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It’s Time


blueandgold

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2 hours ago, graham said:

Here is an argument on why one class is better for the kids:

 

A state championship in a state with one class will carry more weight with college coaches. 
 

Also, I am raising my kids to think big.  Not just in terms of wrestling, but in life. But in that theme, as far as wrestling goes, competing in a single class state tournament is a much bigger stage, and encourages them to shoot higher than a multi-class tourney. 

I just don't buy this anymore.  If you want to wrestle D3 in college, I don't think they care that much if you are a state champ.  Even if you are, there isn't money for it.  If you want a scholarship, I don't think you are getting one without doing well at tournaments like at least a Central Regional or one of the many national level tournaments that now exist.  You should teach them to shoot higher than a single class state tournament also in that case.

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1 hour ago, doctorWrestling said:

I just don't buy this anymore.  If you want to wrestle D3 in college, I don't think they care that much if you are a state champ.  Even if you are, there isn't money for it.  If you want a scholarship, I don't think you are getting one without doing well at tournaments like at least a Central Regional or one of the many national level tournaments that now exist.  You should teach them to shoot higher than a single class state tournament also in that case.


 

My son wrestles in more national level events than he does local, but thank you for the advice. 

 

Do Indiana state champs not typically receive scholarships of some kind?

Edited by graham
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13 hours ago, blueandgold said:


Tell that to David Taylor (4x OH Div. II State Champion), Gable Steveson (4x MN AAA State Champion), or Spencer Lee (3x PA AAA State Champion). I wonder if their classed championships make them any less of a state champion. In Illinois, state champion vs. state champion matches make for great entertainment. If I can recall, the Dvorak Invite back in 2013 featured an undefeated then-3X, eventual 4x Illinois 1A state champion in Josh Alber of Dakota against an eventual 4x Illinois 3A state champion in Jered Cortez, and Alber beat him. That same 1A Dakota team also was nationally ranked at the same time OPRF and Montini were, AND they won Disney that year when they WHOOPED a nationally ranked 3x defending national champion Perry Meridian, a team from a single class state, 55-4, but they were 1A so it doesn’t matter, right?


You killed your own point with this one.  Using 3 of the best wrestlers of this generation is misleading.  but take David Taylor for example.  Do you not think a freshman or sophomore David Taylor would not have liked a shot at whoever won the Div. I Champ?  And other DII or DIII Champs wouldn't like a chance against the DI Champ? You then mention great Champs at smaller schools.  No one says a DI or DIII Champ isn't great, it's that they are not the ONLY Champ.  Big or small school champ may be better, but that's not always clear.  No one says any don't matter, just that they are joined by others with the same title of State Champion.

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Class wrestling doesn’t solve anything.  As a parent of a young very successful youth wrestler who travels the country seeking the best matches, class wrestling waters down the accomplishment.  Yes IN can compete with ANY state champ for champ, but we CANNOT compete with depth.  Our 4th/5th place in a non class state cannot even compete with an IL/OH/PA etc state champ in class.  We will be rewarding a participation champ medal.  I’m my opinion, eliminate the travel restrictions AND allow 7/8th grade to compete in our state tournament like MN etc...It will improve the quality in 106/113, allow phenoms like Mendez etc to complete early, and help IN as a whole.  

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If you want to grow the sport, I do believe having more than 1 class would be the way to go.  I really have no good argument against moving towards multi-class in order to grow.

 

However, for strictly my greedy viewing purposes, I love the one class for individual wrestlers.  (As a team, I have no issues with classed wrestling.)  Knowing who the best individual in the state is something that I do appreciate watching every year.  I understand that most of the champs would come out of the larger class, but rooting for that underdog under the lights is a feeling that is unexplainable.

Edited by pjayroza
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19 minutes ago, #TheBrand said:

Class wrestling doesn’t solve anything.  As a parent of a young very successful youth wrestler who travels the country seeking the best matches, class wrestling waters down the accomplishment.  Yes IN can compete with ANY state champ for champ, but we CANNOT compete with depth.  Our 4th/5th place in a non class state cannot even compete with an IL/OH/PA etc state champ in class.  We will be rewarding a participation champ medal.  I’m my opinion, eliminate the travel restrictions AND allow 7/8th grade to compete in our state tournament like MN etc...It will improve the quality in 106/113, allow phenoms like Mendez etc to complete early, and help IN as a whole.  

When things like this are said it is being looked at as is the current status. We don't know what our depth would look like if it was classed. This is what the argument is for class. Add numbers create depth.

 

I love our current IHSAA state tournament. I'm not sure it would be as cool to watch with more than one class. I'm just not sure it's best for Indiana wrestling to stay single class. My son is an 8th grader and does not like the idea of classing for the same reason as most single class proponents.

Edited by bwoodjc89
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2 hours ago, bwoodjc89 said:

RE: Georgia. While 7 classes seems really high and really watery. Check out the team scores for Fargo 2019, this is from Flo. This is combined Cadets and Juniors. Georgia is on the rise nationally. Why? I'm not sure it's because it has 7 classes but it certainly isn't hurting them.

 

Also funny that Minnesota is 2nd here as they have 7th graders winning state.

 

Link is where I pulled from: https://www.flowrestling.org/results/6529893-2019-usmc-cadet-and-junior-national-championships/26737

 

Team Scores (Champs, All-Americans)

  1. Pennsylvania: 61 (2, 12)
  2. Minnesota: 51 (2, 12)
  3. Ohio: 50 (1, 10)
  4. Georgia: 42 (0, 9)
  5. Illinois: 40 (2, 9)

Fargo has more to do with great freestyle and greco youth level

coaching and their youth organization embracing FS GR more than 6 weeks a year than class wrestling.  

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2 minutes ago, #TheBrand said:

Fargo has more to do with great freestyle and greco youth level

coaching and their youth organization embracing FS GR more than 6 weeks a year than class wrestling.  

Can you show us some examples of what these top 5 states do to support this or is the speculation?

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I will speak from 1st hand knowledge...my son travels to CO, gets 10 matches in 1 day for FS GR at a LOCAL. Have your state Folk tournament end in Feb.  Eliminate qualifiers.  You do realize our own ISWA wouldn’t allow J Mendez to wrestle in schoolboy duals 1 year because of qualifiers.  Smh....schoolboy duals shouldn’t be based off weight at state. Bring in 4 kids per weight class at camp BEFORE camp, goto camp, wrestle off 4 kids at end of camp for top 2 for team.  OK now does this.  PA allows kids to move up classes based off their camp.  Again I know 1st hand knowledge.  In IN, goto a local FS GR, get maybe 2 matches if you are lucky each class.   We should eliminate weight classes until state.  Block weight kids in 5 wrestler groups. Round robin.  Get 8 potential matches.  I do not want this to be a thread about ISWA, but we are WAY behind on our Olympic style wrestling due to our governing bodies.  Class wrestling has ZERO to do with Fargo.

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1 hour ago, SWINfan said:


You killed your own point with this one.  Using 3 of the best wrestlers of this generation is misleading.  but take David Taylor for example.  Do you not think a freshman or sophomore David Taylor would not have liked a shot at whoever won the Div. I Champ?  And other DII or DIII Champs wouldn't like a chance against the DI Champ? You then mention great Champs at smaller schools.  No one says a DI or DIII Champ isn't great, it's that they are not the ONLY Champ.  Big or small school champ may be better, but that's not always clear.  No one says any don't matter, just that they are joined by others with the same title of State Champion.


I didn’t kill my own point though. That’s what ISWA and USAW tournaments are for. Participation needs to go up there as well. You want a shot at the other class champ? Enter the same weight at Folkstyle State. People talk as if winning in a single class state means you’re automatically a super recruit. We NEED the depth. That’s what other states have that we don’t. That’s why going to classed wrestling can be a great thing because the states that we cannot compete with (IA, IL, OH, PA) have it and they have the depth to be good nationally. Just give these kids the incentive to want to wrestle and invest in wrestling. Isn’t there a saying that “the rising tide raises all ships”? How in any way would classed wrestling hurt? It wouldn’t. It’s just that most of you in this state are fearful of change and unwilling to open your mind, and everyone seems to believe a small school kid being successful would hurt a large school kid’s success when it wouldn’t.

 

And I’m saying this as a graduate of a large school who won IHSWCA and IHSAA state and I qualified for state myself. Those smaller schools wouldn’t have disrupted my or my team’s successes in ANY way. No outcome would’ve been different because everyone my team or I lost to was from a larger school.

Edited by blueandgold
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9 minutes ago, blueandgold said:


I didn’t kill my own point though. That’s what ISWA and USAW tournaments are for. Participation needs to go up there as well. You want a shot at the other class champ? Enter the same weight at Folkstyle State. People talk as if winning in a single class state means you’re automatically a super recruit. We NEED the depth. That’s what other states have that we don’t. That’s why going to classed wrestling can be a great thing because the states that we cannot compete with (IA, IL, OH, PA) have it and they have the depth to be good nationally. Just give these kids the incentive to want to wrestle and invest in wrestling. Isn’t there a saying that “the rising tide raises all ships”? How in any way would classed wrestling hurt? It wouldn’t. It’s just that most of you in this state are fearful of change and unwilling to open your mind, and everyone seems to believe a small school kid being successful would hurt a large school kid’s success when it wouldn’t.

We are too busy holding our state in school cafeterias and wrestling at 10 PM at night rather than making our youth tournaments  mean something for a qualifier.  Going to an ISWA event should earn points for seeding for 4 Regional qualifiers to qualify for ISWA state.  Then you will see numbers increase.  Making a qualifier for youth and MS state would only increase numbers pre HS.    

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Honestly, there’s a crap ton of 1A and some 2A schools that don’t even have a wrestling program, I live near Terre Haute and I can think of 6-10 schools near me with 500 kids and less that don’t have wrestling programs. A lot of you guys are talking about doing the classes, then having another tournament after to decide the true championship, that’s pointless you leave it in one class. Just cause little Johnny isn’t better then Jordan doesn’t mean there should be more divisions. 
I don’t think a lot of colleges would even look at Many 1A schools, maybe a little 2A but majority 3A.

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6 hours ago, doctorWrestling said:

The Indiana State Finals are incredible and would hate to see that change but I also understand there are benefits for the smaller schools and the sport should be about the kids and not the fans.  

It should be about both (although more the kids than the adults).  When talking about class wrestling you have to really consider the average kid vs the elite kid (and their families).  If the experience is not enjoyable for the parents of a wrestler then there is less likelihood that the kid will continue to do the necessary things to improve and continue with the sport (notice I said "less likelihood" as there are exceptions to every rule).

 

As for class wrestling as a whole, I think any argument (for or against) needs to have good comparative (and if possible) historical data. 

 

Supporters for class wrestling say "it will grow the sport" - has the IHSWCA team duals helped grow 1A and 2A?  If so support your claim with real numbers.

 

Supporters for single class wrestling say "it will water down the sport" - what has been the response of other states going from single to class?  I am sure at one time all states were single class.  Look at the most similar state (at that point in time) to our state (current point in time) and look at the trends.

 

Using singular points of data to prove a point rarely are effective (EMD or Fargo results or David Taylor).  These are all outliers and wouldn't show a norm that could be applied to all.  Using EMD you are basically says that all 1A schools are the same as EMD.  That's just not true.

 

Using National tournaments to suggest class wrestling doesn't prove much because you are talking about the top 1-3% of each state.  Too many other factors and class wrestling isn't likely to change those results.

 

BTW... I am for class wrestling as long as we can keep our single class state tournament... is that possible??  Have cake, eat cake.

 

 

 

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Our state tournament is the best event the IHSAA offers. Let's keep it the same.

 

Our IHSAA team state tournament was not great in the eyes of the IHSAA. We lost it and now changed it. If we change anything in terms of class wrestling, why don't we do it on the team side? 

 

What if the IHSAA doesn't like the product of the wrestling state finals in a classed scenario? What would their next course of action be? 

Edited by Jcjcjc
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REGARDLESS of school size, if a wrestler wants to compete at a very high level and go on to college wrestling, then they will likely need to do offseason training to hone their skillset.  In a small school environment, you will be killing the other sports by hoping a good athlete will invest this extra time in a SINGLE sport.. wrestling.

 

If your goal is to raise the skill level of the AVERAGE wrestler in the state, then money would be better spent on low-cost, high-quality, high-availability training facilities where small school students interested in wrestling can find better opponents to practice with, and also get consistent quality coaching

 

I also would contend that the very quantity of "potential wrestlers" at small schools is not very high.  Although having a classed tournament would increase the number of state place winners, I do not believe that it would

  • increase ability
  • increase participation significantly - note that some VERY large schools have extremely low participation numbers
  • greatly change the number of athletes from Indiana that college wrestling teams are interested in. In fact, to the contrary, it could possibly backfire and decrease visibility to some high-level small school wrestlers
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Said this a million times, but we need the IHSAA and IHSWCA to join forces even more than right now. Like posted above, they need to get rid of the schedule limits so that you can have single class individual & classed individual tournaments and team dual tournaments. 4 tournaments to get more wrestling in and hone the craft of our best teams and individuals. Not sure if we start earlier or same time as other states, but I know Ohio ends a month later. Why not have the classed individual tournaments and classed team dual tournaments in early to mid January and treat them like Al Smith's, Mater Dei event, and other big individual & dual tournaments? Then have the single class dual tournament in February and single class individual tournament in March? 

Edited by casualwrestlingfan
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9 hours ago, littlevito said:

Ever since open enrollment, smaller schools have had a huge decline. Even top notch programs have felt the hit. Why choose to go to Bellmont in Decatur, IN where there isn't a whole lot of attraction like attending a school in Indianapolis. You can take all of Adams County, Wells County, and Jay County kids and lump them into one program and still wouldn't be able to have the draw and pool of kids like the biggest schools of the state. Our school keeps getting smaller and smaller every year, and the crop of the litter is bare. Our middle school is feeling it even worse. For a sport like basketball, where you only need 5 guys, the middle school doesn't even have an 8th grade basketball team this season. Even if we do get new students, we aren't getting top notch athletes at smaller schools. We are dealing with low income section 8 families who don't care to have there kids be in sports. It has become very ignorant of the fans of our sport to believe that we as a state can continue to grow our sport when we are only benefiting the biggest schools in the state.

 

 

I don't remember where I read it, but I saw Bellmont (a 2A school) has athletic participation numbers on par with a 1A school.  If true, that speaks volumes for the quality of the wrestling program. 

 

It's also a scary to see what the future holds for you guys.  I was surprised our Middle School took it hard to BMS last year, and not only in wrestling (but especially wrestling).  Our youth and High School programs are thriving in Monroe and often times beat the Decatur teams (we won't even talk about football).  Many Decatur kids play in our baseball league and some of our wrestlers live in Decatur as well.  I'm not sure if it's Section 8, parents, the kids, the river water?  Something isn't right up there.

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  • If you want to grow the sport then fix the youth events and change how that is ran.  If a kid truly loves to wrestle then they will wrestle.  A chance to win a state title is a pretty lame way to grow the sport.  We need to raise men that can handle failure.  It's part of what makes wrestling the greatest sport there is, there aren't many excuses to use, it is as fair as a sport gets.  Let's not try to make it so more kids win.  I think changing the youth events would help more than changing the IHSAA tournament.
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14 hours ago, AdamsCoBuschhh said:

 

 

I don't remember where I read it, but I saw Bellmont (a 2A school) has athletic participation numbers on par with a 1A school.  If true, that speaks volumes for the quality of the wrestling program. 

 

It's also a scary to see what the future holds for you guys.  I was surprised our Middle School took it hard to BMS last year, and not only in wrestling (but especially wrestling).  Our youth and High School programs are thriving in Monroe and often times beat the Decatur teams (we won't even talk about football).  Many Decatur kids play in our baseball league and some of our wrestlers live in Decatur as well.  I'm not sure if it's Section 8, parents, the kids, the river water?  Something isn't right up there.

 

Being involved with the youth football for AC & Bellmont, we were surprised that Bellmont started to have better numbers and actually competed with the AC teams. In fact one of their teams won the regular season and the other team surprised and finished runner-up in the tournament. Maybe the 2A title will help the situation for them. The number of split families and one parent households for Bellmont is much more and I think that is part of it. The culture in some sports isn't there with the parents. Adams, Wells, and Jay to extent have a hard time keeping our college grads around. Most move towards Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, and etc if not completely out of state.

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1 hour ago, Raven27 said:
  • If you want to grow the sport then fix the youth events and change how that is ran.  If a kid truly loves to wrestle then they will wrestle.  A chance to win a state title is a pretty lame way to grow the sport.  We need to raise men that can handle failure.  It's part of what makes wrestling the greatest sport there is, there aren't many excuses to use, it is as fair as a sport gets.  Let's not try to make it so more kids win.  I think changing the youth events would help more than changing the IHSAA tournament.

First, Totally agree on fixing youth events, that's a totally different topic, but they are awful to run, be a part of, etc; and changing those would CERTAINLY help numbers WAY more than changing the tourney.

 

However, I don't think the "chance to win a title" is what gets or keeps more kids out. It's seeing kids in programs that have had very little or limited success on the state level, have more consistent success. It's been a few years since Alexandria has had a state qualifier/placer. Don't you think your room could benefit and you'd be able to get 5-10 of those athletes that are "lifting for football" or "getting cuts in for baseball" if they knew they were going to have success year in and year out, not just one kid qualifying/placing every 5-10 years, but 2-3 (or more, you guys are getting good) placing/qualfying every year. Winning breeds winning.

 

Failure is important. I think every kid who wrestles will fail. I don't think adding in an extra champ and placers at each weight will take that away. The struggle to achieve that will still exist. 

 

Ultimately, Alexandria will be successful because you have a Head Coach who is building the program the right way and you have assistants that are great to keep each other from getting worn down. But running a wrestling program the way it needs to be done to have sustainable success takes LOTS of qualified hard working individuals and smaller communities lack the numbers and availability to find people with not only the time and work ethic, but also the expertise to help build a wrestling program. Oak Hill built one, Elwood used to have one. I think Alexandria is well on their way, but it sure would speed up the process if you already had kids placing this year, wouldn't it?

 

I know as wrestlers we like a challenge and want kids to embrace it as well. I just think that classing would help more communities buy into wrestling and build what you are starting to do there with less man power (which many lack). 

 

 

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I think there's confusion. Having class wrestling isn't about just having more champions placers and other things. It's to create more successful programs. If a teams goes from 0-1 state qualifier every 5-10 years to 1-3 every year more kids will buy in especially at the youth and middle school level. My question is how many people advocating for single class have actually tried to build a program? I don't mean being apart of a program that has always has some success I mean a program that goes years with out state qualifiers or even newer programs? Sometimes it takes more than hard work to be successful.

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3 hours ago, Coach Brobst said:

First, Totally agree on fixing youth events, that's a totally different topic, but they are awful to run, be a part of, etc; and changing those would CERTAINLY help numbers WAY more than changing the tourney.

 

However, I don't think the "chance to win a title" is what gets or keeps more kids out. It's seeing kids in programs that have had very little or limited success on the state level, have more consistent success. It's been a few years since Alexandria has had a state qualifier/placer. Don't you think your room could benefit and you'd be able to get 5-10 of those athletes that are "lifting for football" or "getting cuts in for baseball" if they knew they were going to have success year in and year out, not just one kid qualifying/placing every 5-10 years, but 2-3 (or more, you guys are getting good) placing/qualfying every year. Winning breeds winning.

 

Failure is important. I think every kid who wrestles will fail. I don't think adding in an extra champ and placers at each weight will take that away. The struggle to achieve that will still exist. 

 

Ultimately, Alexandria will be successful because you have a Head Coach who is building the program the right way and you have assistants that are great to keep each other from getting worn down. But running a wrestling program the way it needs to be done to have sustainable success takes LOTS of qualified hard working individuals and smaller communities lack the numbers and availability to find people with not only the time and work ethic, but also the expertise to help build a wrestling program. Oak Hill built one, Elwood used to have one. I think Alexandria is well on their way, but it sure would speed up the process if you already had kids placing this year, wouldn't it?

 

I know as wrestlers we like a challenge and want kids to embrace it as well. I just think that classing would help more communities buy into wrestling and build what you are starting to do there with less man power (which many lack). 

 

 

You might be right.  I just think if you change it and it doesn't do what you hope it will do its for sure not worth it.  The other question of has anyone tried to build a program the answer is yes.  I'm trying.  It's not easy but things worth having never are. 

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4 hours ago, Coach Brobst said:

Don't you think your room could benefit and you'd be able to get 5-10 of those athletes that are "lifting for football" or "getting cuts in for baseball" if they knew they were going to have success year in and year out

 

Yes coach, but if I'm not mistaken Alexandria's baseball team made it to state this year. I don't know how their football team did. The very contradiction of a small school is that if you want to have good players, then in today's day and age unless they are some freak athlete they have to put in work beyond "in-season".  So by asking these kids to come out for wrestling, you may just bring the baseball or football squad down to "average".

 

In my opinion, the benefit of a small school is that a student athlete has the opportunity to play and be a starter at multiple sports for their school.  The student can choose to specialize or do dual training of some sort to excel in a sport - but then I believe those individuals are probably already doing just that.

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I like lifting the travel restrictions but cannot stand class sports, for any individual sport.

 

You do this and you never have Mendez v Watts last year.

 

You don’t have 10 of the state championship matches from last year.

 

And you never have Chad Red v Nick Lee, probably the best indiana high school state match of all time.

 

You won’t have 10,000+ fans at bankers life cheering on the 2 best kids in the state under the lights.

 

It’s very simple, the more state champions you have the less it means. You win a state championship and you are one of the best 14.  You win a state championship in a class system and you are one of the best 42.  A state title simply will not mean as much.

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7 hours ago, Raven27 said:

You might be right.  I just think if you change it and it doesn't do what you hope it will do its for sure not worth it.  The other question of has anyone tried to build a program the answer is yes.  I'm trying.  It's not easy but things worth having never are. 

Sorry. Don’t want you to get what I’m saying twisted, I think Alexandria is doing an OUTSTANDING job of doing things the right way! Every time I go to a youth event and see 30-45 little Tigers out there and all the parents getting into it, I get excited for what that town has coming up! My entire family minus myself are Tigers, and you are absolutely doing fantastic things! 
 

just pointing out how you (and others in your boat) could have more immediate success at the HS level of it were classed and the work would be lessened. Burn out in our profession is very real. And many small towns don’t have another guy to take up the torch when one leaves due to it.
Keep up the great work! No doubt we’ll start seeing maroon and gold Tigers at Bankers life soon!

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