Regarding Carmel football, while I don't have any stake in any team in Lake County, I would say that Carmel's return to the glory days it had under Andy Bitto in his early days at the helm are not likely, and this has nothing to do with the coach.
Dollars and sense, I am suggesting, have a lot to do with Carmel's slippage on the football field where, obviously, it takes many more top-end players to be successful than it does in a team sport such as basketball.
In the past 11 years, Carmel has lost 5 or more games every season except one, and in that one, the Corsairs lost four times. The last 9 seasons, Carmel has lost five or more games.
As all of not-well-to-do old-timers can attest, the financial crisis in 2007 was a real dagger to many hearts. And in this view, the northern half of Lake County has either been among the slowest areas to recover from that financial disaster or still haven't recovered from it.
This has had a couple of effects. One, the number of people in the northern half of Lake County who still owe more money on their house than what they could see it for is, I am guessing, a lot larger than is the number for people living in other areas.
Two, when people can't afford to sell their house because they are the proverbial "under water," they don't move. The familiar scenario of people living in their home and when the children finish high school, the kids move on and the parents sell their bigger house to another family with young kids who then fuel the enrollment at the local schools doesn't happen with the same frequency as it used to.
Just look at what has happened to some fo the enrollment figures. Stevenson is down from several years ago. Warren is now down under 4,000 which will become clear when the new enrollment numbers show up in the fall of 2020.
The Grayslake's are down, Antioch/Lakes school district is down.
That's fewer children who could conceivably go to Carmel, which like I assume most Catholic schools, has a pretty hefty cost to attend in its own right.
Now, couple the cost of a private education at Carmel with these additional factors:
1) From a transportation point of view, it's actually easier for Deerfield/Highland Park area students to get to Loyola than it is to get to Carmel.
2) Public schools near Carmel, including Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Stevenson, Lake Forest, Lake Zurich, Barrington, etc., are seriously about as good as . you can get in terms of quality education.
I feel safe in saying Carmel students get a top-end education, but I also feel just as safe as saying that same type of top-end education (minus the religious component, obviously), is being obtained at many of the public high schools in Lake County.
So to finish before you all fall asleep reading this, Carmel is being squeezed by finances in the northern half of Lake County, faces competition of Loyola (and probably St. Viator) in other areas of Lake County, and by top-end public education being offered at many schools throughout the county.
And then, finally, there is football. The football at public schools such as Libertyville, Lake Zurich, Highland Park, Barrington, Deerfield, Lake Forest, Lakes, Antioch, Grayslake North, etc. is pretty darn good.
Does a high-quality gridder have a better chance of getting college opportunities (aka scholarship offers) playing at Carmel than at one of these top football-playing public schools?
My guess is that it's not true anymore.
One of the top top gridders in the entire state this year played defensive line for Lake Forest. He's apparently going to Notre Dame.
The idea of a player getting better exposure at Carmel then at some of the county's public schools was, I would say, definitely true 10-20 years ago, but it's likely not the case anymore.
Finally, and I don't know anything about this, but it might be a comparable situation ....
As a longtime follower of prep football, I can remember when Providence Catholic was the state-of-the-art program.
Has it slipped since the public school in the same city (Lincoln-Way East) has emerged as one of the state's top programs? Does Providence have fewer players than they used to have? If the Celtics' numbers have held steady, what is it that they do that maybe Carmel can learn from?
There likely are other examples, but I've gone on way too long already.
