Silence Dogood Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 After reading the various class wrestling topics on this board lately, it appears that while there is still quite a debate on the necessity/desire of classing the individual tournament, there is a pretty good consensus for classing the team portion. That made me wonder how one could go about classing one and not the other. I think a good option would be to completely separate the two. That is, you could leave the individual tournament as it is, and have a completely separate team tournament that consisted entirely of dual meets. I don?t think the logistics of this would be too complicated (in fact it could be quite similar to the current class setup in other team sports). I believe there are approximately 310 schools that have wrestling in Indiana. With two classes, that would put about 155 in each class. Each class could have 32 sectionals consisting of 4-6 teams each. The sectional bracket would be a basic 8-team bracket with a few teams randomly getting byes the first round. You could then have eight 4-team regionals. Then you could have four 2-team semi-states. The top 4 would then advance to team state. An alternative would be to have sixteen 2-team regionals, eight 2-team semi-states, and have the final 8 teams advance to state. The team tournament could be held during the week and start the week before the start of the individual tournament. With the 4-6 team brackets, you would probably have to hold the team sectional on two different days ? the quarterfinals on one day and the semi-finals and finals on another. So Tuesday and Thursday would probably make the most sense for that. Regional and semi-state could be held on Wednesdays. If possible logistically, from the fan perspective it would be interesting to have both classes competing at the same location (Class 1A on one mat and Class 2A on another). There might be too many teams involved at the sectionals to make this work, but maybe at regional, semi-state, and especially state it might be possible. Would anyone be interested in such a setup? Would the IHSAA ever go for it? From their perspective, the extra dual meets could generate additional revenue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bash513 Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 I'm waiting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TripleB Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 This scenario has been mentioned several times in the past. I think most people would compromise on this proposal however I believe the (I'm not a person in the know and this information could be inaccurrate or outdated) IHSAA has stated two things 1) If they ever class sports, all individual sports would be done so it would be golf, track, swimming, and so on. There would have to be a significant amount of class support across the board. 2) If wrestling ever were classed it would be both individual and team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silence Dogood Posted March 12, 2010 Author Share Posted March 12, 2010 This scenario has been mentioned several times in the past. I think most people would compromise on this proposal however I believe the (I'm not a person in the know and this information could be inaccurrate or outdated) IHSAA has stated two things 1) If they ever class sports, all individual sports would be done so it would be golf, track, swimming, and so on. There would have to be a significant amount of class support across the board. 2) If wrestling ever were classed it would be both individual and team. Where have they stated this? I'm not saying they didn't, but it just seems like a silly position to take - especially if there was a good proposal that made sense and had broad support. And why is that the end of the discussion? If a proposal was put together and had the backing of the right people, they wouldn't listen (I probably don't want to know the answer to that)? I don't know who the "right people" would be, but wasn't it somehow a vote by the school principals that prompted the classing of basketball? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshMed Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 Each class could have 32 sectionals consisting of 4-6 teams each. The sectional bracket would be a basic 8-team bracket with a few teams randomly getting byes the first round. While I like your idea it would cost $10,000+ in officials fees alone per class for the team sectional 32 sectionals x 4 officials x $50 x mileage = $9600 to $12,800. And thats per class and only 1 sport. And that is if there is a 1 day team sectional. If there was a 2 day team sectional you would basically have to double the cost. So if IHSAA classed all ind sports I would imagine a simliar cost would occur in those sports as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coach Peck Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 Where have they stated this? I'm not saying they didn't, but it just seems like a silly position to take - especially if there was a good proposal that made sense and had broad support. And why is that the end of the discussion? If a proposal was put together and had the backing of the right people, they wouldn't listen (I probably don't want to know the answer to that)? I don't know who the "right people" would be, but wasn't it somehow a vote by the school principals that prompted the classing of basketball? The problem is that the IHSAA only recognizes wrestling as an Individual Sport eventhough we are actually both, or at least a hybrid sport because we choose our State Champion in a Head to Head Competition between Teams. I have been in the presence of both Blake Ress and Bobby cox when they have said that the only way Wrestling would ever go to a class format would be if all Individual Sports went to a class format. The Coaches Association has proposed a format similar (if not the same) as mentioned earlier and it has gotten no support from the Executive Board. It was a vote by the Principals that prompted the move to "class" Basketball. The reason for the vote was that the Executive Board had voted it down and a grooup of Principals got enough signatures to have a referendum on it among all Principal. The IHSAA is a Principal driven group and a Principal with a purpose, who is somewhat influential (respected) can get things done. That is what happen when we went from 64 to 32 Sectionals and the IHSAA was not going to have any wrestlebacks. We were able to get a Principal to help us and make the Proposal for Wrestlebacks and it passed. The other thing about Principals is that they can propose something every year where we can only do it once every two years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ Posted March 12, 2010 Share Posted March 12, 2010 The Coaches Association has proposed a format similar (if not the same) as mentioned earlier and it has gotten no support from the Executive Board. Who makes up the Executive Board? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silence Dogood Posted March 12, 2010 Author Share Posted March 12, 2010 While I like your idea it would cost $10,000+ in officials fees alone per class for the team sectional 32 sectionals x 4 officials x $50 x mileage = $9600 to $12,800. And thats per class and only 1 sport. And that is if there is a 1 day team sectional. If there was a 2 day team sectional you would basically have to double the cost. So if IHSAA classed all ind sports I would imagine a simliar cost would occur in those sports as well. They pay those guys? Just kidding. If the cost of officials is $12,800 per day, if you had a $5 admission, you would need to average 80 paying fans per sectional per day to break even on that expense (80 x 32 x $5). What other expenses would have to be considered? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAncientElder Posted March 13, 2010 Share Posted March 13, 2010 Bottom line is: They have a state wrestling tournament that makes money. And after seeing the team state at Center Grove this year I would wonder how that computed out. Seemed like there were quite a few empty seats compared to previous years. If you are not making money on what you have now, how do you plan on making money by hacking it up even more? TAE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silence Dogood Posted March 13, 2010 Author Share Posted March 13, 2010 Bottom line is: They have a state wrestling tournament that makes money. And after seeing the team state at Center Grove this year I would wonder how that computed out. Seemed like there were quite a few empty seats compared to previous years. If you are not making money on what you have now, how do you plan on making money by hacking it up even more? TAE It would be interesting to see what the numbers are for the overall team tournament. Anybody have any insight on this? Is money made? One way a 2-class system could possibly generate more revenue is by having more teams involved in the team tournament to begin with and having more advancing farther into the tournament. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RankingsGuy Posted March 13, 2010 Share Posted March 13, 2010 Not only would the officials fees be astronomical, you're asking kids to make weight Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday all in one week in your proposed sectional plan. I don't think people realize how tough this is to do, hence why college wrestling wrestles only once a week, and even Illinois HS wrestling has their duals on Fridays and tournaments on Saturdays. This is ridiculous for kids that cut any decent amount of weight to make weight 3 different times with a day inbetween each, thereby negating the pound allowance.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silence Dogood Posted March 13, 2010 Author Share Posted March 13, 2010 Not only would the officials fees be astronomical, you're asking kids to make weight Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday all in one week in your proposed sectional plan. I don't think people realize how tough this is to do, hence why college wrestling wrestles only once a week, and even Illinois HS wrestling has their duals on Fridays and tournaments on Saturdays. This is ridiculous for kids that cut any decent amount of weight to make weight 3 different times with a day inbetween each, thereby negating the pound allowance.. Are the official fees really that astronomical if they can be covered by 80 paying fans per sectional? If there are 4 teams in a sectional that would be 20 fans per team. Is that unreasonable to expect? As for the multiple weigh-ins during one week, I could see that being a concern. Maybe the team sectional quarterfinals could be held the week before the semi-finals/finals (during the week of the conference tournament for most teams). Good points. Thanks for the input. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Y2CJ41 Posted March 14, 2010 Share Posted March 14, 2010 How many teams in the state would be affected by a class team state? Right now the team state tournament is for about 15-20 teams in the state. The rest have a snowball's chance in hell of making it to state, so it is worthless to them. If we have a two class system, we would have about 30-40 teams honestly interested in the state team tournament. That means we are hovering around 10% of the teams in the state that are positively affected by the team state tournament. As far as I am concerned the team state tournament can go away until it actually means something to more than 5% of the teams in the state. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silence Dogood Posted March 14, 2010 Author Share Posted March 14, 2010 How many teams in the state would be affected by a class team state? Right now the team state tournament is for about 15-20 teams in the state. The rest have a snowball's chance in hell of making it to state, so it is worthless to them. If we have a two class system, we would have about 30-40 teams honestly interested in the state team tournament. That means we are hovering around 10% of the teams in the state that are positively affected by the team state tournament. As far as I am concerned the team state tournament can go away until it actually means something to more than 5% of the teams in the state. Is this an indictment of the system or the teams that aren't to the point that the team tournament means something to them? If it's the teams, then how do we change that for them? If it's the system, this proposal was meant to help address that. If you don't think it will help, what do you propose as a solution? And how do you impose parity in a high school sport? For instance in college sports it can be done by limiting the number of scholarships each team has. In professional sports it can be done through salary caps. What do you do in high school sports to make sure the playing field is level? My thinking was that this proposal was one way of trying to do so? What are your thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pin2win1 Posted March 14, 2010 Share Posted March 14, 2010 Well each year i would be willing to think that in almost every sport and in every class, only 10 teams or so have a chance at making it to state. So wrestling isn't that much different. I mean every year it seems like we can choose between 8 teams in 5a football as to who will win state and make state, and one team has won it 5 times in the last 7 years. What do we do about that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts