tried to be a receiver first, but with Mikhail’s disability, it would be very difficult to be a receiver,” Howard said. “So we put him on the defensive side of the ball at cornerback and he’s progressing steadily to be a great defensive back.”
Mikhail said he’s really good at man coverage and pressing up hard against opponents.
“I keep them there and stop them from getting outside,” Mikhail said. “I get up in people’s faces and take them on.”
There are at least three senior cornerbacks on Prairie View’s squad this year, which makes it all the more challenging for Mikhail to get playing time as a junior. But he anticipates being used to stop the running game.
Even though Mikhail chose football, he still has his sights set on the 2020 Olympics in the 400-meter hurdles. This past track season, Mikhail was able to cut his 300-meter hurdles time from 49 seconds to 43 seconds.
But his No. 1 goal is to get an athletic scholarship to a college where he can play football and run track. His dream school for football is Alabama or another Division I FBS powerhouse, but his realistic choice is a D-II school, and he’s interested in Southern Utah University in Cedar City.
The combines are a start to improve his skills for college recruiting. Especially when these national events feature the country’s top players to go against, and coaching tips from former NFL’ers, like Mark McMillian.
“I don’t look at it as a group of the top players,” Mikhail said. “I look at it as an opportunity to better myself.”
On the same day he was invited to USA Football’s national camp, he also received another in the mail: an invitation to the Blue-Grey Super Combine in Oakland. The Sands couldn’t afford to send Mikhail to both, so he chose the Super Combine.
At the two-day combine last weekend, Mikhail was faced with the bench press again. He got the bar up to his chest, but wasn’t able to complete it. This time he had a little more confidence.
Boulder has turned to Carmen Rivas to lead its baseball program, hiring the veteran coach on Tuesday.
Rivas was the head coach at Centaurus (for seven years) and Monarch (also seven years) until he resigned and stepped away from coaching in 2009. He led both programs to a lot of success, including six league titles in seven years at Centaurus, and a 71-50 record and three more league titles at Monarch.
Monarch’s 2006 team made the Class 5A Final 4 under Rivas.
Rivas also spent two seasons as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator for the University of Northern Colorado’s baseball program. Additionally, he was an assistant at Fairview in the 1990s.
“I am extremely excited to welcome coach Rivas back to the 5A Front Range League,” Boulder athletic director Eddie Hartnett said in a statement. “It became clearly evident that coach Rivas is well respected and well known throughout the Colorado high school baseball environment. I am confident that coach Rivas will bring a positive approach that will impact Boulder High School baseball for many years to come.”
The plan is for Rivas to meet with the team next month, and then lead the program during fall ball.
Hartnett had crossed paths with Rivas when he was coaching Monarch and Hartnett was the athletic director at Northglenn, and later the district athletic director at Adams 12.
“I’ve seen him coach before, and the way he teaches kids and coaches his kids is a way to win with class, and lose with dignity,” Hartnett said in a phone interview. “The guy’s a winner, but he also teaches the game the right way and what we want to stand for at Boulder High School.”
Rivas replaces Colt Sedbrook, who was 26-31 in three seasons. The Panthers went 8-11 this past spring, and will return a number of key contributors next season.
Defending Class 5A football champion Valor Christian will open its 2016 campaign in a spotlight.
The Eagles play host to Scottsdale (Ariz.) Saguaro on Aug. 27, a Saturday, and the game will be shown on ESPN, the network announced last month. The game, set for a 1:30 p.m. start, is part of ESPN’s High School Football Kickoff.
Saguaro is a three-time defending champion in Arizona’s Division 2, the second-highest classification in the state.
Valor Christian has won six championships in seven seasons, ranging from 3A to 5A, and that includes a 29-26 win over Pomona in last year’s 5A title game.
Joel Klatt is perhaps most remembered as a three-year starting quarterback at the University of Colorado. But he was also quite the three-sport athlete at Pomona before he began his athletic career as a professional baseball player.
Klatt was drafted in the 11th round of the 2000 MLB draft by the San Diego Padres. After two years in the minor leagues, he opted to try his hand at a college football career.
In his second year as a walk-on at the University of Colorado, Klatt earned the starting quarterback job and never looked back.
Now the lead college football game analyst for Fox Sports 1, Klatt knows that his time at CU may not have been possible without options. His desire to play three sports made him what every athlete aims to be, a true competitor.
He took some time to discuss the state of youth and high school sports today and how important it is for kids to involved in as many sports as possible.
[divider]
Question: When you were in high school, did you know that you could potentially have a future in both football and baseball?
Klatt: It’s hard to say. I knew that I would have at least the option potentially, but nothing guaranteed by any stretch. Going through it, I thought I had a much better chance having a post-high school career in baseball than anything else.
Q: Did it help when you were playing at a high level in both sports that you felt like you would have options at some point?
Klatt: I never viewed it that way to be honest with you. For me, I obviously wanted to play something in college but it was always more about competing. I love playing each of the sports.
It was never anything strategic along the lines of post-high school career.
Q: You played basketball as well, was that more for fun just so you can do something in the winter?
Klatt: Yeah, I played it my whole life. I loved playing it. More than anything, I thought the best attribute that a lot of great athletes have is the ability to compete.
What’s better to learn how to compete than doing it?
Regardless of what you’re competing at, whether it’s checkers or ping pong or basketball or football. Having an opportunity to go out there and play all the time, I thought was the most beneficial. And I played with some of my buddies and I wasn’t going to let them down and not go out and play basketball and hurt the team just because I was better at other sports.
Q: So looking at it now as far removed as you are from high school, how happy are you that you were able to consistently play three sports during your high school career?
Klatt: As I look back, I’m incredibly proud that I stuck with it, played three sports and it actually makes me really sad that other guys don’t that nowadays. I think they do themselves a great disservice by not competing.
Q: That’s my next question, when you see people trying to specialize and stick to one sport when they’re young, what’s your reaction?
Klatt: I think it hurts. I have a lot of different feelings about it.
One, I get really upset with these coaches claiming that they have to have these kids specialize because of a special league that they have to be in out of season. I hate it. I think those coaches have no idea what they’re doing.
It’s selfish and they’re hurting a lot of kids.
I had a guy, who I’m actually really good friends with, and he has a son that I think is 11 or 12 and he’s really good soccer player. He’s fast, good hand, feet, eye coordination; that type of deal. He’s also really good at golf. He’s also really good at basketball. And he loves doing all three.
And this bozo soccer coach of his basically said that he had to be at all these different events or else he can’t be on the team. (The kid) is 11 or 12. What are you doing?
Again, I think what we’ve lost is the ability to compete. There’s only so much you can teach from a skills perspective and the technical perspective at a young age, even within high school.
And these coaches that are making kids specialize at an early age are doing a huge disservice, a monumental disservice to the development of the whole athlete and the whole person. Specializing, just point blank, doesn’t help anybody.
I’m one of the reasons that you can point to that it’s true.
It makes me really frustrated.
Q: It seems like a lot of NCAA coaches are putting it out there that they love seeing multi-sport athletes, why doesn’t that message get trickled down?
Klatt: I have no idea. I think it’s born out of insecurity and selfishness from some of those coaches.
I think it’s even more of a problem that we are starting to see it in the youth levels as well like we were just talking about. One of the things that has been lost on this generation of athlete is the knowledge of how to just flat compete.
There’s only so much you can do to “skill level” your way to success, I guess is a way to put it. Whereas if you have the knowledge to compete — look at Jim Furyk. He’s competing with Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy because he understands how to compete and he understands how to grind.
You see it all levels. Matthew Dellavedova. You see it on the football field in particular. You see guys of all different skill levels and all different sizes and shapes succeed. A lot of that is the ability to understand how to compete and find success in certain spots.
I don’t understand why that message doesn’t trickle down.
Again, I’ll go back to this. It’s born out of two things: selfishness and insecurity.
(Photo courtesy of CU Athletics)
Q: You’re still very much in tune with what’s going on with CU. With Coach (Mike) MacIntyre and Coach (Darrin) Chiaverini, how much emphasis are they putting on recruiting multi-sport athletes?
Klatt: I think it’s everybody. I think it’s the type of player that you’re bringing in. You’re getting someone that wants to compete and wants to be a part of a team, that understands how to be unselfish.
I think Coach Mike MacIntyre has done a good job at bringing in kids like that and I think coaches around the country have done that as well.
I hope they continue to do that so the message becomes loud and clear for everybody out there that specializing is not what you need to do.
Q: Coach MacIntyre already has a couple of in-state guys for next year’s recruiting class. How important is for programs at CU, CSU, CSU-Pueblo, Northern Colorado to keep the guys who go to school here in state?
Klatt: At one point, Coach (Bill) McCartney knew that he had to keep all the best kids in state. He got guys like Jon Embree and those type of guys to stay in state and help the resurgence of Colorado get to where it was and then they could go out and get the best kids from Houston and L.A.
What I think is lost on what Colorado does now, and even CSU to a larger extent, is that they think they’re going to go out and get great kids from other places without a whole lot of recent success in their rearview mirror.
I think that’s very difficult to do without building some sort of foundation, which you have to do locally.
Now I’m under no type of spell that thinks you can just go out there and win with Colorado athletes, because you can’t. Plain and simple, Colorado high school football is not good enough to win on the Division I level with just local recruits. You have to get strong recruits from other areas.
Now at the lower levels, that’s what has killed Northern Colorado is that they stopped recruiting the state and the CSU-Pueblos of the world started to do so.
John Wristen got some amazing kids from this state and ended up winning a national championship because of it.
Q: How much do you stay in tune with the high school sports landscape here in Colorado?
Klatt: I’d say enough. I follow it. My brother is the head coach at Mead High School and my brother-in-law was a coach at Mountain Vista and I grew up here and I’m always interested in what teams are doing well and I keep up with the Pomona Panthers, of course.
I think Jay Madden has done an amazing job.
Q: I hate to ask, but were you heartbroken over what happened in the (Class 5A) state title game?
Klatt: Oh I was heartbroken. My dad explained it to me and then I went and watched the end of it and, ugh, I’m still sick to my stomach over it.
That fumble at the end was heartbreaking because it was born out of effort. It was a tough one. They had Valor dead to rights there. They had that state championship won.
Q: Was it nice to see your school get back to that level?
Klatt: Oh yeah. I think Jay has done a tremendous job. He’s had a lot more success than I certainly did at my four years at Pomona.
We had one pocket of success and they had a great history of success from about 1982 until about 1996 or so. It’s been great to see them get back to that level where year-in and year-out they’re competing really at the highest level.
He’s done a remarkable job, he really has.
Q: Last one for you, if you had the ability to address a group of eighth grade athletes heading into their freshman year of high school, what’s the message you want to instill to them?
Klatt: My major points would be twofold. My first point would be don’t get pressured into specializing, even in high school. And I would talk about the benefits in learning and understanding how to compete.
And my second one would be that you have to understand from that day how important your academics are because of NCAA standards and how kids are recruited and how they set themselves up so well just by having their academics in line and how prepared to be to go to school after high school and go to college and really flourish because they’re ready academically.
Those are the two things that I think are the upmost important.
Four Colorado Springs-area football players are getting an opportunity to compete with the U.S. national football team.
Peter Hong, Cameron Crowe, Zander Offutt and Justin Ragland are all taking part in the U.S. Development Games that are being hosted at the University of California-Davis this week.
Hong plays at Sand Creek while Crowe, Offutt and Ragland are all players at Doherty. All four players are entering their senior seasons. Alex Pizolla and Soctt Sellars from Doherty are also attending the event.
Doherty will also send Brandon Deas to the same event next week, but he will attend at the University of Texas-Arlington campus.
“It’s really neat,” Doherty coach Jeff Krumlauf said. “It’s just different. Everything is competing in the Springs and now they’re going out to California to compete with kids from across the country.”
Part of the experience this week includes joint practices with various teams, development sessions that are led by NCAA coaches as well as former NFL players 7-on-7 and full games. The camp is a non-contact event.
The event concludes Saturday, at which point the four players will head home and begin preparation for the 2016 high school football season.
AURORA — The new football alignment means new conference names in some classifications.
When the alignment was set, the conferences in Classes 2A-5A had placeholder names such as “Conference A,” or “Metro 1” until they could be named. These names were set earlier this year, but haven’t been reported on yet.
So, here’s the 2016 and 2017 football alignment, along with the names of those conferences. This can also be found on the football alignment page.
