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Something needs to change


roughneck133

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I agree with much of what I read above.  Roughneck wasn't low blowing anybody.  I feel the same way.  There are a few issues that hold us back...Academies are not the solution, but they would not hurt...

-Recruit kids (within the school) and get them to your club at least once a week

-If you don't host a club, get your kids to a club with a coach you trust

-Find a way to have a better schedule...you can't overhaul it in one year I understand, but start making those little changes.  I understand from personal experience that sometimes your conference by-laws will restrict doing what you want, but you can still always improve your schedule just a little bit each year

-Wrestle in significant offseason events

Clayton Fielden is the obvious example I'll use here...he went from TR last year to Runner up this year.  Clayton's primary home was the Garrett Wrestling Club and the weight room.  Did he take advantage of help elsewhere?  Yes.  He went to a Jeff Jordan week camp, worked with his dad, and as a club we attended a couple other clubs on occasion.  However, the GWC was his primary home and he was CONSISTENT.  So, academy/club makes no difference(as long as there is quality instruction). The evidence has been there for us with the kids who are willing to put in the work. A back up we had last year broke into the lineup and went to SS this year.  That's starting to happen more frequently for us.  I understand SS isn't the goal, but it's headed in the right direction.  Happens at Carroll every year. The kids who make club a priority improve significantly in one years time.  I could say the same thing for the kids from Carroll that did not miss their club workouts, Homestead boys, and Snider.  I'm sure there are other schools who had a couple guys that made club priority.  I also realize there are some schools that only have 0-5 kids who train in the summer.  Consistency is key.   The fact is we need to be willing to work to get our kids to club in the offseason and get the mat time.  The better the area schools get the better WE get as a SS.  

Edited by nkraus
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The factors involved are innumerable; however, a commitment to offseason wrestling and finding the best coaching one can access are prime among them. (Most of the wrestlers under the lights had a plethora of offseason accolades.) It is no coincidence that some of the best programs in the state have some of the most notable academies (and coaches) connected to/with their schools.

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The area is not going to be built up overnight but there is plenty of good being done and some programs on the rise.  Getting kids and coaches to commit to the off season is the key like the other posters have said.  I don't see the issue with re working the  sectional-semi state every few years.  I am not from the ft wayne area but from an outside perspective it looks like ft. wayne snyder which was once a power in the state is back on the rise, starting to see those kids at off season events which is great.

 

Ill propose a short term solution to even things out.... Why not send a team like Brownsburg and a few others that are competitive north to Ft. Wayne?  It would be a slight inconvenience for the sectional and regional but its a closer trip to semi state than their drive to Evansville.  IHSAA already makes Tell City drive 1hr 15 minutes to Jeff for sectionals and regionals and they make Floyd Central and New Albany Drive almost 2 hours to Bloomington for regionals. All of the Marion,Johnson,Hendricks etc have a 2-3 hour drive to semi state as well.  We should not use travel time as a reason this is not possible. This will give the Ft. Wayne area the opportunity to wrestle better competition and then have a reason to schedule more teams in the central part of the state, thus getting better. 

 

The Mooresville regional had 7 state finalist and 19 place winners this past weekend and the area is only getting better schools like CG are loaded at the MS level, Franklin Community returns all 14 starters, Plainfield is on the rise and Brownsburg and Avon are clearly not going anywhere. Why not distribute the wealth of talented wrestlers and re-evaluate and realign every few years.  I am not hating on the Ft. Wayne semi state here but we should not have a regional out scoring a semi state at the state tournament.

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I'd be curious how things would look if there were 4 sports seasons for the IHSAA. Baseball moving to a summer season and wrestling being a spring season sport in that scenario. It seems that middle school teams get a bunch more kids coming out in our programs with this scenario. I know the better athletes in middle school played football, basketball, wrestling, and then baseball. How many do we lose to the roundball/swimming and etc with only having the 3 seasons? I'm not sure they will be podium wrestlers, but some could besides just giving depth. Logan Macklin started out playing basketball last season and came back to wrestling. He ended up 5th at 145 this season. Just a random thought to ponder.

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58 minutes ago, Coach Coop said:

The area is not going to be built up overnight but there is plenty of good being done and some programs on the rise.  Getting kids and coaches to commit to the off season is the key like the other posters have said.  I don't see the issue with re working the  sectional-semi state every few years.  I am not from the ft wayne area but from an outside perspective it looks like ft. wayne snyder which was once a power in the state is back on the rise, starting to see those kids at off season events which is great.

 

Ill propose a short term solution to even things out.... Why not send a team like Brownsburg and a few others that are competitive north to Ft. Wayne?  It would be a slight inconvenience for the sectional and regional but its a closer trip to semi state than their drive to Evansville.  IHSAA already makes Tell City drive 1hr 15 minutes to Jeff for sectionals and regionals and they make Floyd Central and New Albany Drive almost 2 hours to Bloomington for regionals. All of the Marion,Johnson,Hendricks etc have a 2-3 hour drive to semi state as well.  We should not use travel time as a reason this is not possible. This will give the Ft. Wayne area the opportunity to wrestle better competition and then have a reason to schedule more teams in the central part of the state, thus getting better. 

 

The Mooresville regional had 7 state finalist and 19 place winners this past weekend and the area is only getting better schools like CG are loaded at the MS level, Franklin Community returns all 14 starters, Plainfield is on the rise and Brownsburg and Avon are clearly not going anywhere. Why not distribute the wealth of talented wrestlers and re-evaluate and realign every few years.  I am not hating on the Ft. Wayne semi state here but we should not have a regional out scoring a semi state at the state tournament.

Just send Warsaw and Wawasee to Fort Wayne. Still doesn't make sense to me why they go west.  

Also, can the combined Elkhart High School become a power? Any insight into what the Elkhart programs have coming up in the pipeline? Is there fear of athletes leaving to go to other schools? Bristol kids going to Northridge, etc?

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2 hours ago, casualwrestlingfan said:

I'd be curious how things would look if there were 4 sports seasons for the IHSAA. Baseball moving to a summer season and wrestling being a spring season sport in that scenario. It seems that middle school teams get a bunch more kids coming out in our programs with this scenario. I know the better athletes in middle school played football, basketball, wrestling, and then baseball. How many do we lose to the roundball/swimming and etc with only having the 3 seasons? I'm not sure they will be podium wrestlers, but some could besides just giving depth. Logan Macklin started out playing basketball last season and came back to wrestling. He ended up 5th at 145 this season. Just a random thought to ponder.

At our school doing that format wouldn't help gain basketball or swimmers but what it would do is get more football players wrestling due to actually getting a break after football season. Most of our football players don't want to go straight from football to wresting with in some cases only a week of practice before competing. We attempted to move our schedule to where our first meet is after Thanksgiving but adding a two duals makes that near impossible. Plus football/ wrestlers most of the time have to miss out on fall break and Christmas break due to cometition. I know it would be impossible to create a fourth season but I feel it would help with numbers. Baseball and football coaches may not feel the same.

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1 hour ago, Coach Coop said:

The area is not going to be built up overnight but there is plenty of good being done and some programs on the rise.  Getting kids and coaches to commit to the off season is the key like the other posters have said.  I don't see the issue with re working the  sectional-semi state every few years.  I am not from the ft wayne area but from an outside perspective it looks like ft. wayne snyder which was once a power in the state is back on the rise, starting to see those kids at off season events which is great.

 

Ill propose a short term solution to even things out.... Why not send a team like Brownsburg and a few others that are competitive north to Ft. Wayne?  It would be a slight inconvenience for the sectional and regional but its a closer trip to semi state than their drive to Evansville.  IHSAA already makes Tell City drive 1hr 15 minutes to Jeff for sectionals and regionals and they make Floyd Central and New Albany Drive almost 2 hours to Bloomington for regionals. All of the Marion,Johnson,Hendricks etc have a 2-3 hour drive to semi state as well.  We should not use travel time as a reason this is not possible. This will give the Ft. Wayne area the opportunity to wrestle better competition and then have a reason to schedule more teams in the central part of the state, thus getting better. 

 

The Mooresville regional had 7 state finalist and 19 place winners this past weekend and the area is only getting better schools like CG are loaded at the MS level, Franklin Community returns all 14 starters, Plainfield is on the rise and Brownsburg and Avon are clearly not going anywhere. Why not distribute the wealth of talented wrestlers and re-evaluate and realign every few years.  I am not hating on the Ft. Wayne semi state here but we should not have a regional out scoring a semi state at the state tournament.

There was a committee a few years back that the IHSAA formed to look into this changing the sectionals, I think it had around16-20 guys on it.  The IHSAA didn't really listen to the committee at all.  I went there as a Fort Wayne Semi-state representative fully expecting something like this to come from the recommendations, but that was not the direction the  IHSAA seemed to want to go at that time.

What I mean by that is there wasn't a push to make big changes like what your proposing above.  Its hard to explain with out a map, but there would need to be a lot of shuffling to send those Northern Indy schools to Fort Wayne.  I think some proposed Penn head to Fort Wayne, but again the IHSAA didn't listen to the committee very much.

I thought there might be discussion of sending whole sectionals to different semi-states, but that was not on the table at all at that time. It was literally just a team or two, that might move to a neighboring sectional that was recommended.

Another thing on this topic, has anyone done the numbers on placers by semi-state?  We did a quick count on Saturday and I had more placers coming from Fort Wayne than East Chicago (Again I could be wrong on this).  Those two have been the worst in terms of placers most years recently, so I'm not sure if taking a better team from there is really the best option to change Fort Wayne's results.

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