I know that often on here that a lot of people attack Gate City. Well for most of their time back in the LPD, they have been the front dog. Not just in football, but it seems in most sports. Many of the Gate City faithful have on more than one opinion sent private messages, not just to me, but to others and said that hey they were realistic, they had a great run of athletes here for a couple years, boys and girls, but they knew that they would come back to the pack (so to speak) in a lot of sports. It wasn't that they would stink or anything but that there would be a few bad or lean years mixed in.

At the beginning of the year, or at least early in the year, many of the regulars said that they were down, this was one of the worst GC teams that they had seen in awhile, etc. I don't think many of us believed them. I did believe they were down, but honestly didn't think that it would be as far down as they thought. I give them credit for being pretty honest (although I still dont think that they were that bad, it was a snowball affect, and some bad injuries, losses, all compunded and made things seem worse or end up worse than it would have under other circumstances). The thing is we have all been there, just the last several years, it seemed that when something bad happened, Gate City was able to plug in someone just as good or better. This year, they didn't have the 3 levels of Hell for lack of a better word [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

One thing that I will say, for the most part, the Gate City football players and coaching staff has always been pretty classy. A few things here and there might have set off people off or wronged people, but honestly they conducted themselves for the most part to a pretty high level and respresented the district well.

I'm sure that next year, in the new district, that Gate City will rise again and be one of the top teams. I wish them well, and hope that their fans, especially the fairweather ones learned something from this year. To the true fans who show up every week, no matter good or bad. i commend you. Its hard to go out and see a down year, but you deserve the right to be proud when they do right the ship.