This Week in Indiana High School Wrestling - A sad state of affairs

[KarlHungus]

In the past seven days, numerous events have taken place and decisions have been made that really placed our sport and some of its leadership in a bad light.  The focus has been taken off of the 99% of wrestlers, coaches, and administrators who are doing things the right way and making decisions based on what is best for the student athletes and the integrity of the sport of wrestling.

 

Let's Recap:

 

1.  Sectional Saturday - a returning state runner-up was allegedly allowed to wrestle without having the proper amount of qualifying weigh-ins.  His coach was allegedly disciplined with a slap on the wrist but the integrity of the weight management policy was further compromised by lack of enforcement.

 

2.  Sectional Saturday - a prominent program's coaching staff was accused by meet officials of finding results of another sectional and than injury defaulting their wrestler after leading a match 8-0 presumably to ensure a more favorable draw at the regional tournament.

 

3. Regional Saturday - a wrestler is allowed to compete after not making weight.  A call to the IHSAA and an accusation of scale tampering is enough for the IHSAA to allow the kid to wrestle despite what appears to overwhelming evidence to show that no such tampering took place.

 

4. Regional Saturday – The Big Kahuna – The IHSAA decides to deny the opportunity for wrestlers to compete at the Jay County Regional.  They rationalize the decision by calling these wrestlers a “small minority”.  A few coaches at the regional express their discomfort with the situation but wrestling ensues.

 

The first three examples seem to show a lack of coaching integrity and the last shows a monumental lack of leadership by meet and/or IHSAA officials.

 

Coaches need to get their own house in order before any changes will come at the state level.

 

 

Chad Hollenbaugh

 

 

 

 

[busstogate]

Hear, hear.

[maligned]

What about two potential state champs and a couple other potential qualifiers/placers out because of behavior or injury.  It's been a disastrous couple weeks.  Maybe we could hit rewind and start all over?

 

Here's hoping Sarah Hildebrandt qualifies for state.  We need a nice story.

[KarlHungus]

What about two potential state champs and a couple other potential qualifiers/placers out because of behavior or injury.  It's been a disastrous couple weeks.  Maybe we could hit rewind and start all over?

 

Here's hoping Sarah Hildebrandt qualifies for state.  We need a nice story.

 

Agreed but injuries are part of sport and poor decisions are part of being a teenager.  One expects these things, however unfortuate.  One should expect better decisions made my coaches and adminstrators.

[busstogate]

Do you think these poor decisions are made out of selfishness, laziness, being too busy, greed, lack of intellect, or willfully bad intent?

 

I'd like to think the people upon whom I depend for guidance and advice were involved in our affairs for purposes higher than the management of legalized fighting, but I am not so sure.  Perhaps they think our choice of sporting deserves treatment fit for animal brutes.  I know for sure that people outside of wrestling see us as savages and repressed homosexuals, so it would not shock me to my core to see evidence of an inside job or two now and then.  

 

Still, Karl is right in that we could be less suicidal about what we can control.  The other managerial issues, to me, have only to do with wrestling in that our sport is not taken seriously by those who see it as a burden.  Burden or not, if you are sucking up tax dollars to manage us, make an honest effort and above all, try not to make yourself a lawsuit magnet in your condescension.  You'll never get tickets to the policeman's ball that way.

[Smooth34]

Sad state of affairs indeed.....

[edb41]

Who the hell do you think you are, putting facts ahead of an individual's opinion???   

[AJ]

It seems like we tend to be our worst enemy.

[macdaddy]

Looks like a total breakdown in leadership! If this is how we run our business, it's no wonder why Wrestling will always be a "red-headed step-child" to other sports! IHSAA needs to step-up and redeem themselves. I don't have the answers, but common sense says "rules are rules' and everyone deserves a right compete.

[jessmo]

I would like to know more about the wrestler who went to sectionals without enough weigh ins. I had a wrestler who couldnt wrestle until mid season and he only had 5 weigh ins. We had time for 6 but we had a meet canceled due to the snow. I asked Bobby Cox if I could have an official weigh him in on an off day or take him to a dual meet at another school for a weigh in. I was told that my guy should have been weighing in before he was eligible and we were out of luck. If anyone in the state is still wrestling without enough weighins, I want my guy back in. I will take the slap on the wrist.

[edb41]

Who the hell do you think you are, putting facts ahead of an individual's opinion???   

 

I don't remember posting this, I think I need a breathalyzer lock on my computer. LOL

[Sponge Bob]

In the past seven days, numerous events have taken place and decisions have been made that really placed our sport and some of its leadership in a bad light.  The focus has been taken off of the 99% of wrestlers, coaches, and administrators who are doing things the right way and making decisions based on what is best for the student athletes and the integrity of the sport of wrestling.

 

Let's Recap:

 

1.  Sectional Saturday - a returning state runner-up was allegedly allowed to wrestle without having the proper amount of qualifying weigh-ins.  His coach was allegedly disciplined with a slap on the wrist but the integrity of the weight management policy was further compromised by lack of enforcement.

 

2.  Sectional Saturday - a prominent program's coaching staff was accused by meet officials of finding results of another sectional and than injury defaulting their wrestler after leading a match 8-0 presumably to ensure a more favorable draw at the regional tournament.

 

3. Regional Saturday - a wrestler is allowed to compete after not making weight.  A call to the IHSAA and an accusation of scale tampering is enough for the IHSAA to allow the kid to wrestle despite what appears to overwhelming evidence to show that no such tampering took place.

 

4. Regional Saturday ? The Big Kahuna ? The IHSAA decides to deny the opportunity for wrestlers to compete at the Jay County Regional.  They rationalize the decision by calling these wrestlers a ?small minority?.  A few coaches at the regional express their discomfort with the situation but wrestling ensues.

 

The first three examples seem to show a lack of coaching integrity and the last shows a monumental lack of leadership by meet and/or IHSAA officials.

 

Coaches need to get their own house in order before any changes will come at the state level.

 

 

Chad Hollenbaugh

 

 

 

 

 

Thank You Karl and Chad for being the voice of sanity in a sea of insanity. When asked about cheating Vince Lombardi said this not to worry" Evil carries within itself its own seed of self destruction." I believe he was right. This is a truely sad state of affairs I hope somene does what is right.

[WaltHarris]

I coached high school wrestling from 1972 - 1999 in Indiana. The last 10 years that I have been 'out' of wrestling have been the best and most relaxing years of my life. I would encourage as many of you coaches as possible to exit the sport of wrestling asap. I still love the sport and read this messageboard. But the way wrestling is run by the IHSAA and a small group of coaches at several elite programs ruins the enjoyment for the rest of us.

IHSAA charges an arm & leg to enter events, then claims poverty at every turn. They keep the SemiState at Merrillville despite the fact the gym is way too small.

It seems like weight and seeding exceptions are made regularly for the elite programs. But if you are a small school with just 1-2 excellent wrestlers, your kids get the shaft.

 

I rarely post on this board. However, I read it daily and I consider myself a historian this board and the old one. It shines the light of truth on the jackals at the IHSAA and their hypocrisy (see, you guys now have succeed in getting me fired up!).  Occasionally, I read great posts and copy them to a disk.  There have been several posts along this line in past years.  I will see if I can dig some of them out.

[B Campbell]

What about two potential state champs and a couple other potential qualifiers/placers out because of behavior or injury.  It's been a disastrous couple weeks.  Maybe we could hit rewind and start all over?

 

Here's hoping Sarah Hildebrandt qualifies for state.  We need a nice story.

 

While I agree that Sarah's qualifying for state would be a great story...she would have to beat one of my wrestlers in the ticket round!!! 

If she wins, our boy gets humiliated by his peers for a few decades or so....if she loses, our boy gets booed by a few thousand fans for beating a girl and ruining her "Cinderella" story!

For every great story, there's going to be a victim....I wish her the best of luck, but will be coaching against her at the same time.... my love for wrestling will allow me to do both! I think every other coach out there is glad it's not their kid meeting her in the ticket round! LOL

[Joker]

1.  Sectional Saturday - a returning state runner-up was allegedly allowed to wrestle without having the proper amount of qualifying weigh-ins.  His coach was allegedly disciplined with a slap on the wrist but the integrity of the weight management policy was further compromised by lack of enforcement.

 

If there is not going to be any more punishment than a slap on the wrist then why have a policy? Or why not just rename it weight management guidelines? What are we teaching our kids if there is no consequence for our actions? Even if it was the coaches fault.

 

Jessmo, I would definetly look in to this. If it was the same case as your incident then you may have an argument. Then again unless your kid was a runner-up last year you may not. 

[WaltHarris]

As promised, here is a post from the old, old messageboard from 2001.  Problems like the ones this weekend go deep into the past.

 

I am quitting.  That is right.  After many years of coaching high school wrestling I have said to myself that this is it.  I never considered myself a quitter at anything, but certain things about this sport have gotten to me over time.  I love the sport dearly and always thought I would coach until I retired.  But now I am going to quit two decades earlier then I had planned.  Here are my reasons in order of annoyance.

1) STALLING- I am sick and tired of coaches who teach their wrestlers to stall.  Most kids do not know how to stall well, unless an experienced coach has taught them how to do it.  An experienced coach can teach any wrestler how to stall consistently and rarely get called or penalized for it during a match, under the current rules.  I am tired of watching year after year as good aggressive wrestlers lose matches at sectional/regional/semistate/state, while average stalling wrestlers win matches and move on to the next level of the tournament.  The stallers will sit back for 5 minutes and 50 seconds conserving energy, then go for a score in the last 10 seconds and win 1-0 or 2-1.  Least you think I am some weak coach, I can proudly say I?ve had plenty of state place winners over my career and some very good dual teams.  However, I have had many more kids wrestle for me who earned the right to move on to the next level in the tournament, but were denied simply because some average opponent was taught by his coach to stall out the match.  Officials have become much better about calling stalling during the regular season.  However, I still see a great fear among officials to call it at any level of the state tournament series.  Officials do not want to be the one to determine the outcome and thus, stalling is called quite infrequently.  A few years back, I considered changing my coaching philosophy.  I contemplated if I should take the weaker/average wrestlers on my team and teach them how to stall out a match.  In the end I simply could not do it.  I would not consider it ethically right, nor would it be in the spirit of the sport of wrestling.

2) HILLBILLIES- The utter scum-of-the-earth white trash that has invaded our sport makes me cringe.  I have coached football, baseball, and softball over the years.  I almost never have seen these degenerates at any of those contests.  But you hold a wrestling tournament and these greasy long hair, B.O. infested, 400 pound each mom and dad, ignorant nut-jobs come out of the woodwork.  For starters, their kids regularly have ringworm, muluscom, or an assort of other contagious skin conditions.  Many of them have never been treated by a doctor and continue right on wrestling every week.  Officials are officials.  Most of them are not trained to pick up on these diseases, so you cannot blame them.  The problem is, numerous wrestlers and coaches who are very careful about watching out for these conditions are forced to deal with the results.  Families have to pile up doctor?s bills and pay for medication as a result of the hillbillies inbred laziness.  Then comes mom and dad hillbilly, along with their box of Krispy Kream doughnuts.  I shall call them Randy Bob and Lauraleen.  Randy Bob sits in the stands screaming his Skoal filled mouth off at the official, the coach, and the opposing fans.  After his son loses, Randy Bob proceeds to slap the hell out of his son (15 years ago) or berate the kid into a psychological nightmare (at present).  Lauraleen threatens the official as he is walking out the door and gets in the face of the young man who beat her son/brother (yes, the inbredding again).  As a coach, I can no longer continue to ask good, well mannered young men to come out for my wrestling team and subject themselves to this kind of torment.  Fifteen year olds should not have to subject themselves to skin disease and the rantings of a 400 pound mother in an ?I?m With Stupid ->? t-shirt in order to enjoy a sporting event.

3) THERE IS LITTLE HAPPINESS IN WRESTLING ANYMORE- Almost everyone in my family wrestled or has been involved with wrestling on some level.  My brother, who was a state place winner, has this saying about wrestling: ?Almost no one leaves wrestling happy.?  Sure, if you wrestle for Mater Dei?s team or are one of the 14 state champions each year, then you might leave happy.  But for the vast majority of people I know, most feel unfulfilled.  My brother, my dad, my sons, all think the sport is just screwed up.  Too many nut-jobs, too many bad coaches, too many dreams broken by some official?s bad call.  For years I have disagreed with them.  Told them that the nuts were a minority, the bad coaches out there get replaced, and that I never have met an official who made a bad call on purpose.  Besides, winning was not everything.  The competition and hard work helped these kids out for a lifetime.  My perspective was that the positives out weighted the negatives.  But the time has now come that I agree with my family.  There are too many nuts threatening officials and coaches.  Too many bad coaches for whom winning is the only thing.  Too many people who would brake every rule in the book to win a state title.  I still coach football and I do not see the same thing on the gridiron.  But I see it at almost every wrestling match I go to.

4) IT?S NOT THE KIDS WHO HAVE CHANGED, IT?S THE ADULTS- People think that today?s kids are a great deal more lazy than 20 or 30 years ago.  I disagree.  It?s the adults who raise and mentor these kids.  They have caused more and more headaches for me over the years.  Many parents are not only clueless about the sport, but clueless about how to raise their child.  Then I go to a super dual and watch two opposing coaches almost come to blows and think ?No wonder some of these kids are going over the edge.?  I witness certain officials who believe they are always correct, challenging coaches, and vice-versa.  These kids are sent so many terrible messages about something that really does not even matter in the grand scheme of life: a game.  That?s all wrestling is; a simple game.  Yet so many of the adults make it out to be a matter of life and death.  No wonder so many kids want no part of wrestling anymore.

5) THE ELIMINATION OF NIGHT DUAL MATCHES- Wrestling is being killed by the super dual.  In the quest to set records, we have all but eliminated the night dual match.  Everybody wants to break so-and-so?s record for individual wins/ coaching wins/ takedowns, etc.  It is a legitimate argument that wrestling in a lot of super duals helps one?s team out come state tournament time.  But is it really worthwhile for the sport of wrestling in the end?  Basketball, baseball, tennis.  All these sports play single games during the regular season, yet come tournament time they must compete several times on the same day.  And we are talking about a contest in those sports that sometime take hours, not 6 minutes!  What would be the big deal about requiring a team to utilize 8 of its 16 points for single night dual matches?  That would still give a team 4 super duals (or tournaments), plus 1 tournament.  The majority of fans, parents, and high school kids do not want to sit in some gym from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. every Saturday from Thanksgiving until the last week of February.  It is no wonder that many teams cannot fill every weight class.

6) IHSAA IS A FAILURE- I am so sick of the IHSAA treating wrestling like we just don't matter. Blake Rees in particular seems to think wrestling is the lowest wrung of athletics. The disrespect with which they treat students is sicking. I can't take it anymore. The IHSAA is literally a career killer for many high school students.

 

Most of the people who read this message board are the good individuals in the sport of wrestling.  The coaches, officials, and wrestlers who do care about the right things.  Unfortunately, many of the people who should be reading this probably will never see it.  And even if they did, I doubt most them would care anyway.  So, goodbye to the bad coaches out there who teach kids to stall instead of wrestle, goodbye to the officials who have not read the rule book in ten years, goodbye to Randy Bob and Lauraleen?s crusty armpits and trailer park language, and most of all goodbye to the utter insanity that high school wrestling has become.

[Joker]

The saddest part of all of these situations is that it is overshadowing what is one of my favorite times of year.

The tournament series!

[Boot]

Seems like nothing's changed. The fans are getting worse and some schools main "offense" is stalling and using the edge of the mat. Who posted that on the old board and where did they coach?

[Galagore]

That is the longest post that I actually read through.  I am glad I did.  All we can do is keep our affairs right, and make sure that when all is done we have done our best to coach and compete with integrity.  Someone once told me, if you are going to commit to doing things the right way, then you have to be willing to accept the fact that some times other people won't.  And sometimes they'll still win.

[hammer]

Seems like nothing's changed. The fans are getting worse and some schools main "offense" is stalling and using the edge of the mat. Who posted that on the old board and where did they coach?

 

I think it was posted by someone with the screen name of RochZebs, or something like that, but the coach at Rochester came on here and said it wasn't him that posted it.  I don't think anyone put a name behind the post.  Great post, though.  There's a lot of truth in it.

[Whoosier Daddy]

As promised, here is a post from the old, old messageboard from 2001.  Problems like the ones this weekend go deep into the past.

 

I am quitting.  That is right.  After many years of coaching high school wrestling I have said to myself that this is it.  I never considered myself a quitter at anything, but certain things about this sport have gotten to me over time.  I love the sport dearly and always thought I would coach until I retired.  But now I am going to quit two decades earlier then I had planned.  Here are my reasons in order of annoyance.

1) STALLING- I am sick and tired of coaches who teach their wrestlers to stall.  Most kids do not know how to stall well, unless an experienced coach has taught them how to do it.  An experienced coach can teach any wrestler how to stall consistently and rarely get called or penalized for it during a match, under the current rules.  I am tired of watching year after year as good aggressive wrestlers lose matches at sectional/regional/semistate/state, while average stalling wrestlers win matches and move on to the next level of the tournament.  The stallers will sit back for 5 minutes and 50 seconds conserving energy, then go for a score in the last 10 seconds and win 1-0 or 2-1.  Least you think I am some weak coach, I can proudly say Ive had plenty of state place winners over my career and some very good dual teams.  However, I have had many more kids wrestle for me who earned the right to move on to the next level in the tournament, but were denied simply because some average opponent was taught by his coach to stall out the match.  Officials have become much better about calling stalling during the regular season.  However, I still see a great fear among officials to call it at any level of the state tournament series.  Officials do not want to be the one to determine the outcome and thus, stalling is called quite infrequently.  A few years back, I considered changing my coaching philosophy.  I contemplated if I should take the weaker/average wrestlers on my team and teach them how to stall out a match.  In the end I simply could not do it.  I would not consider it ethically right, nor would it be in the spirit of the sport of wrestling.

2) HILLBILLIES- The utter scum-of-the-earth white trash that has invaded our sport makes me cringe.  I have coached football, baseball, and softball over the years.  I almost never have seen these degenerates at any of those contests.  But you hold a wrestling tournament and these greasy long hair, B.O. infested, 400 pound each mom and dad, ignorant nut-jobs come out of the woodwork.  For starters, their kids regularly have ringworm, muluscom, or an assort of other contagious skin conditions.  Many of them have never been treated by a doctor and continue right on wrestling every week.  Officials are officials.  Most of them are not trained to pick up on these diseases, so you cannot blame them.  The problem is, numerous wrestlers and coaches who are very careful about watching out for these conditions are forced to deal with the results.  Families have to pile up doctors bills and pay for medication as a result of the hillbillies inbred laziness.  Then comes mom and dad hillbilly, along with their box of Krispy Kream doughnuts.  I shall call them Randy Bob and Lauraleen.  Randy Bob sits in the stands screaming his Skoal filled mouth off at the official, the coach, and the opposing fans.  After his son loses, Randy Bob proceeds to slap the hell out of his son (15 years ago) or berate the kid into a psychological nightmare (at present).  Lauraleen threatens the official as he is walking out the door and gets in the face of the young man who beat her son/brother (yes, the inbredding again).  As a coach, I can no longer continue to ask good, well mannered young men to come out for my wrestling team and subject themselves to this kind of torment.  Fifteen year olds should not have to subject themselves to skin disease and the rantings of a 400 pound mother in an Im With Stupid -> t-shirt in order to enjoy a sporting event.

3) THERE IS LITTLE HAPPINESS IN WRESTLING ANYMORE- Almost everyone in my family wrestled or has been involved with wrestling on some level.  My brother, who was a state place winner, has this saying about wrestling: Almost no one leaves wrestling happy.  Sure, if you wrestle for Mater Deis team or are one of the 14 state champions each year, then you might leave happy.  But for the vast majority of people I know, most feel unfulfilled.  My brother, my dad, my sons, all think the sport is just screwed up.  Too many nut-jobs, too many bad coaches, too many dreams broken by some officials bad call.  For years I have disagreed with them.  Told them that the nuts were a minority, the bad coaches out there get replaced, and that I never have met an official who made a bad call on purpose.  Besides, winning was not everything.  The competition and hard work helped these kids out for a lifetime.  My perspective was that the positives out weighted the negatives.  But the time has now come that I agree with my family.  There are too many nuts threatening officials and coaches.  Too many bad coaches for whom winning is the only thing.  Too many people who would brake every rule in the book to win a state title.  I still coach football and I do not see the same thing on the gridiron.  But I see it at almost every wrestling match I go to.

4) ITS NOT THE KIDS WHO HAVE CHANGED, ITS THE ADULTS- People think that todays kids are a great deal more lazy than 20 or 30 years ago.  I disagree.  Its the adults who raise and mentor these kids.  They have caused more and more headaches for me over the years.  Many parents are not only clueless about the sport, but clueless about how to raise their child.  Then I go to a super dual and watch two opposing coaches almost come to blows and think No wonder some of these kids are going over the edge.  I witness certain officials who believe they are always correct, challenging coaches, and vice-versa.  These kids are sent so many terrible messages about something that really does not even matter in the grand scheme of life: a game.  Thats all wrestling is; a simple game.  Yet so many of the adults make it out to be a matter of life and death.  No wonder so many kids want no part of wrestling anymore.

5) THE ELIMINATION OF NIGHT DUAL MATCHES- Wrestling is being killed by the super dual.  In the quest to set records, we have all but eliminated the night dual match.  Everybody wants to break so-and-sos record for individual wins/ coaching wins/ takedowns, etc.  It is a legitimate argument that wrestling in a lot of super duals helps ones team out come state tournament time.  But is it really worthwhile for the sport of wrestling in the end?  Basketball, baseball, tennis.  All these sports play single games during the regular season, yet come tournament time they must compete several times on the same day.  And we are talking about a contest in those sports that sometime take hours, not 6 minutes!  What would be the big deal about requiring a team to utilize 8 of its 16 points for single night dual matches?  That would still give a team 4 super duals (or tournaments), plus 1 tournament.  The majority of fans, parents, and high school kids do not want to sit in some gym from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. every Saturday from Thanksgiving until the last week of February.  It is no wonder that many teams cannot fill every weight class.

6) IHSAA IS A FAILURE- I am so sick of the IHSAA treating wrestling like we just don't matter. Blake Rees in particular seems to think wrestling is the lowest wrung of athletics. The disrespect with which they treat students is sicking. I can't take it anymore. The IHSAA is literally a career killer for many high school students.

 

Most of the people who read this message board are the good individuals in the sport of wrestling.  The coaches, officials, and wrestlers who do care about the right things.  Unfortunately, many of the people who should be reading this probably will never see it.  And even if they did, I doubt most them would care anyway.  So, goodbye to the bad coaches out there who teach kids to stall instead of wrestle, goodbye to the officials who have not read the rule book in ten years, goodbye to Randy Bob and Lauraleens crusty armpits and trailer park language, and most of all goodbye to the utter insanity that high school wrestling has become.

 

 

 

Amen..

[AJ]

I guess the question that needs to be asked is:

 

Why as coaches, and lovers of this great sport, do we ALLOW these things to happen?

 

Where have all of our priorities gone?  What do we really care about anymore?

 

I myself have already posted that I lost thought of the JC Regional wrestlers not being there once I arives and focused on the wrestlers who were there competing.  I have apologized for this but that is not enough.  Our sport is on a slippery slope going somewhere that we do not want it to go.

[Coach Peck]

I coached high school wrestling from 1972 - 1999 in Indiana. The last 10 years that I have been 'out' of wrestling have been the best and most relaxing years of my life. I would encourage as many of you coaches as possible to exit the sport of wrestling asap. I still love the sport and read this messageboard. But the way wrestling is run by the IHSAA and a small group of coaches at several elite programs ruins the enjoyment for the rest of us.IHSAA charges an arm & leg to enter events, then claims poverty at every turn. They keep the SemiState at Merrillville despite the fact the gym is way too small.

It seems like weight and seeding exceptions are made regularly for the elite programs. But if you are a small school with just 1-2 excellent wrestlers, your kids get the shaft.

 

I rarely post on this board. However, I read it daily and I consider myself a historian this board and the old one. It shines the light of truth on the jackals at the IHSAA and their hypocrisy (see, you guys now have succeed in getting me fired up!).  Occasionally, I read great posts and copy them to a disk.  There have been several posts along this line in past years.  I will see if I can dig some of them out.

 

I would have to say if a "small group of elite coaches ran wrestling we would have had wrestlebacks a long time ago.  We would have also had a class Dual Meet Tournament.  The Weight Control Program would be more easily understood.  The Semi-State would be somewhere other than Merrillville.  The list could go on.  The IHSAA does not listen to any Coach unless it suits the purposes of Blake Ress and Bobby Cox.

 

As far as "weight and seeding exceptions" being made "regualrly for elite programs".....I do not think you can cite even five documentable instances of this happening.  If you cannot even cite five then it would seem to me that they are not happening regularly.  I would think regualrly means it is happening almost all of the time.  I do think we have scattered instances of the IHSAA interpreting THEIR rules however they want to and not how they are written.

[beachbum21]

Let's Recap:

 

1.  Sectional Saturday - a returning state runner-up was allegedly allowed to wrestle without having the proper amount of qualifying weigh-ins.  His coach was allegedly disciplined with a slap on the wrist but the integrity of the weight management policy was further compromised by lack of enforcement.

 

2.  Sectional Saturday - a prominent program's coaching staff was accused by meet officials of finding results of another sectional and than injury defaulting their wrestler after leading a match 8-0 presumably to ensure a more favorable draw at the regional tournament.

 

3. Regional Saturday - a wrestler is allowed to compete after not making weight.  A call to the IHSAA and an accusation of scale tampering is enough for the IHSAA to allow the kid to wrestle despite what appears to overwhelming evidence to show that no such tampering took place.

 

4. Regional Saturday ? The Big Kahuna ? The IHSAA decides to deny the opportunity for wrestlers to compete at the Jay County Regional.  They rationalize the decision by calling these wrestlers a ?small minority?.  A few coaches at the regional express their discomfort with the situation but wrestling ensues.

 

The first three examples seem to show a lack of coaching integrity and the last shows a monumental lack of leadership by meet and/or IHSAA officials.

 

Coaches need to get their own house in order before any changes will come at the state level.

 

 

Chad Hollenbaugh

 

Please add this one to your list, the New Castle SS draws being release prior to the completion of all regionals feeding into it.  I truely believe this puts a lot of pressure on all the coaches at the Richmond regional to compete in a fair, honest and ethical level.  Who are you kidding when a coach or kid sees a much better match-up if they finish 3rd instead of 2nd?  Is it the coaches job to give his kid the best chance to advance or does he owe it to the sport to compete every match and finish as high as possible?  This is a tough situation to put the coaches and kids in.  But, this is also an easy one to fix...Simply re-draw this SS after the completion of the Richmond Regional.

[Y2CJ41]

Please add this one to your list, the New Castle SS draws being release prior to the completion of all regionals feeding into it.  I truely believe this puts a lot of pressure on all the coaches at the Richmond regional to compete in a fair, honest and ethical level.  Who are you kidding when a coach or kid sees a much better match-up if they finish 3rd instead of 2nd?  Is it the coaches job to give his kid the best chance to advance or does he owe it to the sport to compete every match and finish as high as possible?  This is a tough situation to put the coaches and kids in.  But, this is also an easy one to fix...Simply re-draw this SS after the completion of the Richmond Regional.

Its one of those things where you wrestle as if you don't know the draw as you would have on Saturday if they wrestled on Saturday.