The question about whether we will play high school football this coming fall is one which appears to be falling along both geographical and political lines. I field numerous phone calls daily from high school coaches from across the entire breadth of Kentucky. The western-side of the high school football coaches are really freaking.
I have talked with two or three western-end guys so convinced Beshear isn’t going to allow us to play they are making plans regarding to which of our bordering neighbors they will be sending kids this Fall. These guys believe it would be criminal to have Kentucky not accommodate seniors with a football season, particularly those seniors trying to play at the next level. We agree.
It would be criminal. However, it would be no more criminal than what happened to the winter and spring sports by the cancelling of their 2020-seasons at the end of the 2019-2020 school year.
Over on the eastern-end of Kentucky, these guys tell me the talk they have heard out of KHSAA and the KDE leads them to believe not only will we play this Fall, we may well be back in school in a traditional school setting. These guys don’t seem panicked and are going about business as usual.
Kids like the one to the right of this paragraph, Darion Dearinger from Anderson County HS, are using this time to get bigger, stronger, faster, and more explosive. This will show up quickly should we resume play.
Dearinger, who is holding around a dozen or so committable, FBS-level offers, is putting the “down-time” to tremendous use and has gotten substantially stronger, quicker, faster, more athletic, and more explosive than he was a year ago. We hear he is substantially heavier, though appearing lighter than he looked in the picture to the right. Scary!
We talked with Dearinger’s father last night over the phone. Justin, who knows quite a bit about lifting (Heck, look at him) said Darion is just way stronger than he has ever before been. Dearinger and KPGFootball would be comfortable forecasting his bench-press is now over 400-pounds, but the most noticeable gains have been to his speed, explosion, and quick-twitch/change of direction mobility.
“He’s just way faster, quicker, and more explosive than I have ever seen him. He is also 265-pounds, easily, right now. That is 15-pounds heavier than his game-weight a year ago,” Justin Dearinger told us.
Another kid who has put the down-time to good use is Breathitt County’s William Long, II. William, who is heating up on the recruiting circuit himself (3-offers with several more shortly forthcoming), has grown taller (5-11) and has thickened considerably (265-pounds).
The story of William crawling around an old dump area and finding, repairing, and now using weight equipment and weights he had to both reclaim and, in some instances, reassemble so he could actually use it is the stuff of legend. It is also making its way around to coaches recruiting him.
William’s having turned 18-years old on April 8, 2020 didn’t hurt his physical development either. The words grown-man come to mind when looking at him these days.
When being interviewed for this article William was asked what he would competitively do on the bench, squat, and power-clean were there to be a meet right now. He responded, “I would stroke about 425 on the bench, squat in excess of 625, and power-clean around 265.”
He went on to confide…”The power clean is a lift in which I don’t experience gains as quickly. The other two lifts…I am considerably stronger right now than I have ever been.” Yeah, he’s been working!
So while the western-end of Kentucky is terrified there won’t be a season, kids over on the eastern-end are getting ready for one, in the off-hand it gets played. Eastern-end coaches insist the 2020-season is happening and they are preparing accordingly.
Now the complaint from most of the western-end guys, who happen to be huge MAGA-guys, is that Beshear is going to cancel the season to make President Trump look poorly because Andy has his eye on a presidential bid in 2024 as the Democratic nominee. The theory, they tell me, is he wants to help the Democrats win back the Presidency in 2020 to make it easier for Beshear to be the candidate in 2024. The thought is that Biden’s age would make him a likely, one-term-er were he elected President.
That is way deeper into the political weeds than this publication is comfortable wading. We are a football-only rag.
I will say this, KPGFootball has no idea if we are going this Fall or not. We suppose the safest thing to do is get ready for the Fall but start planning what you would do if the season is lost.
We are confident (or optimistic, however you want to term it) that if the season is lost it will be for public health and safety concerns and not to make the sitting President look imbecilic.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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