23 replies to this topic

[The Guilty Bystander]

Varsity Schedule (0-10)

@ Napoleon: 43-49
Elida: 28-42
@ Bath: 33-42
Celina: 7-35
Ottawa-Glandorf: 7-48
@ Wapakoneta: 0-38
St. Marys: 21-49
@ Van Wert: 14-45
@ Shawnee: 29-32
Kenton: 0-34

JV Schedule (0-9)

Napoleon: 0-34
@Elida: 24-40
Bath: 8-32
Celina: 26-58
@ Ottawa-Glandorf: 6-48
Wapakoneta: 0-42
@ St. Marys: 26-28
Van Wert: 26-32
Shawnee: 20-46

Freshmen Schedule (0-1)

@ Napoleon: 0-34
No other scores so I presume the rest of the Freshmen season was cancelled and combined with the JV, but since I'm in Lima and don't attend JV games I don't know for sure.

So the high schoos teams combined for a record of 0-20

It continues on to the Junior High Level as well

8th Grade Record: 3-4
7th Grade Record: 0-6

So for all levels of football, Defiance had a total W/L Record of 3-30

It was touched on in a few other threads, but there are a few key things to mention here:

1. The Defiance demographics have changed, you simply cannot deny this. Defiance has become the poor minority school while Tinora has become the desination for the upper middle class kids that used to make up the bulk of Defiance's roster while Ayersville is also flourishing with middle class and farm kids right now.

2. The boom of the baseball and basketball programs are taking kids away from playing football. There are some kids who play both sports, but it is very rare for top players to do that, virtually unheard of anymore, with baseball in particular.

3. The football team does have seem to have a higher concentration of minority players on the team than in past years. Someone else thought this wasn't a fair point so I did some digging on their website. The football and basketball teams do have a similar amount of African-American and Latin-American student-athletes. The anomoly comes with baseball, where a larger percentage of the players seem to be caucasian. I thought this was a pretty interesting point.

4. Buti is/has been/hopefully will continue to be one of the best coaches in the WBL. He looks to be doing the best with what he has on hand. I saw Defiance once in person and once on film this year and noticed that several times defenders in particular were right in position to make plays or tackles but simply didn't make the play. You can put a kid in the right position but you can't make a tackle for them. Defiance continues to be lucky that Buti didn't leave for a different job when he probably could have. I'm sure some "fans" and probably parents will grumble that Buti is still there but I'm sure they don't know a damn thing about coaching/winning football.

I know we have a few Defiance posters here, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts from someone else in the league that is just confused with what has happened to Defiance.

[Chilidog]

I thought that the minorities ( as you called them) are better athletes? .

Edited by Chilidog, 03 November 2014 - 05:04 PM.

[Dakota Green]

These are very interesting stats and as a fan of O-G, I have always thought of Defiance as a school that always has a proud heritage and pride in their sports programs and had very good facilities to hold those various games. You have touched on a lot of the realities right now regarding Defiance, but I think this is going on albeit on a smaller scale at a lot of other schools. The demographics in this country have changed greatly in regards to economic conditions and this fact has over time filter into the local sports scenes in some schools. Throw in the fact that a lot of kids (heck anyone under the age of 40) that just do not want to put in the work needed to do anything productively in society anymore. There are a lot of kids in the school in Defiance I am sure that are coming from single family homes that do not have interest in sports or school work or belonging to any club or anything else regarding school. Athletics in school are taking a bigger hit in some schools then a lot people realize. I really feel sorry for a lot of young people out there who are behind the eight ball through no fault of their own. Defiance as a town is a lot older as far as age of their residents then it seems then a lot of other towns and I am not sure why. If you drive around Defiance you see a lot of substandard housing, and I got to believe a lot of kids live in these homes and they just do not have much. And today kids for the most part would have a game boy or some electronic gadget instead of going outside to pass a football. As far as the record throughout the school regarding the football program the record is shocking. You would thing that even with Tinora to the north and Ayersville to the southeast that with the size and amount of kids that still go to Defiance that somewhere in those 6 grades that they would some talent in the horizon football wise. I gotta believe Jerry Buti didn't all of the sudden become an incompetent coach, but maybe for some reason a new voice is needed, somebody to light a fire in this program because as a fan of O-G I do not want to see Defiance have a bad sports program in anything. When Defiance is strong it is great for the WBL. Going 0-10 is not good for anyone.

[Teddy Malone]

Effing Crapoleon keeps stealing our jobs.

[dhsdawg06]

33 kids in grades 10-12 certainly doesn't help anything. We had kids that should have been playing JV getting big varsity minutes, freshman making up the bulk of the JV team(22 freshman on the roster), and then of course no freshman team because of that.

The demographics, lack of jobs in Defiance, and other sports are obviously all HUGE factors. But while this years team wouldn't have been good no matter what, I think with more experience they find a way to win AT LEAST the Napoleon and Shawnee games, and potentially Bath as well. 3-7 still wouldn't have been good, but it's lightyears ahead of 0-10.

I'm not sure what the next couple years hold, but my hope is that the sophomores and juniors that got varsity experience this year with only 10 seniors on the entire roster grow up and we're at least competitive. I have no clue anymore why the defense has been so horrible the last 5 seasons(it wasn't GREAT between about 04 and 09 either, but it was at least serviceable. The last 5 years has just been terrible).

I also remember sitting there during the St. Marys game and having absolutely NO clue what the offensive gameplan actually is. They try a lot of different things with varying degrees of success, but there was just nothing that you could say was our "bread and butter."

At this point I'll take what we did was I was in high school. We were all disappointed with 6-4 every year back then. Little did we know........

Edited by dhsdawg06, 03 November 2014 - 06:41 PM.

[Maltese Falcon]

Didn't Defiance make the playoffs last season?

[dhsdawg06]

Maltese Falcon, on 03 November 2014 - 07:34 PM, said:

Didn't Defiance make the playoffs last season?

They did. But I wouldn't call the 2013 team good either. On one hand, they were about 2 plays away from being 8-2. On the other, they were outscored 281-247 in the regular season, were the most one dimensional offense I've seen(absolutely NO run game, and the passing game consisted of basically Trey Guilliam making plays where there shouldn't have been one), and then they got lucky that Guilliam's injury was during the easy stretch(St. Marys, Van Wert, and Shawnee, where he played but was limited). And even during THAT stretch, they were lucky to escape each of the 3 games. That team in reality should have been about 4-6, but they took advantage of an all league talent on both sides of the ball and a joke of a region to sneak in

And I guess that's what scares me the most. Trey Guilliam isn't walking back through that door, and at least this year it was obvious there's no one there to take his place.

[RedskinFan]

Could anyone see buti going to elida, should Coach Carp resign?

Edited by RedskinFan, 03 November 2014 - 09:05 PM.

[dhsdawg06]

I think Buti is about ready to retire, to be perfectly honest. Just a hunch I've had the last few years.


But considering he's the AD now and his daughter is volleyball coach, I personally couldn't see him taking a different coaching job. Maybe it's wishful thinking. Who really knows.

[Teddy Malone]

Maltese Falcon, on 03 November 2014 - 07:34 PM, said:

Didn't Defiance make the playoffs last season?

Token spot. Basically the reverse of O-G being in a tough region (at least from a computer points standpoint) this year; Defiance's region last year was quite shallow. It was definitely the weakest of Defiance's 8 playoff teams.

[The Guilty Bystander]

Chilidog, on 03 November 2014 - 05:02 PM, said:

I thought that the minorities ( as you called them) are better athletes? .

I never said that they were better athletes, I don't think it's reasonable to say that anyone in "farm country" NW Ohio that isn't Caucasian is a minority.

Teddy Malone, on 03 November 2014 - 06:26 PM, said:

Effing Crapoleon keeps stealing our jobs.

Is that true? What companies have left Defiance?

Maltese Falcon, on 03 November 2014 - 07:34 PM, said:

Didn't Defiance make the playoffs last season?

As many pointed out that region was an anomaly last season. I think they got beat pretty bad by Toledo Central Catholic, like it was over before halftime. Looked at Defiance's 2013 results on the Eitel website, they beat 6-4 OG for their only win against a winning team that season.

RedskinFan, on 03 November 2014 - 09:05 PM, said:

Could anyone see buti going to elida, should Coach Carp resign?

Absolutely not, as others have mentioned, family is firmly entrenched in Defiance it seems, he's a legend there. He couldn't, AND SHOULDN'T leave. He has the ability to lead the program back up again. If anyone can do it, it's Buti, he's easily one of the top 25 coaches in the state of Ohio.

[Common Sense]

Saw Defiance at a scrimmage before the season and said at the time I'd be shocked if they won a game. Was actually semi-surprised they had some competitive games. WBL is a tough conference to be thin. Pretty low numbers, and small lines, not many good skill position players. Hopefully it's just a cycle of kids right now. Always been pretty impressed with Defiance and their overall success of their athletic programs.
But it's like any other schools, if your top 3-4 athletes per class isn't playing your sport, it's going to be difficult.

[roadtoC-town]

The Guilty Bystander, on 03 November 2014 - 04:30 PM, said:

Varsity Schedule (0-10)

@ Napoleon: 43-49
Elida: 28-42
@ Bath: 33-42
Celina: 7-35
Ottawa-Glandorf: 7-48
@ Wapakoneta: 0-38
St. Marys: 21-49
@ Van Wert: 14-45
@ Shawnee: 29-32
Kenton: 0-34

JV Schedule (0-9)

Napoleon: 0-34
@Elida: 24-40
Bath: 8-32
Celina: 26-58
@ Ottawa-Glandorf: 6-48
Wapakoneta: 0-42
@ St. Marys: 26-28
Van Wert: 26-32
Shawnee: 20-46

Freshmen Schedule (0-1)

@ Napoleon: 0-34
No other scores so I presume the rest of the Freshmen season was cancelled and combined with the JV, but since I'm in Lima and don't attend JV games I don't know for sure.

So the high schoos teams combined for a record of 0-20

It continues on to the Junior High Level as well

8th Grade Record: 3-4
7th Grade Record: 0-6

So for all levels of football, Defiance had a total W/L Record of 3-30

It was touched on in a few other threads, but there are a few key things to mention here:

1. The Defiance demographics have changed, you simply cannot deny this. Defiance has become the poor minority school --do u have some kind of data to prove this?? while Tinora has become the desination for the upper middle class kids that used to make up the bulk of Defiance's roster while Ayersville is also flourishing with middle class and farm kids right now.

2. The boom of the baseball and basketball programs are taking kids away from playing football. There are some kids who play both sports, but it is very rare for top players to do that, virtually unheard of anymore, with baseball in particular.

3. The football team does have seem to have a higher concentration of minority players on the team than in past years. --what does this have to do with anything?? Someone else thought this wasn't a fair point so I did some digging on their website. The football and basketball teams do have a similar amount of African-American and Latin-American student-athletes. The anomoly comes with baseball, where a larger percentage of the players seem to be caucasian. I thought this was a pretty interesting point. Why??

4. Buti is/has been/hopefully will continue to be one of the best coaches in the WBL. He looks to be doing the best with what he has on hand. I saw Defiance once in person and once on film this year and noticed that several times defenders in particular were right in position to make plays or tackles but simply didn't make the play. You can put a kid in the right position but you can't make a tackle for them. Defiance continues to be lucky that Buti didn't leave for a different job when he probably could have. I'm sure some "fans" and probably parents will grumble that Buti is still there but I'm sure they don't know a damn thing about coaching/winning football.

I know we have a few Defiance posters here, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts from someone else in the league that is just confused with what has happened to Defiance.

understand some of ur points but dont understand what minorities has anything to do with it??

[The Guilty Bystander]

roadtoC-town, on 04 November 2014 - 12:35 PM, said:

understand some of ur points but dont understand what minorities has anything to do with it??

That's a fair question, those questions arose after reading posters from Defiance post those things and the fact that 60% of the students in the school are on free or reduced lunch. Those came from posters in Defiance, not me, I live in the Lima area. I'm just a huge WBL fan who was curious from an outside perspective at the downfall of Defiance.

Why did I compare it to basketball/baseball? Simple, because others made the point where they don't seem to be having any issues getting athletes play those two sports. I thought it was a natural question to ask about the make up of those two teams as well. National statistics show that more minority children live in poverty than Caucasian children, it's natural to make the assumption that Defiance would be a smaller sample size of America. Based on what people from Defiance have posted on here and national statistics, I think that's a fair and logical conclusion.

[Teddy Malone]

The Guilty Bystander, on 04 November 2014 - 10:42 AM, said:

Is that true? What companies have left Defiance?

Koester moved there, and Defiance Stamping is going to move there. GM, while in the Ayersville school district and not employing only Defiance residents, went from like 4,000 employees to less than 1,000 currently, I think. Manville had 3 plants here but one relocated after a fire, I think. There could be several smaller ones as well.

[Chilidog]

roadtoC-town, on 04 November 2014 - 12:35 PM, said:

understand some of ur points but dont understand what minorities has anything to do with it??

Not sure either. I know I don't know much about Defiance but I do know they use to have a kicked butt team. Maybe it's time for changing of the guard. Maybe it is the kids.

[waterloowonder]

Data to support Defiance becoming a poorer community: 1) Over 60% of kids in elementary on free or reduced lunch. 2) Defiance passed a levy for a new Grade 6 thru 12 building in May, 2014 with the State share being 79% and local share 21%. In 2010 when the same levy failed, the State - Local share was 70% - 30%. The State share increased because the local tax valuation went down, in the other words the school district became poorer. 3) Loss of good local jobs (Koester Corp. - 60, Defiance Stamping - 70, and GM - 3,000 as samples)

What do minorities have to do with it? I don't know that minorities is the right term to use. The growing poor population is made up of all kinds. A better way to describe it is the decline of the middle class, which was made up of mostly white 2 parent families. The bottom line is that a lot of what is remaining are poor families, many one parent, who do not support their children in academics or athletics. An ever increasing number of kids walking the hallways at Defiance High School and not eligible to play athletics because of grades.

Why is baseball and basketball so successful? First of all, they have great coaches, but so does football. Baseball is very good, but not as good as 10 years ago. The success of the Defiance Little League program has also fallen way off in recent years. They still have pretty good participation numbers, but the talent and skill levels are not there. I think baseball in general is way down in our area at other local schools, so the competition is declining also. Basketball is going thru period of good talent, aided by key move-ins. They will be good this year, and this seems to be the sport of choice right now. I don't think the lower grades have been as successful in the past few years, so we could see basketball success drop some in coming years.

Not playing football is the easy way out for a lot of the good athletes. It is a lot of hard work. As Coach Buti has always said there is isn't much fun and glamor in hitting a blocking sled. Many of the parents are now allowing the kids to take the easy way out of things, by quitting and not following thru on commitments. I think the parents, or lack of parents, are the main issue in Defiance regarding the drop in football numbers and success. All the demographic issues stated earlier contribute to this parent problem. I give a lot credit to the kids who have stuck with the program. They are doing the best they can. It's the kids who are not playing that bother me.

Chris Adams, while coaching basketball at Elida, was once asked what is the key to your success. He answered on 0-10 football team doesn't hurt. In the other words, the best athletes don't play football and give their full attention to basketball.

[Common Sense]

great post waterloo, many of those points may not be politically correct, but absolutely true. two parent, working couples provide a solid foundation for kids to flourish in school and sports. You start chipping away at that and it gets tough. Also, football is about numbers, there's no way a school Defiance's should only have 10-11 kids on the football team per class. Kids are turning into 1 sport athletes, they have "personal trainers" or play their sport 10 months out of the year. Representing your school and community as each season changes isn't important anymore.
I'll take a kid whose skills maybe a little less in 3 sports, than a 1 sport athlete any day.

[fightingpanther]

It is sad to see how far the Defiance program has fallen. Some good points here especially the lack of 2-3 sport athletes. A perfect example is how a school not far down the road from Defiance continues to have success because the athletes play multiple sports and that is Ottawa Glandorf. Hats off to their continued success and athletes and parents supporting them to play more sports with their classmates as it is paying off. Only if more parents, athletes, coaches would figure this out that it's the best benefit for the majority. Hopefully Defiance can get back to winning.

[crazy4football]

Best coach in the WBL was a conversation involving Mauk and Buti in years past. Now we are left with one. That is not the problem.