LCCHS Trojans summer baseball report

The article above was written and sent to Andrew by the person that covers Lamar Co. High School Baseball for the Trojans Dugout Club. The folks at the Herald-Gazette -- Andrew Odom & Walter Geiger -- are kind enough to accept this coverage and publish it in their paper. For that, the Dugout Club is most appreciative for giving us the space, and the coverage.

I would suggest that you get somebody that is affiliated with the rec. program to cover the activities of the tournament at the Rec. Dept., and email them to the folks at the H-G. I feel certain that they would give you equal time.

It is very important that the kids get coverage even down at the rec. league, because it allows them to get some credit, too, while stimulating interest in youth baseball in the Lamar Co. Community. Hopefully, a win-win situation for all that are involved...

As a matter of fact Paideia is a private school from the Metro Atlanta Area which the Trojans handily defeated during the Bringin' The Heat tournament. Teams participating in these tournaments are usually scheduled due to contacts between the coaches of the various teams, fwiw. For lack of a better description, it's like a fraternity among the coaches, as a lot of them know each other personally.

Other teams like the private schools, for example, that learn about the tournaments can request participation and pay their entry fees, if there are slots available at the time of their requests. See Paideia...

But, back to your observation about playing the private schools... I'm not sure whether that would be an advantage one way, or the other, as long as the quality of the teams already scheduled for the tournaments is good. If you will look at the list of the 14 teams that actually participated in the local tournament, there were quite a few of them that were AAA, or above. Lamar Co. plays in the AA Classification.

Also, in the Mary Persons & Crisp Co. tournaments there were teams from the AAA & AAAA classifications -- so, the quality of the competition that the Trojans faced this summer was very good. And, they held their own as the 14-3-1 record would indicate... However, your point is well-taken...

The most important thing is winning a region championship, which most real baseball fans in the area knows has to go through Pike Co. -- a program that never rebuilds, but just reloads each season.

Geeze, private school, independent school it's just terminology. The difference as far as sports is concerned is that independent (private) schools have the ability to recruit athletes, without any penalty. Whereas, public schools are not allowed to recruit and therefore, have a much smaller pool of athletes from which they field their teams. This practice gives the private schools an unfair advantage when it comes to the state championships. As long as private, recruting schools are allowed to play against public non recruiting schools, there will be controversy.