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MT. VERNON meet 12/4


MVwatcher

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Or people could just let people be and not come out and try to embarass someone and just show a little respect.  Anybody who has wreslted in college lately would tear me apart.  I'm not talking about someone's superiority in wrestling. 

 

 

I agree with ya,,,, pretty classless to rip a fan for posting results.

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Times have changed, guy.  Your Don Patton reference shows that you are stuck in the 1970's, which was a timeframe in which most high school coaches never wrestled.  They taught wrestling out of a book!  Look at the team that ended Mater Dei's run.. Portage, coached by a Purdue wrestler Ed Pendoski.  How about the team that ended their run, Lawrence North, coached by an Olympic level coach Jim Humphrey and Purdue wrestler Jared Williams.  Crown Point came to be good thru their kids program coached by.. you guessed it, a division 1 wrestler Bill Hawkins.  How about Warren's resurgence under Minnesota Gopher Danny Williams, or Roncalli's resurgence under Lance Ellis, or Perry's team coached by UIndy wrestler Jim Tonte, or today's Mater Dei team coached by IU's Greg Schaeffer, or Mishawaka's coaching staff with multiple guys with college experience, or Penn's resurgence under Purdue grad Brad Harper, or Munster's resurgence under Northwestern's Robert Maldonado..  This isn't the 1970's anymore where you can put together a good team with a regional qualifier and the gym teacher for a coach

 

 

Rankingsguy-

 

Your position surprises me as I usually enjoy what you post.  I 1000% agree that hiding your lineup is futile, but I gotta respectfully call you on your position about coaches...

 

1.  Don Patton did way more than simply coach out of a "book" as you imply.  He was an amazing leader at Delta.

2.  For every college wrestler who took over and created a solid program we can also cite just as many who have run programs into the ground.

3.  Lawrence North was and is maybe the best program in Indiana for the last 25 years (EMD is the obvious other choice) .  I am taking nothing away from Coach Humphrey  by saying LN was incredible long before he arrived.

4.  There are a many great coaches in the last 20 years with little to zero wrestling experience.  The two I admire most were Coach Goebel (EMD) and Coach Feigart (Beech Grove).

5.  Some of the "resurgence" you mention are programs that never really went went away...

 

The best programs are run by great leaders and motivators who draw kids in and make them believe in tradition and a system...  some of them did well at the college level.  However, to say that college success is a prerequisite to winning is simply not the case.

 

 

 

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Rankingsguy-

 

Your position surprises me as I usually enjoy what you post.  I 1000% agree that hiding your lineup is futile, but I gotta respectfully call you on your position about coaches...

 

1.  Don Patton did way more than simply coach out of a "book" as you imply.  He was an amazing leader at Delta.

2.  For every college wrestler who took over and created a solid program we can also cite just as many who have run programs into the ground.

3.  Lawrence North was and is maybe the best program in Indiana for the last 25 years (EMD is the obvious other choice) .  I am taking nothing away from Coach Humphrey  by saying LN was incredible long before he arrived.

4.  There are a many great coaches in the last 20 years with little to zero wrestling experience.  The two I admire most were Coach Goebel (EMD) and Coach Feigart (Beech Grove).

5.  Some of the "resurgence" you mention are programs that never really went went away...

 

The best programs are run by great leaders and motivators who draw kids in and make them believe in tradition and a system...  some of them did well at the college level.  However, to say that college success is a prerequisite to winning is simply not the case.

 

 

Although I'm definitely in the information publicizing camp, on this particular point of not needing college wrestling experience, I have to agree--simply because there are too many examples of non-college experienced guys who have had success.  Just as there are non-politicians who become successful in politics, no-business-school people who become billionaires, and no-pro-experience guys who become professional sports head coaches; there are people in every field who find success at leadership despite their seeming lack of training or hands on experience.  There are, unfortunately, highly successful ex-wrestlers that are doing their schools no favors--and on the other hand so-so ex-wrestlers who know how to lead, put good people around them, and work hard at learning the trade that have built quality programs. 

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I disagree with Coach Stevens, for the most part, on posting line-ups.  However, he is not a joke.  He is a great influence on all the wrestlers that come through Mt. Vernon.  His involvement with the Jr. High program directly results in getting kids to love the sport of wrestling and want to continue wrestling in high school.  He runs great practices and gets positive results.  I find RG's comments to be pretty childish, especially when he comes back with the juvenile "I've got a job to do" garbage.  That is an excuse for bad behavior.  Then RG takes a swipe at Mr. Heckman, who is a great ambassador for wrestling.  The argument took on an elitist tone.  That might work for tennis or soccer, but wrestling is more of a blue collar sport.  Elitism won't fly.

 

You might want to get a little perspective.  Rankings are not a job, but a hobby.  Relax.  Everyone appreciates your effort, but don't ruin it by typing prior to thinking.  That doesn't help the sport either.  You could have simply disagreed.

 

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What publicity is gained for the sport of wrestling by posting your LINE UP the day before a meet?  Do you think some parent is going to be surfing the internet and see a teams line up and decide to get their kid involved in the sport?  Coach Stevens' post said nothing about posting results of matches, he was simply concerned with other coaches knowing what weight class kids were at.  Maybe someone dropped a weight class since their last meet, or didn't make weight and had to go up.  Prior knowledge of this can help the opposing team.  I don't know of football or basketball coaches sending their playbooks to opposing coaches.  A wrestling coaches line up is his playbook. 

Coach Stevens holds a memorial softball tournament every year to honor his older brother who was serving in the Air Force and was killed in an automobile accident.  All proceeds go to the wrestling program to help out with whatever it is they may need.  He works a full time job and goes straight from work to the wrestling room to practice with the team.  So to call him a joke is actually childish coming from someone who is younger than him and knows nothing about him really.  And then to call him out about a match that happened more than 5 years ago, seriously?  You would think that someone who represents a website would have a little more professionalism than that.  I guess kids will be kids. 

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I'm all about posting line ups I know for a fact in the Region the Times and post trib writers read indianamat posts. I like to think that the post with Multilpe pages have more of a chance to be featured in the paper. Crown point Merrillville over the years and Munster/Portage(mcMurray vs Estrada) have been direct results of the hype built up by these kind of sites. If you think every highschool kid doesnt want a article or his photo in the paper you are crazy. As long as we are not promoting our own teams we can never move foward we should all be selling our sport anyway we can. Look at Gary Lew wallace posting every result and the LAst season their 215 a full page article it probably made that kids life to this point. If you are good people know you should be happy with your teams success.

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Look post results, post lineups, try to get kids to come watch matches, whatever.

 

But If you wrestle to get publicity then you should start shooting threes everyday and play basketball. 

Or we can just keep it right here on a website. When your sport is seen then it will grow. When you see a kid like Jason Tsirtsis getting articles in ESPN more kids are going to come out if you think that makes me less of a wrestling fan then thats fine. I wish we had basketball has in this .

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Look post results, post lineups, try to get kids to come watch matches, whatever.

 

But If you wrestle to get publicity then you should start shooting threes everyday and play basketball. 

 

I dont think anyone wrestles to get publicity, however we ought to be doing everything we can  to get  the kids that are busting their butts the publicity that they desreve.

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Some guys that wrestled in college were 9-18 for their careers and quit after two years.  Guys like this tend to have something to prove because they didn't do as well as they would have liked.  Guys like this often tend to cut down on other people.  A guy like this tends to be a blowhard and indulge in shots at other people to try to prop up their damaged egos, especially when guys like this had a lot of success in high school.

  usually guys that go to such prestigious schools go there for the education not the sports boss. To even be able to step in that room is an honor to most let alone wrestle varsity 27 times as a freshmen/sophomore, so unless your a hawkeye or a multiple time all American at that level you can't really dog a guy.                         
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As I sift through the pages and pages of replies on this thread, as well as through the replies to Y2's rant thread, there are 3 arguments which keep showing up that, in my opinion, are serious contributing factors to why Indiana as a wrestling state is being held back from becoming a national power wrestling state.  These 3 arguments as I understand them and my replies to each are listed below...

 

1) It is okay for coaches to hide their results and their lineups from major media sources because this may give them a competitive advantage in a dual meet.  (One person even went so far as to make the argument that a wrestling coach's lineup is analagous to a football coach's playbook.)

 

My Reply:  How on Earth can a wrestling coach's lineup be analagous to a football coach's playbook?!  Wouldn't the analogy to a football coach's playbook be the fundamental wrestling techniques which the coach preaches to his athletes and the solid positioning that he expects to see out of each and every one of his athletes every time they step on the mat?  What ever happened to the definition of a successful coach being one that helps his wrestler improve each and every single day?  Good coaches preach solid technique and fundamentals and do not care who knows their lineup because as long as their kid improves, that's all that matters.  In my opinion, this is the reason why coaches like David Maldonado and Darrick Snyder are so wildly successful.  Both of them have the ability to take horrible wrestlers and bring them up to a level where they are good enough to compete for state medals in Indiana.  I cite examples such as Keon Jones of Merrillville, who didn't know what wrestling was when he was a freshman, and by the time he was a senior, he was a takedown away from the state championship match.  Or how about Danny Abu-Shehab at Mishawaka?  The kid was horrible at wrestling, and yet he qualified for state and one could see the improvements he made from week to week, and even though he had nearly twenty losses, his marginal improvements week to week throughout the season added up in the end to a state qualification.  Think to your own wrestling team... every coach has horrible wrestlers, yet only a few coaches in the state are turning these kids into Keon Jones' and Danny Abu-Shehab's and that is one reason why Indiana wrestling is stagnant.  Instead of worrying about who knows your lineup or who sees your results, why don't you spend the time preaching solid, solid fundamentals to each and every single kid in your wrestling room.  All too often when I go into high school wrestling rooms, I see coaches showing move after move after move, but nearly every single kid in their room does not have perfect fundamentals.  Keon Jones, I can guarantee you, did not almost make the state championship match because he knew more moves than everyone else.  He knew a double leg, he was taught solid defense, and he could get away from almost everybody.  This is why he won.  Not because his coach kept him hidden and he snuck up on people.

 

2) Being a college wrestler only marginally effects how good of a coach a person can be. (One person even argued that for every college wrestler I named that helped a program become better, he can name one that ran one into the ground.)

 

My Reply:  First and foremost, I'd love to hear you name off these former college wrestler coaches that have ran programs into the ground.. Please, name them.  Come on people? Really?  College wrestlers don't make better coaches than the gym teacher who wrestled in high school and was a regional qualifier?  If that's the case, then the argument for class wrestling is thrown out the door.  As I understand it as I've talked to Y2 about this many times is that the idea of class wrestling is that more classes means more recognition, state placements, etc.  More recognition means more opportunities for kids to wrestle in college.  More kids wrestling in college means better coaching within the state when they come back.  Y2 points out often that the reason that Ohio is as good as they are is because they have former college wrestlers running kids clubs there!  The longer our high school coaches are the gym teacher/regional qualifier, the longer our state will lag behind states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, etc.

 

3) My argument that college wrestlers make better coaches and that we need to weed out the gym teacher/regional qualifier coaches is an "elitist" mindset.  (One person even argued that my mindset may work in tennis and golf, but not in wrestling because wrestling is different.)

 

My Reply:  Given the choice between school A who is coached by a regional qualifier and school B who is coached by an NCAA All-American like David Maldonado, who do I want my kid to wrestle for?  Sure, the coach at school A may be a great guy, he may run a charity event every weekend of the year, but that does not make him a better wrestling coach.  If a kid has the goal to become a state champ, and his coach was a regional qualifier, how is that coach going to put him on a path to success when he doesn't know what it takes to get there himself?  I know that when I have a kid, my kid will wrestle for a coach who's been there and done that and not one who my kid could have taught wrestling to when he was 10 years old.  And if you think there aren't coaches like that in this state, then you are surely mistaken.  Sure, call my argument elitist, but when people around the country are posed with the question 'what is Indiana wrestling?', what do you think comes to mind?  My guess is that Andrew Howe's NCAA title comes to mind.  My guess is that Ethan Raley's title at Super 32 comes to mind.  My guess is that the kid who wrestles 3 months a year because his friends are on the team does not come to mind.  Sure, call me an 'elitist', but if we want Indiana to rise up to a level of national prominence, we need better coaches in this state, and the place we're going to find those coaches is in former college wrestlers, and not former regional qualifiers.

 

My two cents..

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Naw you were trying to dog him by in that post. I'm a pretty good judge of sarcasm and that post had a lot in it. I think and I'm sure you would agree that any win or multiple wins at that level is an accomplishment.

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Rankings Guy-

 

I agree with you that having college success is an assett in being a coach.  There are other skills besides teaching tech that are part of coaching.  You have to run a program.  The ideal in wrestling is to have a great technition who can run a program. 

 

In wrestling unlike the major sports, it does seem that the best college coaches are the best wrestlers. . . Gable, Sanderson, Smith, etc.

 

In other sports, like football, basketball, and baseball, it seems as though being one of the elite players is more of a detriment than an asset.  There are very few of the very greats in these sports who have had much success in coaching.

 

Wrestling seems to be different here.

 

But what is objectionable about what you have said is that there are very few college coaches available at the hs level.  For one thing, I don't know the stats, but I would say that the work ethic necessary to be a collegiate wrestler probably correlates to an earning power that is far superior to the average salary for a teacher/coach.  This eliminates most of  your college guys right there.  HS wrestling coaching is not a very lucrative career choice.

 

Are you seeing alot of college guys getting turned down for coaching postions?  There are always coaching postions available down here in Southern Indiana.  I don't know, but I'm guessing that there have been very few collegiate wrestlers to apply for these positions.  Come on down.  I'd personally love to have more and diverse knowledge down here.

 

Guys who love wrestling and are willing to get feeder programs together are generally going to be good coaches regardless of their technique level. 

 

Now just saying that you think college wrestlers are good for the sport and demeaning all the rest of the coaches are two different things.

 

Anyway kid.  You do a good job of the rankings. 

 

In order to wrestle in college you have to have an extreme level of dedication and love for the sport.  Almost all of my former teammates from college are helping out in some form or fashion now.  One of the best wrestlers I know who was a 2x NAIA champ and one match from AA in DI is now a biddy coach and so is another former teammate.  I would venture to say 95% of my former teammates are coaching or reffing in some form or fashion now.  

 

What Indiana has a problem with is getting kids to wrestle at the next level.  Too many think that it is DI or bust and go walk on or get their parking sticker paid for and then wrestle for a year then drop off the face of the earth.

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Bottom line for me is that RG insulted Coach Stevens and, indirectly, others. I have yet to see a retraction of the insult(s). The insult, for all practical purposes, was because he disagrees over the posting of line-ups. Doesn't seem to be worthy of name calling.

 

Also, RG, what drives your elitist tone is not your argument but the fact you must disparage others and their ideas to make your argument. I don't really have a big problem with your theory. Your attitude is not helpful.

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U of I is the only D2 school in the state, Manchester, Wabash, and Trine are the only DIII schools in the state that offer wrestling, and as of right now, I believe that only Calumet is the only NAIA school in the state, with Indiana Tech to join them next year. It would be great if there was a way for us to be able to get ISU, BSU, ND, EU, SIU, IUPUI, IPFW to get wrestling programs, not to mention all the other small private schools in the state,  but I dont see that as a real possibility.  At least not until we can figure out a way to make wrestling a revenue sport, and find an equivilant scholorship sport for the women to compete with football so that title IX can be met.

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Its hard for the wrestling community to get colleges to add the programs when coaches don't send in results and chastise people for posting their prospective lineups online.  Don't blame Title IX when we do it to ourselves. 

 

I was not blaming title IX, merely pointing out that we need to do a better job of working in its perameters. As well as fixing the other problems we have within our sport.

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