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aoberlin

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aoberlin last won the day on December 24 2023

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About aoberlin

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Fort Wayne, Indiana
  • School
    I love the General

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aoberlin's Achievements

  1. Just over the last 3ish years over $100,000 and a 2nd mortgage to insure the $130,000 I still owe on the business loan. And countless hours. But my wife and I got to go to dinner with Kenny Monday! Before the business an unknown amount of time and money.
  2. I'm out this weekend for wrestling, but I will still be coaching. I popped a rib pinning a Lopshire last night. I'll be back next week.
  3. I'll start. Carroll Regional a nominate @GenHeavyHandz and @nkraus
  4. Let me rephrase. They absolutely know who is who in Indiana wrestling and are looking to generate a conversation around it. The names you just dropped I am guessing are in their DMs somewhere.
  5. How does that generate conversation? I am assuming they want some smack talkers.
  6. You make really good points, and you aren't wrong. Coming from a big school, the mindset of the coaches is to get the athletes to focus almost solely on their sport. The baseball coach doesn't care to have their player wrestle. In a small school, there is a good chance you are friends with all the coaches and know them by name when you see them. I would imagine you have talks about each of the athletes and the their strengths and weaknesses. You share the athlete. I don't think that happens at big schools too much so there are some advantages you have if the kids do multiple sports. Not saying it wouldn't be better if they totally focused on wrestling but at least there is that. I also truly believe that, for the bigger boys, wrestling is a huge asset to football. I think if you are 165ish and above and your main sport is football but you still get some offseason and mat time when you can you can still be very successful. I do hear you when you say even your mid weights and smaller wrestlers play football, since it is a small school, so that can be tough, but it can also make them tougher. One of my best wrestlers is football first and wrestling second and I am okay with that. Currently, he is one of a few of my wrestlers with a real competitor mindset but he has been that way since sharks in minnows as a little kid. My stance is that either we class the state or we add more qualifiers and have wrestle backs. Our wrestlers deserve more opportunities because of how hard they now have to work now. I also really do see the advantage of classing for a small school and helping drive the numbers up. One of the reasons I would like to coach at a smaller school would be to get invited to Team State and be a part of that. Doing that at a 4A school while you are still trying to build a culture is a challenge. So don't get me wrong I don't disagree with you. I will keep saying it's not rainbow and butterflies in big school land. We all have battles we are fighting. Keep up the good fight.
  7. No it doesn't hold on a team sport that well. Wrestling is weird I will admit you need a good partner or coach that can wrestle you. In some individual sports, you don't need a teammate. Like running shouldn't require a bunch of other teammates to make you better. Or golf. But having a culture of success would make them better or believe they can do it. Just like being the first one in the family to graduate from college. It is always hardest for the first one to pave the path. If your question can a small school team sport beat a big school team sport like basketball or football? Not usually. The movie Hoosiers shows that it can be done and it is probably the reason for no wrestleback and no classes.
  8. I'm not bashing you at all. What I am stating is we all struggle with pretty much the same thing and it is very hard to overcome. Getting kids to fully buy-in and creating a good culture that will foster the mindset it takes. Then holding them accountable for it without them quitting. You are obviously very passionate so I would assume you are also a good coach unless you fall on the psycho side which some of us do. I am just saying big schools aren't all they are cracked up to be and we all have our battles. I am also not saying I have the answers or that I have implemented anything right. Or my post season would be lasting longer instead of sitting in the cheap seats.
  9. Why do people walk away with an expensive car from a dealership when they just went there for a base model and something reliable?
  10. I named 4 in my local area that I compete against on the regular. I don't know much about the rest of the list you just copied and pasted. This simple answer is they don't have a wrestling culture at the moment. It's not easy to build and sustain. Most of these schools you will see flare up once in a while when a group of parents or a parent has been riding their group of kids since they were youth wrestlers. Once those kids graduate they fade back away. Those are just facts.
  11. Absolutely not. There are way more factors than that. What I am saying is that it can be done at a small school and it is done at small schools. Yes, your wrestlers need good practice partners. It is your job as a coach to recruit those partners and build relationships with them and their parents to get them to fully buy-in. After working for years to build numbers and make a sport cool in a place where it isn't. Here is where I currently stand. Numbers aren't everything and can be a bad thing if you don't have enough coaching staff and you aren't able to separate them into different practices. We had 50 wrestlers this year. I would much rather a smaller group of dedicated wrestlers than a bunch of kids that are trying the sport out and most of them will quit before they are seniors. I have made that clear with my team and parents so we will see how many we get next year. I just don't see this as a sport you can be halfway in. Like I tell my wrestlers it is like not fully committing to a backflip. You are going to land on your head.
  12. I can tell you this much I coach at a big school and I have been the head coach for 4 years and I have yet to get a qualifier or placer. It definitely hasn't been from a lack of effort on my part and the amount of opportunities that my wrestlers have. I am biased but I think our technique and approach are spot on, but obviously that part is subjective and maybe it is me.
  13. If the high school has a wrestling culture then there are a ton of advantages. Take Bellmont, Adams Central, Garrett, and Prairie Heights for instance. None of them have issues with their numbers. I think Prairie Heights and Garrett had like 50 kids this year. On top of that, I am from Eastside High School and I know how small communities work. Most of the time you will have the same last names flowing through the school so you have a generational culture of wrestling that is huge also. Having a parent who wrestled is a big deal when the going gets tough. The reason I started wrestling is because it was the cool thing to do at Eastside in the 80's and early 90's. You don't need a room full of hammers for your wrestlers to have success. I will say you need 2 or 3 around the same weight that can push each other. Throw on top of the mindset challenges that certain demographics have or don't have that is another factor. I didn't read the whole thread but I think someone touched on it already. Here is the bottom line now for any of us. If you want your wrestler to reach the podium in Indiana you need to have an all-in wrestler that is willing to wrestle year-round with only a little bit of off time. Times have changed no matter if we like it or not. Yes, there will be some outliers here and there that don't fit this rule. Especially at the upper weights but for the most part, it is what it is. If you state that you will always share athletes with other sports because it is a small school and you don't want to takeaway from anyone's pool then 110% you are at a huge disadvantage unless your school's number 1 sport is wrestling and other coaches accept that and are okay with them possibly getting injured in a wrestling practice during their season. If your whole argument is you want divisions so kids can play other sports and still have some success at wrestling then you are correct. But that doesn't make it easier at a big school to have success. That is what you and your school system have chosen.
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