HYWAY - USA Wrestling

[tazdevil]

HYWA needs to advertise tournaments better for them to have a chance to grow.  I had to hunt for the State tourney info and I only saw info on one qualifier.  The Venue for HYWA state is already outgrown also.  The quarter mats are horrible at their borderwars tournament, let alone a "state" tournament.  I commend Andy Hobbs for trying it, I think Peru is his home school.  However, for the sake of HYWA growing, it needs to move.  You already know about the medals.

I know the OURWAY program in OH and MYWA in MI have done well.  It would be great to see the same thing here.  I like the different age groups the best so we can see kids we do not usually see.  My child won this year against kids from the higher divison by USA guidelines and that was cool.

[grecoref]

Why should any club be responsible to bring officals,  ISWA should contact and pay for them and please dont go to the local elementry to find them.

 

This used to be a requirement for the clubs. About 10 years or so ago we had one referee per mat (20 mats)  from Indiana at the Jr Nationals in Fargo. Also during this time we had adults on every mat at the state finals.

[grecoref]

Why should any club be responsible to bring officals,  ISWA should contact and pay for them and please dont go to the local elementry to find them.

 

What training opportunities to freestyle officials get from either USA wrestling or ISWA?

 

There is an annual clinic at the begining of each season. The clinic date is listed in the annual publication and on the ISWA website.

[Y2CJ41]

Tom,

I know I went to a class back in the day in 1997.  It was very good and I learned a lot.  Has there ever been talk of doing something like that regionally?   

[TripleB]

I was very disappointed with the officiating at Freestyle State last Sunday as I saw SEVERAL matches that were poorly officiated.  I had a discussion on my way home with my wife saying that I would be happy to pay an extra $5.00 to pay the officials to ensure that we attract quality officials to participate in the ISWA tournaments.  Don't get me wrong, there were many high quality officials at the tournament, however there were too many that I feel were not ready to officiate a state level tournament.  Maybe if we pay the officials at the state level tournaments, then we can attract enough quality officials that we will not need to use officials that are not experienced enough to officiate these events.

 

I apologize that I only reffed on Saturday, maybe next year I'll do both days... ;D ;D ;D

[grecoref]

Tom,

I know I went to a class back in the day in 1997.  It was very good and I learned a lot.  Has there ever been talk of doing something like that regionally?   

 

I think they tried regional clinics at one time, however attendance was low and the ISWA decided to have the clinic at a central location. There used to be two types of clinics offered. An advanced clinic and a clinic for new officials.  I remember the first full year I was here-97- I conducted the clinic and there was about 75 people in attendance. This year we were lucky to have had 10 people in attendance.

 

 

 

[grecoref]

 

ISWA Folkstyle State Finals are staffed by IHSAA Certified officials that are paid. ISWA Freestyle and Greco State Final officials are volunteers. There has been discussion regarding paying these officials as well but last year at Freestyle state we had someone complain about a bad official and it just happened to be the same Indiana Official that represented the USA at the Olympics.

 

 

Infolady,

 

Thank you for the responses to concerns voiced in this topic.  If folks don't like some of the answers, so be it, at least you are willing to communicate.

 

However, regarding officiating, I do think there are legitimate concerns from what I saw last weekend at Freestyle state.  Just because one of the complaints was directed at an eminantly qualified official is not a very good reason to not address the situation.  In fact, I would guess that official is more qualified to handle complaints than anyone else.  I also find no fault with those that do volunteer their time to officiate.  The responsibility falls on the ISWA leadership.  I am hoping that they also see the need for a more professional approach to the officiating situation.

 

Although I am not an ISWA Board Member, I can assure you this is a "hot topic"  with the board. They recognize the issue and I am confident that they will do their best to remedy the situation.

 

With that being said, it is very frustrating to hear what some people say to and about referees. Our society has the "kill the umpire" mentality. Yelling, berating, showing displeasure, etc... towards referees has become an acceptable practice. This is the major factor why there are so few referees.  Wrestling is such an emotional sport-which is one of the things that draws me to it. It's also the thing that causes us the most problems.

[coops99]

I have a few questions, what are if any of the advantages of  becoming a HYWA club have for coaches?  Where do the profits from HYWA actually go or where and what are they invested in? We have been to HYWA, MYWA and ISWA tournaments and I LOVE the mat side pairings that  HYWA and MYWA use!! For example a MYWA tournament this season had 800 wrestlers and it started @ 10am including the drive which was 45 min we were home before 4 pm with 4 matches (very smooth). I personally think that if HYWA had more tournaments then maybe clubs , coaches, parents whoul be more apt to get on board. Here is a suggestion... maybe HYWA could run tournaments in November and then since ISWA  start later (around the middle of Jan) then the public could decide for themselves which they prefer or at the very least youth wrestlers get more and more time on the mat and with that HYWA is involved in making Indiana an elite wrestling state.

[andy hobbs]

HYWAY is intended to start after football season and end spring break.

K-8 tournament on mostly  Sunday due to High School wrestling.

HYWAY is having triple duals in our area on almost every friday evening prior to super 6 high school events.

In the next 30 days HYWAY members will have a meeting to establish 4 regions.

HYWAY will operate everything from REGIONS.

Each region will keep their money in their region to reinvest in the kids and keep the cost low.

The excutive board only gets dollars from cards, club dues, and state tournament.

The regions keep the remaining dollars in their regions' clubs.

 

As for investment so far:

HYWAY had to purchase a $600 /year the past two years for the banner ad on IHSWCA website  in order to be allowed to post HYWAY tournament info and results. (Too bad this website got jacked)

Pay athlete insurance  which is approx. $8 per wrestler for insurance for the year.

A small royalty for matside pairing software.

A laptop  and printer to build tournaments used at most events this season.

We are running pretty thin on dollars but, the wrestling events have been great.

IMPORTANT: Anyone with a HYWAY card can compete in OHIO (ourway) or Michgan (Myway)  tournaments each weekend too.

Several other states are organizing at this time to join the HYWAY - NUWAY concept.

 

Future investments:

Planning on helping Ohio and Michigan pay for FLOwrestling band width so, we can  communicate.

This will also provide a good website.

 

[The Guru]

Have not watched the video, but to be fair to the already posted responses:

 

ISWA has passed out more than its fair share of "crappy" state medals. 

 

ISWA hasn't had crappy medals since they had sectionals back in the 80's. You remember those little bitty round ones?

[MCKAJC]

ISWA hasn't had crappy medals since they had sectionals back in the 80's. You remember those little bitty round ones?

 

I agree. The state medals are very nice these days. With two wrestlers in the house and each with close to 300 matches, it's not hard to distinguish between the state and national awards compaired to the smaller weekend tournament medals.

[IMAWRESTLER]

[The Guru]

Infolady,

 

Thank you for the responses to concerns voiced in this topic.  If folks don't like some of the answers, so be it, at least you are willing to communicate.

 

However, regarding officiating, I do think there are legitimate concerns from what I saw last weekend at Freestyle state.  Just because one of the complaints was directed at an eminantly qualified official is not a very good reason to not address the situation.  In fact, I would guess that official is more qualified to handle complaints than anyone else.  I also find no fault with those that do volunteer their time to officiate.  The responsibility falls on the ISWA leadership.  I am hoping that they also see the need for a more professional approach to the officiating situation.

 

 

Although I am not an ISWA Board Member, I can assure you this is a "hot topic"  with the board. They recognize the issue and I am confident that they will do their best to remedy the situation.

 

With that being said, it is very frustrating to hear what some people say to and about referees. Our society has the "kill the umpire" mentality. Yelling, berating, showing displeasure, etc... towards referees has become an acceptable practice. This is the major factor why there are so few referees.  Wrestling is such an emotional sport-which is one of the things that draws me to it. It's also the thing that causes us the most problems.

 

I agree. But I think we can all agree there are a lot more referees today that are no-nothing, power-tripping jerks too. I see more and more refs who are willing to get mouthy with stupid coaches and parents and show their asses.

[ShyGuy]

From the HYWAY vs USA discussion we should all realize one thing.  Competition is a good thing.  We have a similar situation going on in Ohio with OAC and OURWAY.  Before OURWAY came along, OAC had little reason to improve anything.  They were it and USA Wrestling-Ohio has no interest in being involved in the game.  Though OAC is considered to still be ?THE? Folkstyle State Championship in OH, I don?t think it is a coincidence that OAC has added a 6 and under division, present State Finalist singlets and All-Ohio T-shirts to State Placers since OURWAY has come to the table.  Since OURWAY did those things, OAC had to reduce profit margins to keep up. 

 

OURWAY presents huge, heavy trophies while OAC presents Ohio shaped medals.  Both present large brackets to champions.  OURWAY goes to a much greater expense for placement awards, but my son had never complained about receiving an OAC medal.

 

I think the concept of MYWAY and the point of Dave Dean was to keep membership funds local.  USAW uses ISWA membership income for things outside the state of Indiana.  This in my opinion is not all bad.  They are the nationally sanctioned body of amateur wrestling in the US.  They do have a little something to do with our top athletes that compete for world and Olympic titles.  Without this type of funding to USAW we would only have the wealthy competing at these levels, and wrestling is largely a blue collar sport.  Now Dean spoke of some states getting preferential treatment from USAW.  This is obviously a problem if it is in fact happening.