So I do not watch much 6a football at all , but was curious, what makes Bixby so dominant? Are they getting that much better of a player then Jenks , Union , BA ect ? Is it coaching ?
Bixby Football
- Thread starter TULSARISING
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Conditioning is huge there. More so than at Owasso which had a helluva program.
In game coaching/adjustments are big too.
Strength and conditioning program is next level. Montgomery brought it over from Jenks and then expanded it. Kids are 100% bought into the weight program. Youth teams run the same offensive and defensive sets as the high school. Which allows for great execution on both sides of the ball once those kids hit high school. Add a few great athletes and maybe the best coaching staff in the state and you have a dynasty.
Just stuns me that Jenks or Union can’t replicate that , you would think they have the athletes as well.
Maybe this is true for Bixby, but people said this about Union for years and the most common offense ran at the youth level was the Wing T
I think Bixby has the best coaching staff in the state.
It seems their players have all bought into the system.
Union, Owasso, Jenks, BA... all have more great players, Bixby players, however, play better as a TEAM.
Football is a TEAM sport.
It seems their players have all bought into the system.
Union, Owasso, Jenks, BA... all have more great players, Bixby players, however, play better as a TEAM.
Football is a TEAM sport.
I would agree on the coaching aspect for Bixby. All these groups are running weight training similar to what Bixby is doing, they all have the youth programs implementing certain aspects and concepts of the HS program and all the kids at the youth levels wear their Spartan, "U", Rams, Tigers, and Trojans jerseys with pride. And the youth programs are not school based yet, so that's the kicker. And that's the real difference between what is happening on the east side and why they're so dominant versus the west side. Montgomery is a next level coach. I know it's hard for a HS coach to jump to college and be successful, but Montgomery is one that I think could do it.
ADD: In terms of athletes, all the east side schools have a ton of great athletes. Obviously Union and Jenks are probably fielding the most with Bixby right behind. BA used to have them but all the great ones there seem to be transferring to one of the previous 3. Owasso is an ebb and flow place and is dependent upon kids actually in the district. A kid that lives in BA and gets an approved transfer probably can get to Union or Bixby pretty easily without the kid's parents needing to move or taking an extra hour out of their day to drop off/pick up kid from the school. Owasso's not getting those kids from those districts unless the parents are actually moving to Owasso. And we've all seen the suburban migration pattern in Tulsa....it's all headed to Bixby right now. You can't drive on 121st St or 131st street all the way to Garnett and not see new subdivisions going in.
And for every time you see a kid transfer from one school to another and see "bona fide move into the district" attached. Take it with a grain of salt. Many times these kids parents rent an apt. in the district for a month or two, get a couple utility bills in and submit and you have yourself a "bona fide move". Once they're in the district and attending, you can move back to your original address and submit an appeal to the district to keep attending and simply put the reason as not wanting to disrupt the student's daily routine and academic progress and you'll get your waiver. OR you can go the Kejuan Jones route and have your mom get an admin job in the district.
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Back when I had kids in football and cheer, most of the transfers occurred in 7th grade. 6A schools don’t sponsor athletics until the 8th grade, while everyone else starts in 7th.
It was always interesting to see where players from the top Tulsa teams would end up after 6th grade, as many of the parents didn’t want their kids wasting a year in the TPS 7th grade programs and preferred to keep them in the Indian Nations football league.
For several years, you could find these top players show up in Union and/or Jenks uniforms the following season and then would eventually move up to 8th grade school sponsored football. I don’t know if the loophole is still open, but back then if you competed a year at the sub-varsity level at your new school then your family didn’t even have to move.
The dynamic changed in about 2011 when a handful of elite Tulsa players showed up in Owasso for the first time. These guys helped form the nucleus of Blankenship’s first state championship team and a few are still playing as 6th year seniors. One is at North Texas, another at UAB and one at Ohio State.
It was always interesting to see where players from the top Tulsa teams would end up after 6th grade, as many of the parents didn’t want their kids wasting a year in the TPS 7th grade programs and preferred to keep them in the Indian Nations football league.
For several years, you could find these top players show up in Union and/or Jenks uniforms the following season and then would eventually move up to 8th grade school sponsored football. I don’t know if the loophole is still open, but back then if you competed a year at the sub-varsity level at your new school then your family didn’t even have to move.
The dynamic changed in about 2011 when a handful of elite Tulsa players showed up in Owasso for the first time. These guys helped form the nucleus of Blankenship’s first state championship team and a few are still playing as 6th year seniors. One is at North Texas, another at UAB and one at Ohio State.
So the OSSAA rule is if you weren't in the district last year, you still have to show you made a bona fide move into the district for athletics eligibility. That kind of muddies things a little because OSDE has the open transfer rule meaning that a student who lives within TPS boundaries can transfer to any school district...the caveat being the district has to have space in the class/school you are wanting to transfer to. Union publishes the availability of spaces for non-district residents for each of its school sites as part of their monthly board report. There is almost no availability/space and certainly not at the high school. Not sure what other districts are like with that regard. Regardless, a transfer for that reason doesn't make you immediately eligible to compete in athletics according to the OSSAA rule...you would still need to prove some sort of hardship as to why you had to transfer to that district.
And you know the ridiculous amount of forms you need to sign for your kid to be OSSAA eligible for any type of school activity.
Series switched in 2017 after decades of Jenks dominance. Since 2017 Bixby has won 6 of 8 and 5 of the last 6. Trimble’s absence from the Jenks program and Montgomery coming to Bixby being the likely explanation.
I wonder where they would be now had Montgomery lost his job after the hazing scandal. I hear he came very close to being shown the door.
I remember that. Didn't Jenks win a game at the start of Bixby's championship run when they were still in 6A-2 something like 77-10? And then the Presley's showed up, Trimble left, and I'm not sure Jenks has been really close except for the 1 fluke win last season.
Good point. That was awful and how Montgomery escaped is beyond me..and anyone claiming he didn't know. Fine he didn't know, but he still allowed that type of culture to exist.
It got to the point where if Jenks didn't put 60 and Bixby and 70 on Owasso, I was a little disappointed.
There was one night against Union in 96 or 97 where the ref just let the holding calls go b/c Union couldn't protect Sherrod Poteete against the Jenks Legion of Doom. That starting D-Line signed with OU, Notre Dame, Nebraska, and of course Tulsa. I think those guys had their own nickname, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
The 1st Jenks/Union game I really followed was the initial Backyard Bowl at Skelly that had 40k people there. Perhaps the most epic HS football game I've every seen.
So in the mid 90s me and a couple of friends basically did the PA announcing and scoreboard stuff for Rogers HS when they were still playing on Thursday nights at Skelly. We would take bets on the O/u of the number of yards and points Rogers would allow in each quarter and the 1st half and also the o/u on the # of yards Rogers would have. I remember one game against Jenks where Rogers had -7 yards at the half and were trailing Calmus and Co. 47-0.
The Kejuan Jones miracle TD still remains the best high school football games I’ve ever seen.
100%. The TD Union scored just before that was a really nice 2 minute drive and the catch by Jerome Janet was pretty nice. Who knew 16 seconds would be too much time to leave on the clock?
jenks is fully capable of knocking off Bixby. Play sound defense and magic things happen.
The Presley Bros helped Bixby a lot
The Presley Bros helped Bixby a lot
Jenks will have the best player on the field. Anything can happen tomorrow.
