A lot of it has to do with the lack of jobs. Even though they were in Mitchell county the furniture factories employed a lot from Avery county. There's some Daniels,Webb's,and Hicks working there way through the youth system. They'll be in high school in a few years. I can tell a difference in the youth programs in Avery county. The 3rd and 4th grade are pretty good. The 5th and 6th grade bunch are young real young. Only had four 6th graders out of 24 come out for spring football. 18 are 5th graders and should be pretty decent come August (the real football season). No jobs are killing small town ball. People have to go where work is at to raise a family.
Mitchell @ Avery
- Thread starter purple95
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I travel up to Avery co. a pretty good bit to trout fish and the thing that I have thought about a lot is where do “just normal” folks work ? I see a lot of places that would be for teenagers to work but not much for families. Looks to me like most have money already but not much money to be earned.....
I bet most people don’t know that 50% of the homes in Avery are vacant half the year. One thing that’s hurt Avery is there is kids that could of went to Avery that are at different schools. My son could of went to Avery but wanted to go to Cloudland. The back up QB for Elizabethton is from Avery. There are some kids at Mitchell from Avery. Hopefully the youth program is getting better. They didn’t play enough teams the one year my son played. Did you know Avery and Cloudland aren’t playing next year. Avery is playing Hampton.
Avery folks either work for the rich and become wealthy raise trees or are poor. No middle class Mitch is becoming the same
They do have a bigger tax base then Mitchell because the wealthy homes, Grandfather Mtn, the ski slopes etc
Didn't know that, that sucks. I'd rather play Cloudland the way it's supposed to be. The rec league could use some tweaking. It is good and I'm grateful that we have what we have. I just think that when it comes to scheduling our rec department could use some help. I'd like to see the youth program cross state line and play Cloudland, and Hampton. Something needs to change to get more kids interested.
I would agree on the youth part.Hampton will be really good this coming year. Might be the best team you see on next year’s schedule.
It's sad to see the tri counties and surrounding area drying up, just 20 to 30 years ago each tri county fielded 3 to 4 teams per age group in the rec leagues for football, now each county is barely able to to field one team per age group. This year there is just 3 teams per age group in the league and one team has to play a double header every third week just so they can play every week. McDowell has been playing with us for several years, but backed out because of covid this year and even when they did play they can only field two teams per age group even though their population is equal to the tri counties combined. Watauga also played in the league also but has not been able to field a team for rec league for 2 or 3 years now because the kids are all playing for the mega church in Boone that I can't think of the name of right now.
The jv situation is also sad, Mitchell was only able to play 2 games this year because so many teams can either not field a jv team or just because of attrition through the season. You hate to see kids put in so much offseason work and be limited to that little playing time. Rumor has it the conference is leaning towards going to the smoky mountain conference system of jvs being 7th, 8th, 9th and varsity being 10th and up just to be able to get numbers high enough to field teams. Hard to believe that Avery and Mitchell were once 3a schools, with Mitchell once having 1000 students and now setting in the 400s. But when you think about the fact that just in the last 25 or so years we've lost Henredon, Ethan Allen, and Lexington furniture as well as 2 knitting mills it's easy to understand why it's happening.
The jv situation is also sad, Mitchell was only able to play 2 games this year because so many teams can either not field a jv team or just because of attrition through the season. You hate to see kids put in so much offseason work and be limited to that little playing time. Rumor has it the conference is leaning towards going to the smoky mountain conference system of jvs being 7th, 8th, 9th and varsity being 10th and up just to be able to get numbers high enough to field teams. Hard to believe that Avery and Mitchell were once 3a schools, with Mitchell once having 1000 students and now setting in the 400s. But when you think about the fact that just in the last 25 or so years we've lost Henredon, Ethan Allen, and Lexington furniture as well as 2 knitting mills it's easy to understand why it's happening.
back when we folded our helmets up in our back pockets. Bowman had 2 little league fb teams 5,6 Harris had 3 little league fb teams and Harris alone had 6 optimist league 5,6 basketball teams. Back then the school was bigger the teams the competition was better. Nafta killed our little county
#3 limped out after the called for roughing in the punter and hasn't come back in, hope okay can afford to lose him before playoffs and miss him on D right now
Turned on the radio station they say that #3 has a cut on his leg and having trouble getting it to stop bleeding
According to the radio station Mitchell won the drawing they are conference champions and get one of the 1A #1 drawings and Polk gets the wild card
As it should be ...... Mitchell played and won every game ... we won the games we played but didn’t play every game. I really would love to seen the Polk /Mitchell game tho I believe it would have been a very tuff game
Avery has a good offense, they have just been missing that physicality on defense the past few years. By far the best passing team Mitchell has played all year but they had no defense.
I wouldn't say no defense they did a good job stuffing the middle a much improved Avery team
Congratulations on the win and good luck in the playoffs.
I'm sure it would have been pretty much same score against a pretty good Avery team, I know you can't go off that, we may never know who would have won that game unfortunately
There are 2 prisons a lot of them work at some drive to boone, mitchell or McDowell to work no jobs up there
Avery hung around for 3 quarters but ran out of gas. Defense has been a problem all season. Dropped pass really hurt Avery tonight, out of respect I won't say names or numbers, but several dropped balls. Good luck to Mitchell in the playoffs. Thanks to the seniors may God bless you on your next journey. Good luck to the seniors from Mitchell and to the rest of you purple wearing goobers.... we'll see you in a few months in Ledger good Lord willing.
Problem with the 2 prisons is nobody will work there because Cooper and the powers that be won't give them the benefits or pay they deserve. I don't work at either one but know first hand (have family that works at both) that there both so under staffed right now.