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Concerns over Capitol Christian fielding a team?

Harleydeuce

Junior Varsity Poster
Jul 26, 2013
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Mr. Helmick, On the Baltimore website "Eagleinsider" posted there is uncertianty over Capital Christian fielding a team this year. Maybe something you may want to look into possibly affecting both FH and Alco.
 
Been aware of this for a few months. Thanx.
Playing these type of teams like MATHS, Capitol Christian and Silver Oak is always a roll of the dice when it comes to fielding a football team. MATHS burned both Alco and FH last year by telling them they didn't have enough kids to field a team. The problem was they didn't know until mid-August. So then you are left scrambling to find an impossible opponent at the last minute. Alco ended up with only 9 games and FH picked up Capitol Christian by luck. Now we are back in the same saddle it seems.

What is disheartening about CCA is that I have tried to reach anyone at their school. Called at least 10 times over last 2 months. Nobody answers or returns calls. Not even an operator at the school. I even had someone else call and inquire about sending their kid there this fall and she got no reply. Why anyone would want to send their son or daughter to a place like this is beyond me. All it takes is a phone call to let others know you won't have a team. Otherwise you are hurting other kids. Really disappointing.

What people might not understand is that these type of teams are the only option for both Alco and FH unless they want to play Class 3A, Class 4A or private school powers. And even that is a reach for getting teams to visit Cumberland. Coaches were given other options (tougher opponents) to CCA back in January, but chose not to take them because of this stupid playoff system we have where regional teams duck you. It is what it is.

I have not officially received 100% confirmation that CCA has folded football. But it certainly looks that way. If so, FH will either pick up someone of equal strength or just stick with 9 games. Same for Alco I would assume.
 
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What you have to understand about Capitol Christian is they don't have an actual building like a regular public school, or even an ordinary private school like DeMatha or Riverdale Baptist where they need to have a secretary in the office all summer. They are a very small school and probably just exist for basketball purposes. I didn't even know they had a football team until Fort Hill scheduled them last year and I live about 10 minutes from the "school". CCA basically occupies two floors in an office building which is part of a large church. They will probably have faculty in their building in early August when it gets closer to the beginning of the school year. I did some photography work for them and I used to have the phone number for the coach, I'll try to find the number.
 
Thanks BoyznBlue, appreciate the info.

I'm going to re-edit my last post here as info changes...
Whether you have 20 students or 2000 students does not matter when it comes to this type of situation involving kids. It takes 5 minutes or less to respond to an email. I have owned two businesses and operated them out of my own suburban home office. Being small or not even having a building at all is no excuse.

For the record, CCA is still under contract on the Alco and FH schedule and nothing is confirmed by them that they will not be fielding a team. We knew this was a possibility going in just like MATHS for the past 5 years. I have heard different things from different people. Those closest to CCA say they are practicing daily and will indeed have a team. So for now they are on the schedule.

The risk is being told in late August they will not have a team. Again, this is nothing new to Cumberland football.
 
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...and so it goes with Fort Hill and Alco and the schedule. Only to have a team just across the river that will not play you. Frankfort and Hampshire should be on all the local schedules. I am aware of the Pennsylvania situation with the playoffs, but still Bedford, Johnstown, Meysersdale and a few others are right there...BUT WON'T SCHEDULE!

The MPSSAA has to get off the dime and change things up soon or there will nothing left to do but play the bigger schools and most likely have to travel to their place to play on a one year deal. They just will not come to Cumberland and quite frankly...they don't have too. Maryland's class 1A is hamstrung with this region thing and you'd think someone would realize it downstate.

It is what it is. If Alco and Fort Hill were to combine, this area would really be in bad shape as to schedules. The only 3A types locally is the Hagerstown and Frederick area and we all know they won't come up here either. It possibly be a 10 game schedule of all away games for both schools if things don't change soon.

Even Hancock and Williamsport won't do a schedule and we all know about the Smithburg's and Boonsboro's in Washington county. Have to give Brunswick props for finally scheduling Alco for the regular season for the first time ever...go figure. Of course the traveling money is a big thing now-a-days with the Baltimore teams restricted to distance to travel ban that they have.

Oh...what to do...what to do... :)
 
We potentially have FH needing 10/2, Mountain Ridge needing 10/9 and Allegany needing 10/16. These are what I have for open dates for those weeks, potentials are in bold:

10/2
- Archbishop Curley
- National Academy Foundation
- New Era Academy
- SEED (maybe, missing a lot of their schedule)
- Annapolis Area Christian School


10/9
- New Town
- Central Maryland Christian (Home School) (MPSSAA teams aren't allowed to play home school teams)

10/16
- SEED (again... maybe)
- Silver Oak (already playing Alco and also missing a bunch of their schedule)
- Maryland Christian (Home School) (MPSSAA teams aren't allowed to play home school teams)

For 10/2, Curley would be a toss up or slight favorite over FH, they were undefeated MIAA B conference champions last year. AACS would put up a fight for a quarter or so but it would be like 42-10 FH or so. FH would score as many as they wanted to on the other 3.

I've always hated how MD does playoffs, it punishes teams for scheduling good competition. There's already 8 sections in each class. Make all the teams in the section play each other. Take the top two finishers in each section to the playoffs. Seed 1-16 across the board. Use the point system to determine seeding, not who actually makes the playoffs.

For example, 1A West Section 1 is Fort Hill, Allegany, Northern Garrett, Southern Garrett, Hancock. The last 4 weeks of the regular season they should all play each other. Say FH goes 4-0, Alco 3-1, Northern 2-2, Hancock 1-3, Southern 0-4. FH and Allegany make the playoffs as section champion and runner-up. It's simple and it's the way it's done in most of the South, Southwest and Plains states.

There's no reason teams should be allowed to compete for the same playoff spots without playing each other or even similar schedules.
 
In a perfect world, everyone would play everyone and every game would be 21-20 type games that both teams go in having a chance to win, but we know that is never going to happen. There is too much disparity between the top teams and bottom teams. This is why this area play and regional thing will never be successful. My suggestion is go to a top 16 format if you have to travel 5 hours for a playoff game that's not the end of the world, at least you can play some different teams and see different parts of the state. Northern's biggest win ever was in 2000 when they went as the 8 seed to top seeded Cambridge and won. This makes the playoffs better than a predictable regional format, in my opinion.
 
Todd in answer to your email you sent me.
The only WV schools needing games are:

Martinsburg
Capital
Bluefield
 
I would like to see the MPSSAA adopt the fact that the Top 16 in points make the playoffs in each class. It is hard to do that without then seeding them 1 through 16 and then setting up a bracket. I understand the reason they do what they do and in the grand scheme of things the only thing it does is prevent teams from having to travel too much of a distance in the first two rounds of the playoffs. At least it does in most situations. But if let's say Joppatowne and Allegany are the two best teams in 1A this year they will probably end up meeting at M&T no matter which format we have.

The scheduling issue is a whole other can of worms. It would be easy for them to step in and say each team must play "X" number of teams from their own Class or Region. But what gives them the right to dictate what schools can schedule. If each team plays every other team from their region in the regular season it would solve a whole lot of scheduling issues for more remote teams such as our area. But most teams in the State of Maryland don't have problems finding teams to play. Most teams in the State of Maryland are part of a conference. They already have "X" number of games built into their schedule each year. It is hard to convince someone who doesn't have a problem to implement a rule statewide that would only really help a select amount of schools. This area presents so many issues with the limited number of schools and the vast difference in athletic success that each have. I would love to see enrollment numbers between all area schools and see how much of a difference their really is. I honestly don't see a fix for the scheduling issues that some schools have in our area unless a conference is formed in football as their already is in all other sports.
 
eagleinsider... do you have just select schedules for MD teams or do you have them all. I have been searching for them. I was just going to wait until they were put up on the countysportszone.com page.
 
eagleinsider... do you have just select schedules for MD teams or do you have them all. I have been searching for them. I was just going to wait until they were put up on the countysportszone.com page.

I have most all of them. They're all up on the first two pages of this thread: http://talk.baltimoresun.com/topic/256528-2015-md-hs-football-schedules/

It goes way off topic after those first two pages but I update the posts on the first two pages pretty much weekly with updated schedules. Let me know if you can't access it for some reason. The Sun board is really weird about working for some people and not for others.
 
Kudos to eaglesinsider and Ed Forshey. When I know teams that need a game I email them every time. And they always have sound information. They may not realize it, but they are helping kids in the process...a wonderful feeling that money can never buy. At least that is how I feel when helping kids. Thanks guys!
 
I would like to see the MPSSAA adopt the fact that the Top 16 in points make the playoffs in each class. It is hard to do that without then seeding them 1 through 16 and then setting up a bracket. I understand the reason they do what they do and in the grand scheme of things the only thing it does is prevent teams from having to travel too much of a distance in the first two rounds of the playoffs. At least it does in most situations. But if let's say Joppatowne and Allegany are the two best teams in 1A this year they will probably end up meeting at M&T no matter which format we have.

The scheduling issue is a whole other can of worms. It would be easy for them to step in and say each team must play "X" number of teams from their own Class or Region. But what gives them the right to dictate what schools can schedule. If each team plays every other team from their region in the regular season it would solve a whole lot of scheduling issues for more remote teams such as our area. But most teams in the State of Maryland don't have problems finding teams to play. Most teams in the State of Maryland are part of a conference. They already have "X" number of games built into their schedule each year. It is hard to convince someone who doesn't have a problem to implement a rule statewide that would only really help a select amount of schools. This area presents so many issues with the limited number of schools and the vast difference in athletic success that each have. I would love to see enrollment numbers between all area schools and see how much of a difference their really is. I honestly don't see a fix for the scheduling issues that some schools have in our area unless a conference is formed in football as their already is in all other sports.

Agree with everything beall02 just wrote. There are two sides to every decision. They won't accommodate Alco and FH by making everyone in the state change. However, just like in politics they will make Western Maryland change to fit what works in the population areas, regardless of the differences in rural vs. city. But what they can do is create special alignments and circumstances for different areas much like they do with this 1A special football classification. It's not that hard.

Either force teams to play each other or do away with the regional playoffs format for Class 1A. Shouldn't have both. Of course I answered this many times before. Let 1A West determine their champion the way they see fit. Give them special circumstances since they don't have enough teams. We play a 9 game regular season and everyone makes the playoffs in Week 10. Come regular playoff time we have 4 teams left like everyone else. Doesn't change anything from what we currently have. If we had that system, toughness of opponents would not matter.
 
I like the PA system. The biggest advantage that Sectional play has is that everyone has control of their future as far as making the playoffs is concerned. Maryland already has everyone placed into two sections in each region, all they have to do is enforce Sectional games. We're talking four or five games tops. Also the State could continue with the current point system and use it when seating the final four teams in each class. That way, a few out of section loses may hurt a team when it comes to the final four, but it wouldn't knock a team out of the playoffs if they lost,
 
I tried to contact someone at CCA to see what's going on with the program, and like Todd said, nobody is answering the phone or commenting. Which is crazy at this time of the summer. But I did talk to one of their players from last year and he said that CCA did drop football. That's still not confirmation, but it's a pretty good source.

The other thing he said that was kind of funny is that many of the better players from CCA are transferring to Avalon, lol. I wasn't giving them a chance against FH because other than Diggs and the QB, they aren't very deep. They're another small private school that just threw a program together. But now the game may be a little more interesting. One of the transfers is being heavily recruited by D1 schools
 
The more and more I think about it the more I hope the next director of the MPSSAA makes some sort of change to the playoff system. I think they should either do away with the regions all together or they should reward teams who play regional games. By reward them, I mean they should get more win points or come up with another category and award teams more points for victories over teams within their own region. It makes absolutely no sense to have regions with the way Football, and in general all sports are set up in this state. Even with the MVAL break up, most other teams within this state have conferences that they belong to. Being in a region means absolutely nothing to them until it comes to playoff time.
 
I would be searching to replace CCA on the schedule. Seems like they closed-up for the summer. To drop football and not contact the teams on their schedule in advance is BS! FH & Alco kids deserve a 10 game schedule!
 
Regardless of whether FH knows for sure or not, I say start looking now. Why wait? Other teams "opt" out of contracts against Fort Hill, we saw it a couple years ago with North High when they forewent a contract and then made up the 2nd game a season later.

The bottom line is that these "contracts" really aren't contracts. There is nothing legally binding or punitive about them whatsoever. They are basically good faith promissory notes. They could be written on a legal form with signatures and witnesses or a beer-stained napkin from the Tilted Kilt and they are equally valid, or not, as it were.

My point being, the alternative is having a 9 game schedule, which with this years schedule could be a 6-3 finish. Luckily the way they split 1A up this year, this isn't going to horribly affect Fort Hill. So skip over the wait and see and make the call to take CCA off the schedule and start looking for other games. It probably isn't going to be fruitful anyway.

As for the comment about Frankfort, for God's sake, please get over it. I don't want to play Frankfort. 9 out of 10 times it would be as boring a game as playing Mountain Ridge or Southern. At least MR and SHS are Maryland schools in-county or in-class. Fort Hill and Alco's scheduling problems have nothing at all to do with Frankfort. So don't blame them. Yeesh.
 
We actually have found replacements for CCA. All of them bigger schools who are very competitive. Coaches want to stick with CCA for obvious reasons stated. The risk of getting that call in August that CCA won't have a team outweighs the alternative of playing another bigger/competitive school.

It should be noted here that the headmaster at CCA, who is also their head men's basketball coach, told us this week that CCA does have a team and are practicing daily. FWIW, he looks forward to playing both Alco and FH this year and for many years down the road. He says he doesn't know where the rumors got started that CCA won't have a football team but that he is very disappointed those rumors were taken as truth when no one at CCA has made such a statement. My problem is that no one at CCA returns phone calls or emails...ever. So the only way to get info is through chasing rumors with coaches at other schools. And at least 3 coaches at these other schools have told me they believe CCA folded because all their players transferred out when former head coach Chuck Thompson left back in January. Although those 3 coaches were just like us...they could not be 100% positive because no one at CCA returns phone calls or emails. It also should be noted that the headmaster at CCA did not get back to me as to who their head football coach is when I did the follow up.

I also have been told by others in that area that CCA exists specifically for boys and girls basketball and for football. When you have less than 100 students in a school (or should I say a building formed into a make shift school) and they maintain mostly good quality athletes where they all play a sport it's very easy to see this. They recruit very hard to sell football and basketball to young kids. It's so bad that when a coach leaves these kids transfer out to another coach who recruits them hard. Although these type schools would never admit to such a thing they most certainly do exist much like the IMG Academies and even Eastern Christian here in Maryland. With that said, I have been told it makes no sense for CCA to drop football if this is why they are set up in the first place. CCA does have a great response to all this in their defense...every single one of their graduates (albeit a very small handful) last year are enrolled in college.

I don't like setting up these games. We know they are a gamble. It was the same for MATHS every year. But as I have stated too many times to count, the alternative is bigger and better schools much further away in a system where Hancock is winning 9 games versus Timber Ridge and SEED school. If you are tired of hearing about Frankfort, etc. not playing the Cumberland schools, you can't turn around and continue to complain about playing CCA type of teams. That's what will continue to exist if schools in a 90 minute radius won't play.

The Fort Hill 2015 schedule is tough enough. There can be no complaining this year that it isn't tough. If playing 9 games is where they land, then so be it. At least coaches accepted that gamble knowing full well 9 games is a good possibility. And most people don't want to come see that CCA potential blowout. So Alco and FH have 9 games already before CCA even backs out.

FHHSAHS...Local schools not playing Alco and FH has everything to do with scheduling problems. Wow! There are 24 football schools in MD and WV in a 60 min radius that I would consider area schools, probably about 38 if you count Pennsylvania. When Mountain Ridge and Keyser are the only schools that will play you out of of those 38 there is a massive problem. Unless you count Martinsburg as a possible option on a given year or North/South Hagerstown after pulling teeth to land them once every 10 years. Administrators in other districts don't believe it's possible that only 2 teams out of 38 in our area will play. How anyone doesn't see that as a problem blows my mind. Denial doesn't solve problems in Western Maryland as we have sorely found out.
 
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My point being, it is NOT anyone else's problem. It is not up to Frankfort to fill Fort Hill's schedule. Period.

It's up to FH to fill FH's schedule. And yes, I totally get it that it's tough work. That's what you, Coach, and the AD signed up for, it's not like this hasn't been a known issue for many years. . Looking for meaningful games that are worthy of competition, and will be a nice matchup. While not being able to pluck out whomever you want in a nice hour drive. I understand that there is an extreme difficulty. But it's not Frankfort's fault. It's not Hampshire's fault. It's not Hancock or Northern's fault. Etc.

And really, out of those 38 football schools in the 60 minute radius there may be, what, 10 more of which FH doesn't play that might be worth playing? And of only those 10 getting more than a handful of them to have a similar open date, non-conference availability, means to travel, etc..that's a pretty slim window of error. And it's not up to those other teams to go all out to re-arrange things for FH. That's what I'm getting at when I say FH's scheduling problems are not those other local teams' fault.

I don't want to play Frankfort. I don't want to play Hancock. or Northern. etc. Unless you do away with the Capitol Christian's and the Silver Oak's and so forth and substitute Hancock and Northern for them. But then you;re right back in the same boat of needing games.

Hey, I'm not disparaging of the hard work you guys do to fill the schedule. This year's schedule is pretty sweet. I'm just saying, please, don't bring up Frankfort and Hampshire not playing Fort Hill as if it will ever happen. They don't need us, we want them. That's not their fault. Have to move on.
 
We will have to massively disagree. The Cumberland schools adopted a policy of not playing Frankfort in any sport and everyone cried, including Frankfort. LOL. It's no different. The shoe was just on the other foot. Very laughable.

FH will play CCA, Silver Oak and if we can find another MATHS or Carrick for next season you can add them. Or they might only play 9 games like this season may bring. So you get your wish...no need to play Frankfort, Hampshire, Northern, Southern, etc. Much like you I get tired of the complaining about playing these teams.

But yes...if FH had just 2 or 3 more local schools to play, you could say bye-bye to the MATHS and CCA teams of the schedule world. Don't take offense to our disagreement. Feels like football season already :D
 
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No offense at all. And if there is a silver lining, the same naysayers who liked to complain about Fort Hill's cupcake schedule not preparing them for the championship are dining on big plates of back-to-back crow right now. Apparently something is being done right on the Hill.
 
I hope Capitol Christian fields a team and makes 2 trips to Greenway this year. If they don't, Fort Hill and Allegany would have been just as served by adding Calvary Christian to the schedule.
 
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