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Participation - another perspecitve


Galagore

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This new post has been created as not to hijack the thread from Tskin on participation. Seeing those numbers makes me even more certain that we would be better off with a classed post-season individual tournament. We have been at three super duals this year, and all three have lasted less than five hours (with five rounds of wrestling). If numbers are up that much, they are not only not indicative of small school participation, they seem to be counter-balancing loss of wrestlers at small schools. No, classing the tournament won't be a "magic" bullet, but it might be a kind of buck-shot that catches a couple athletes who think they might have a shot at state, gives an on-the-fence guy the one little nudge needed to go give it a shot, makes a young coach give more thought to taking over the abandoned program at his local school. More schools with a wrestling program equates to a larger overall audience (not just state tournament audience) to the sport, and that is important for long-term health.

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As a counterpoint, if you are stating that the increase in participation is not happening at small schools, then conversely it must be occurring at the large schools.

The large schools typically have a full lineup of 14 wrestlers.  Adding additional wrestlers does not increase the number of people on the team who have an opportunity at a state championship (if that is their objective).  Therefore, the increases must be mostly to the JV ranks of large schools.  These wrestlers have even less of a shot at winning state than do the varsity wrestlers at small schools. In fact, they get very little notoriety unless they get bumped up to varsity.

So, I could draw the conclusion that maybe it's not about the "championship" possibility as the major factor that in increasing participation

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What if classing the tournament included the ability for teams to enter up to two wrestlers per weight? Would that change anyone's mind on classing the tournament? From the perspective of a non-classer, would that positive out weigh the negative enough for you to be pro-class?

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What is the possibility of a sanctioned event outside of the IHSAA season where only 1A school wrestlers may attend?  You could call it small school State championship.  It would allow the really high level kids at 1A schools to still be able to participate in the single class tournament during school season, with the additional motivation that they might be able to compete in a random-bracketed championship event among small schools over one weekend and be crowned the small school state champ or placer

I prefer to keep the single class tournament, but I have been swayed by the proponents of class wrestling and would like to have something to offer.  Classed Team State is definitely one method for positive recruitment, a tournament such as this could be another step without disrupting the apple cart entirely

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44 minutes ago, base said:

What is the possibility of a sanctioned event outside of the IHSAA season where only 1A school wrestlers may attend?  You could call it small school State championship.  It would allow the really high level kids at 1A schools to still be able to participate in the single class tournament during school season, with the additional motivation that they might be able to compete in a random-bracketed championship event among small schools over one weekend and be crowned the small school state champ or placer

I prefer to keep the single class tournament, but I have been swayed by the proponents of class wrestling and would like to have something to offer.  Classed Team State is definitely one method for positive recruitment, a tournament such as this could be another step without disrupting the apple cart entirely

I would be open to the idea and interested to see how it played out. I think the Freshman/Sophomore state could give us some insight into how well received something like that would be.

 

What are your thoughts on trading one class tournament in for being able to enter multiple wrestlers to the tournament? Two classes, but the schools with two guys that are studs could have both of them gunning for a title. Thoughts there?

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