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Will FW SS have a champ?


Y21AB

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1 hour ago, Coach Nieman said:

No middle school wrestling in Fort Wayne schools.

 

How effective and used are the academies up there? I know there are some up there, but down here in Indy I don't hear much about them (Outside of Outlaws at Huntington). Are there any comparable to CIA, Red Cobra, Contenders, Region, or Maurer Coughlin?

 

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1 hour ago, Coach Nieman said:

No middle school wrestling in Fort Wayne schools.

That's half true and half false...

 

Bishop Dwenger has one of their feeder middle schools with a team. They seem to have decent numbers and a lot of familiar last names.

 

Snider has a middle school program at one of their middle schools that combines any kid basically in the district that wants to wrestle. Obviously it is hard to get to practice if they are at a different school. This team has had solid success since the early 2000's and many of the top kids at Snider have gone through this program.

 

Concordia has a really big and well organized elementary and middle school league. Some of the schools feed into New Haven and Bellmont, but it is a big well organized league that should feed into Concordia's program. I cannot find the history of this league online, but it has had some very good wrestlers come through it. 

 

While this isn't exactly like the other programs there is still some wrestling in the lower levels in Fort Wayne.

 

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8 minutes ago, Y2CJ41 said:

That's half true and half false...

 

Bishop Dwenger has one of their feeder middle schools with a team. They seem to have decent numbers and a lot of familiar last names.

 

Snider has a middle school program at one of their middle schools that combines any kid basically in the district that wants to wrestle. Obviously it is hard to get to practice if they are at a different school. This team has had solid success since the early 2000's and many of the top kids at Snider have gone through this program.

 

Concordia has a really big and well organized elementary and middle school league. Some of the schools feed into New Haven and Bellmont, but it is a big well organized league that should feed into Concordia's program. I cannot find the history of this league online, but it has had some very good wrestlers come through it. 

 

While this isn't exactly like the other programs there is still some wrestling in the lower levels in Fort Wayne.

 

Fair enough, other than what I read on here and knowing Cochran from Snider, I know little to nothing about wrestling in the area.

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On 1/25/2020 at 9:16 PM, Silence Dogood said:

Fort Wayne had 5 champs in 1999. How'd we get to the point over the course of 20 years where we are trying to figure out if they'll even have 1?

 

I have this discussion often and I think there are a bunch of factors that play into it. First off, I think wrestling in the last 20 years in Indiana has gotten much better across the State and North East Indiana hasn't kept up. You can no longer start in high school wrestle for 4 months out of the year do a few freestyle tournaments and one camp and expect to do great things. Just like all the other sports, rather you agree with it or not, kids are becoming specialized and know they have to start young and focus on your core sport 9 to 10 months out of the year. That isn't happening a ton around here. We have had many well meaning individuals step up and try to provide some sort of Academy but they start them and get about 10 kids or so and quickly realize they can't keep the lights on doing it. I personally have went around and priced facilities and done the math on running it as a business that would just break even and there is definitely a risk there. Especially if you want to create a real Academy that screams wrestling when you walk in.

 

Given that FWCS is our biggest school district with some of our biggest schools and there is a multitude of challenges you have to overcome to produce quality teams or even keep kids out. Like stated before the thing that would make the biggest difference is if we can get middle school wrestling in FWCS across the board and not just a few places. I have talked to a few FWCS ADs about it and a couple middle school Principals and they say the discussions are starting about the logistics of it. I believe there are more challenges then most of us realize. So with the lack of middle school wrestling and the increase in talent overall it gets very hard to get kids with no experience to come out and stay out when they just get their butts kicked. A wise coach, that coached in FWCS for over 30 years once said to me "the hardest thing to do is to convince a kid that getting your butt kicked all the time is worth it." Such a true statement, I don't care how athletic you are if you don't have a room around you with some experienced kids and a great coaching staff you are not going from no experience your freshman year to a State champion your senior year. Their may be a few examples of this but they are very very rare.

 

So our biggest school district isn't producing anymore and that definitely hurts us. But as one person said many of those kids our going to outer schools like Southwest and Northeast Allen. Hence the rise in Carroll and if everything goes as planned Homestead will be starting to show some real promise soon. The 3 biggest schools in the area are Homestead, Carroll, and Northrop. Northrop is part of FWCS and that has been discussed. Carroll has a program that is well established and has been in the making for over 20 years and has produced a State champion, runner up, and multiple state place winners. As much as we, Homestead, hate them because we would love to beat them, we really work well together at the youth and middle school level, and personally I get along with all the coaches. I will say this, with first hand experience, just because a school is big does not make it easy to build a program and change a culture. We all have our own battles that we deal with to try and get our wrestlers to the next level. 

 

The Goshen area isn't as up as it has been the past but they always always contribute a ton to Fort Wayne Semi-State. I coached for Dekalb for years and we went to that regional and when Northridge, Goshen, Elkhart Memorial, and Jimtown are firing on all cylinders it is tough. To be honest I just don't know that much about the Peru area but I know there is some pride in that area and Peru always has like 50 matches. We just don't see many of their kids until Semi State.

 

With all that said the small schools in North East Indiana pull their weight and more. There are a bunch of solid smaller schools with a culture of wrestling that do well. Just to name a few Bellmont, Garrett, Adams Central, Jay County, and Prairie Heights. These schools are consistently invited to team state for a reason but it has been discussed at nauseam the challenges small schools have compared to the big schools so it is tough for them to make up for the rest of the area.

 

I really hope we can change things around here but it will take all of us to do it. A single Academy isn't going to fix it. I think all the coaches around the area would be happy to work with each other to get things moving again but as many of you know there is only so many hours in the day and this sport doesn't pay anyone's bills and it is hard enough getting your own program going. It is all for the love of it. Personally I am always willing to help, just shoot me a message and I will respond. Just like everyone else on this board I know how this sport changed my life and I have witnessed it change many others.

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The biggest factor with an academy is that this area is very much spread out.  

 

The Goshen regional teams are spread out where some can hit up clubs/academies in South Bend, but some are stuck being an hour+ from Fort Wayne and South Bend.

 

The Carroll regional has the most athletes and closest proximity, but along with what @aoberlin said it doesn't always breed the ones that want to put in the time AND pay for it.

 

The Peru and Jay County regionals are spread apart and many of their athletes will head to Indy for clubs/academies or train at home. You are also talking about smaller schools(no 3A teams) and thus many of those kids are also involved with spring sports.

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Being from Oak Hill (Peru Regional),we normally head to Indy to train like Joe said. CIA is the best option for us and that’s where we go. I would like to take some of our guys to other places but everywhere else is to far to go train for a couple nights a week like EAC, Red Cobra, Region and etc. Of course there are some RTC’s and stuff like that but it’s not quite the same. It would be awesome for a academy to start up somewhere close but I don’t see it happening unless it’s in the Ft. Wayne area. I know former Illinois University standout Eric Terrazas started TWA at Oak Hill and lasted two summers there but he’s the current IWU offensive coordinator and ran out of time to juggle both. 

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5 hours ago, Coach Nieman said:

No middle school wrestling in Fort Wayne schools.

Ok, so this makes sense now. This is how I got indoctrinated to the sport. There wasn’t academies at that time and we didn’t know what freestyle was.  HA! For that matter, it was sectional, regional then state, for the state tournament.  
But there was electricity.  

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On 1/25/2020 at 8:50 PM, piscis1956 said:

I haven’t actually had the opportunity to watch Levitz wrestle this year, but by just comparing the notable results listed on the rankings page, it would seem that he would have as much chance as anybody at winning 160.

I concur

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