Boycott Freestyle

[Sig40]

Well I am back on the boycott freestyle state bandwagon after just wasting $40 on the Iron Eagle Columbia City tournament.  I went to sign up for Penn's freestyle tournament on March 26th, but could not because they moved it to April 30th.  FYI there are no other freestyle tournaments offered on the weekend of March 26th in Indiana.  So we are giving 7 weekends to wrestle in 2 freestyle tournaments, but only 6 weekends offer tournaments.  Now throw in 3 very expensive tournaments that are all supported by ISWA(National middle school duals, Heartland Duals, and USA Nationals) and you are down to 3 weekends.  Out of those weekends one is Ohio TOC which is probably a better tournament then USA Nationals and Viper Pit Dual(Indiana is the defending champion).  That leaves us with 1 weekend(Iron eagle), which I will just skip instead of paying for 2 nights of hotels and food.  Thanks again ISWA.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Sig40

[takedownartist]

Compromise over Boycott. Here is a solution. I challenge the ISWA Board to vote on this:

 

 

Any wrestler who is on any ISWA team going to National Middle Schools duals and/or Heartland duals should have an automatic exemption for one Freestyle qualifier per ISWA team event.

This makes sense if any freestyle qualifier is held on the same weekend as the ISWA dual team tournaments.

The wrestler parents are already supporting the ISWA by spending hundreds of dollars on the out of state tournaments.

If their kid is doing both, over a thousand dollars when counting all travel expenses.

Note that I stated exemptions not waivers.

I do not think little Johnny should get a waiver because he had a baseball game.

This is all about wrestling.

I like freestyle way better than folkstyle, but during the month of April, that is the prime month to seek out top competition for the younger wrestlers who are not Cadets or Juniors. Do not penalize these kids because Freesyle and Greco States are in May.

Most of these kids on these teams do not know off seasons and wrestle year around. They are at the Academy or Club training Freestyle and Greco. They already are training all styles for years to be ready for Fargo when they become Cadets and Juniors. They are the future of Indiana wrestling.

Do not preach to the choir. We want the same thing. Making Indiana wrestling better and better.

Edited March 11, 2016 by takedownartist

[wagreco84]

I took a job in Washington state in 2010 but we still come back every year for my son to wrestle at the Iron Eagle in addition to visiting family.  I'm sorry you felt the tournament was a waste of money.  I sure would like to see more kids come out, but even now, the quality of wrestlers my son had in his weight brackets were great.  We were in cadet and he had someone who made the Cadet Fargo team last year and a kid who qualified for high school state from Ohio.  The group was so evenly matched that the kid who won Greco and Folkstyle lost by tech fall in two straight in Freestyle.  It sounds like the frustration is that Indiana continues to lose focus on Freestyle and Greco, and that Hyway is really competing with ISWA.  Out in Washington state we regularly have 400 kids in freestyle and Greco tournaments each weekend.  The one we are signed up for this weekend has 8 registered in his class for freestyle and 6 for Greco.  I don't know what Washington State does to keep Freestyle and Greco going but I hope that the ISWA can do some benchmarking against other successful states to see if there are improvements that can be made to get more wrestlers into Freestyle and Greco.