Illinois High School Association

We won't have any coaches on.

We're going to have Friday night drive Steve Soucy, who is, we call him the world's best IHSA playoff football bracket projector.

So we will have all of the latest.

Gotta get a

So it's always great to have him on.

But the Rockridge story with the enrollment classification is the big story, I think, next week following that.

Do you know how many Saturday games are there in the IHSA that determine stuff next week? I have not looked, and

that's something that we always get into him with on the Saturday morning version of our coverage is what games should we try to track to see what big swing could this have one way or the other in the field.

It's playoff times for a lot of teams.

A lot of teams trying to win to get into the postseason or trying to keep things rolling and head into the postseason in a few weeks with a higher ranking in the IHSA playoffs.

So a lot of cool stuff to talk with about Carson.

I want to check and see if we've got Stevie ready.

I'm your host, Jacob Durdan.

Today, we're joined by a good friend and fellow IHSA basketball coach, Hunter Todd.

Hunter is taking over this year as head basketball coach at Foreston High School in Illinois.

Previously, he coached freshman girls at a large school in Texas.

Ideal offensive scheme.

Yeah, ideal offensive scheme, off the bat, shot clock, introduced.

IHSA shot clock, so I gotta keep that in mind.

I never played with it, doesn't matter, I gotta figure out what to do about it.

Mm.

So, uh, within that, I know there was some huge changes to IHSA football over the last year or so, specifically in the playmount- playoff format.

Um, and then, and maybe there was some excitement even going into this year as like, "Okay, hey, listen, we, we've got a great shot to make the playoffs just, you know, baseline," because of how they've changed it.

And then you guys come out gangbusters.

Mm

... um, w- we knew, we knew we'd be in good shape.

I, I, I wasn't a huge fan of the, the, the amount of the expansion for the IHSA playoffs.

I think that it would've been better if they would've gone eight teams per class instead of 16.

Yes.

February 2009, we were coming back from the IHSA state tournament.

We had driven all the way from St. Louis.

It was, like, so, so south that year.

However, I was informed, I don't know, sometime last week that they decided to shelf it and cancel it for this year, potentially revisiting it in the springtime.

But the reasoning is that there is an all-star rule for the IHSA that doesn't allow you to select athletes based on their merit or the individual.

They have to invite the whole team.

Well, if you invite the whole team, you can't really have this tournament because the whole team isn't the best kid at a particular weight class.

I've talked about it time and time again because I've dealt with Craig Anderson.

I've read some of his email responses to people over the years, some were to me.

And everything is about, for the IHSA, you always hear equity, equity.

It's got to be equitable, equitable, equitable.

And I tell you what, we're right there.

I know the IHSA playoff outlook had us like, what, four or five teams in the 1A last week.

And now after last night, we're like the biggest team in 1A.

So some teams definitely went up to 2A.

So I'm going to be looking forward to seeing what the... results are if the proposal from Coach Dixon gets on the ballot.

And I really hope that like the previous proposal last year, they released the specific data on what 11-man football schools, what was the vote tally of those schools, non-football playing schools, what was their voting like, teams that have eight-man football, what was the vote yes, no, or no vote from them.

Because that was really interesting to see that data the IHSA released from the playoff expansion proposal that was passed last year.

And I hope that they continue kind of that transparency because I love to see kind of where the trend is with each school in its own kind of category like they did.

Sorry, Tommy.

Uh, the best eight-man game in the state is tomorrow, and that'll be Pawnee at Macon-Meridian, and it's an, I, I have it listed on the IHSA site as an 11 o'clock game.

Those are two undefeated teams.

Wow.