In 2011, Mississippi had 10 state champions in football. This year, they will have 11 and it’s not because Mississippi has 11 public school divisions. In fact, they only have seven. The reason for the disparity in numbers from the six divisions in Kansas and 11 in Mississippi is Mississippi separates private school and public school state playoffs.
In 2011, I covered one of Mississippi’s state champions — Simpson County Academy. During their awards banquet, they acknowledged the biggest problem in high school athletics. They defeated a slew of other all-star teams to capture a state title. Outside of the banquet hall in Simpson County, nobody cared. The real rivalry was between public schools Mendenhall and McGee, which dates back to McGee burning down Mendenhall to be the county seat. That was Simpson County’s true champion — the people’s champion.
What does any of this have to do with Iola? Kansas? Anything west of the Mississippi River? As great as the Kansas education system may be, it must also be galling to imagine the state whose schools routinely rank at the bottom of dating back to the inception of high school athletics.
While driving from the state track meet in Wichita and the state baseball tournament in Manhattan earlier this year, I kept a close eye on Humboldt’s semifinal game against the Trinity Academy Knights out of Wichita. Something was off because Humboldt lost 5-2. The Cubs registered three hits while nearly every player in the Knights’ lineup had a hit. I hung around a little longer after the consolation game to have my suspicions confirmed.
Hesston, the eventual state runner-up, filled their side of the stands while just a handful of Trinity fans skittered about.
Just a cursory view told me one of these things is not like the other. One is a public school from a small town, and the other is a heavily recruited all-star team from a big city. In the end one was a state champion and one was the people’s champion.
I wrote this before the season starts so anyone of consequence can’t immediately dismiss it as just a sports reporter with sour grapes. Legislators could have changed this long ago. Maybe elected officials chose not to take up the issue because their kids or grandkids at private schools are winning state champions. Maybe they won’t address it because it’s not a big city issue.
In the history of Kansas athletics, there has never been a 6A football state champion that was a private school. The reason is the number of athletic scholarships it would take to field an elite level 6A team would cost hundreds of thousands. Look at the lower divisions and it’s a much different story across the board. This isn’t a rich versus poor issue. This is Kansas’ major metropolitan schools legitimizing themselves by beating up on teams they were never supposed to play. After state champion games, in the event of a private school winning, there should be a separate trophy for the people’s champion — the true champion.
