Faulkens view on Class Wrestling

[Cmoney125]

6 hours ago, Galagore said:

 

Me, too. It is a thrilling environment. My son just asked me the other day, "Dad, do you think I could be a state champion?" and I said (and meant it) yes, and explained to him all of the camps, tournaments, etc. that it would take to make that happen. My son wrestling in this system does not worry me. The decline in participation in Indiana wrestling (while the rest of the nation is growing in wrestling participation) worries me. When you look at what the other states do that we don't do for small schools, there is one that stands out - a classed individual tournament.

California has a single class tournament and so does New Jersey. Doesn't seem to be hurting their participation. Maybe us as a wrestling community are hurting participation, maybe the focus on weight cutting instead of improving wrestling skill is hurting participation. Let's be honest, the wrestling community does a crap job of promoting the sport of wrestling. Strong youth wrestling and running youth clubs for the right reasons, especially when they are like 10 and under, will do wonders for participation. A classed state tournament doesn't increase participation, it decreases the quality of competition at all levels because it spreads top tier wrestlers out across multiple classes. A small school with a strong youth program will put state champions on the mat. How many high school coaches are putting the time in to set up a feeder program for their middle schools? How many are showing their faces at those practices, even if it's might be once a week or a couple times a month and building relationships with their future prospective wrestlers? Look at what happened when they classed basketball in Indiana. It destroyed a world class state series and objectively made the quality of the games and competition worse.

[TakeTheShot]

I don’t disagree numbers of student athletes is decreasing in Indiana in many sports. I don’t believe that anyone has demonstrated any evidence that classing an individual sport will make any measurable change at the schools we are obviously talking about on this thread. 
 

If you truly want more high school kids to wrestle, go to the big schools and let more of them compete at the varsity level in state tourney. That’s were kids that want spots aren’t getting them.  I don’t want this, but that’s were the numbers are. That is likely only going to hurt small school participants’ chances at individual titles, however. 
 

This thread isn’t really about getting more individuals to wrestle, it’s about making small schools, many of which don’t have enough kids either in attendance or with the skills needed to compete with a state placer (ie the measure of success used), and the kids that attend them somehow successful against those that do have the numbers and skills. Since that is deemed impossible for whatever reason (coaching resources, practice partners, competition opportunities), some feel we need to change how success is defined to get kids to fill spots on teams that they don’t currently want to fill for whatever reason—other sports, interests, jobs, etc.—convincing them that they won’t have to compete against those considered to be more skilled individuals.  You are trying to offer them a shortcut for success, which doesn’t work. You really can’t compete at high school wrestling as an Individual if you not all-in. You don’t go from not wanting to join the team to place winner at wrestling, or swimming, soccer, or basketball either for that matter, no matter what class they are in. 
 

The kids that would “benefit” from classes are the kids that are already participating but finishing their seasons at semi state.   Their reward is the title semi state qualifier (or regional placer), a reward that reflects their accomplishment.  This is not something everyone can do, and it leaves room for improvement.  If all the proposed changes basically give the title of state placer to that same level of accomplishment, it seems a little disingenuous. 
 

Kids need to fall in love with wrestling when younger than high school.  All those things that don’t exist to the same extent in smaller programs and communities—feeder leagues, clubs, parents and coaches able to attract groups of young kids to the sport, and possibly time and money to find the right competition, etc—are the types of things required to be successful by the time you get to high school. 

[Galagore]

California participation:

14-15: 26374

15-16: 23945

16-17: 22383

17-18: file won't work for some reason

18-19: 22602

Their participation looks to be following a similar trend as Indiana

 

There are several small school coaches who have active feeder programs, help out with MS and/or youth and usually run one or the other. We don't just "make appearances," we actually run practices, organize schedules, and communicate with parents.

[CFleshman]

So kids at small schools should just be happy with getting to semi state or being a state qualifier. I'll describe a couple senerios. A young boy started wrestling in 2nd grade. Over the next 6 years he wrestled tournaments in Michigan,Ohio,Tennessee,Illinois with lots of success. Coming into HS he had won multiple iswa,hyway and other titles. His family obviously traveled and put the time in. Every loss he had thru Jr high and high school was to state qualifiers and place finishers. Now he is giving back all that he learned over those years and is a big reasons a particular school up here is having success right now.. We had a unbelievable group of kids in the program at that time 9 state appearances and 2 medals. But your saying they should be happy with just getting there. Obviously you have never had to coach at a small school. We don't have the luxury of having multiple coaches at all 3 levels. If anyone wants another opinion on this ask a Hall of Fame coach Cale Hoover about big school small school advantages. 

[Coach Brobst]

7 hours ago, TakeTheShot said:

 

The kids that would “benefit” from classes are the kids that are already participating but finishing their seasons at semi state.   Their reward is the title semi state qualifier (or regional placer), a reward that reflects their accomplishment.  This is not something everyone can do, and it leaves room for improvement.  If all the proposed changes basically give the title of state placer to that same level of accomplishment, it seems a little disingenuous. 
 

 

I think the part you seem to be grossly missing is that it's not about next year. Or the year after that. Wrestling, as a funded High School sport, won't die in the next 2-5 years. It's in the next 10+ that it may be in trouble. 

 

I think all class wrestling supporters would concede that you're correct, not too many non-wrestlers will suddenly decide to come out just because the tournament is classed and then place that year (though there would probably be a handful). HOWEVER, now we have a situation where success breeds desire to be a part of something. 

 

Let's play a hypothetical: Indiana goes 2 classes for this past season and Cael Albaugh of Clinton Central qualifies and places (made it to semi-state this year, won his sectional, so not too much of a leap). Those other Clinton Central Bulldog football players see this about him and think to themselves "That looks fun, I like Cael and I think I could make it that far as well." Not all of them, mind you, but 2-3 of them. 

 

The following season, 2 Bulldogs make it to state and place. 3-4 others are in the semi-state. Then 3-4 new kids want to come out, and maybe one of them has a little brother or 2, then suddenly those kids are in club, where they would usually just be playing basketball. This sets up Clinton Central for some long term success that they can point to.

 

In 3-4 years, a small school that has 1-2 semi-state qualifiers every 2-3 years, suddenly has a program that can fill most, if not all, weight classes with competitive wrestlers instead of just bodies. The whole sport is better off for it.

 

Will there be programs that struggle no matter what? Yes. And will this scenario play out at every school? No, for sure, not. BUT, if it happens at 1-2 dozen schools in cycles it helps grow the sport in places it's not been flourishing recently.

 

There will always be exceptions of small school kids that overcome the odds and small school programs that find success. But Geography plays a HUGE role in which of those programs find massive success too. But that's a post for another time.

 

 

 

 

[Wrestling Scholar]

9 hours ago, Cmoney125 said:

California has a single class tournament and so does New Jersey. Doesn't seem to be hurting their participation.

If you look at some posts earlier in the thread,  it was established on reliable data that California wrestling participation has been seeing a consistent decrease in participation.

[CFleshman]

That's the point us small school coaches are trying to make. Kids at all schools want to work hard and have fun. If they can have that chance at success in a state tournament they will be more motivated. Why have any class sports? Watch FB numbers and teams disappear. Are kids going to play if they have to play CG or WC to have post season success? No! But All kids have the same opportunities to succeed no matter what school they attend or sports they are competing right.

[SIACfan]

On 2/25/2021 at 9:38 AM, Y2CJ41 said:

Strictly speaking on a 1A and 2A level

1A = 22.6% of the population

2A= 77.4% of the population

 

Qualifiers

1A- 20.63%
2A- 79.37%

 

Placers

1A- 16.72%
2A- 83.28%

 

Champions

1A- 14.29%
2A- 85.71%

 

Top 4

1A- 14.61%
2A- 85.39%

 

 

OK Y2,

 

The basis of my debate has been that an individual who attends a large school does not have an advantage over individuals who attend small schools. And I contend that if this is correct than what we should find is that the percentages of elite individuals closely follows the enrollment percentages.

 

So when looking at the raw numbers it is flawed to make the decision to put MD's numbers into the large school data because you think they perform like a large school. The fact is they don't perform like a large school, they perform like an elite school and there are also a hand full of large schools that perform this way as well. Thus in the end it is acceptable that you remove certain outlier schools, but MD is an outlier to 1A not 2A.

 

So below are the raw data numbers with MD's qualifiers, placers & champs in the 1A data where they belong before identifying the outliers that should be thrown out from both 1A & 2A.

 

Enrollment Percentage:

1A - 22.6%

2A - 77.4%

 

Qualifiers:

1A - 23.7%

2A - 76.3%

 

Placers:

1A - 20.0%

2A - 80.0%

 

Champs:

1A - 16.9%

2A - 83.1%

Edited February 26, 2021 by SIACfan

[casualwrestlingfan]

Is there somewhere pinned that I've missed quickly skimming over the board that has the data of how many teams have at least 7 wrestlers in the line up and is broken down by each class? Is there any quick place to see all of the teams in each class (1 or more wrestlers) and what semi state they would fall into?

Edited February 26, 2021 by casualwrestlingfan

[Pug]

16 hours ago, Clint Gard said:

So 40% of schools had 72% of the qualifiers and 60% of the schools had 28%.  Numbers don't lie.

My numbers might be off--I went back through and it looks like 49 kids from 3A and smaller schools qualified (I did not include EMD in this) and 25 were from the Ft. Wayne SS. This makes the numbers worse.

[ENoblewrestling]

I was curious as to what the FF numbers looked like for Ohio in their smallest class.  They average 8.5 kids per team.  Joe said that our average 1A team has 5.07 forfeits. So 8.93 per team.  Anyhow I thought it was intersting to compare the two.

 

Ohio DII FF Data	Teams	Wrestlers
Ridgedale	21	168
Barnesville	11	89
Sandy Valley	12	112
Berkshire	14	124
Independence	13	131
Northwestern	14	134
***Rootstown	14	116
###Archbold	13	135
Lima Cental Catholic	14	120
*** Oak Harbor	13	119
Plymouth	14	134
***Van Buren	13	109
Alexander	21	141
Covington	13	111
Lehman Catholic	14	121
Reading	13	84
	227	1948	8.5  per team average
Most of the information came from https://www.baumspage.com/wr/archive/2020Sectionals.htm
*** were hand counted from the brackets
### came from trackwrestling

[ENoblewrestling]

3 minutes ago, ENoblewrestling said:

I was curious as to what the FF numbers looked like for Ohio in their smallest class.  They average 8.5 kids per team.  Joe said that our average 1A team has 5.07 forfeits. So 8.93 per team.  Anyhow I thought it was intersting to compare the two.

 

Ohio DII FF Data	Teams	Wrestlers
Ridgedale	21	168
Barnesville	11	89
Sandy Valley	12	112
Berkshire	14	124
Independence	13	131
Northwestern	14	134
***Rootstown	14	116
###Archbold	13	135
Lima Cental Catholic	14	120
*** Oak Harbor	13	119
Plymouth	14	134
***Van Buren	13	109
Alexander	21	141
Covington	13	111
Lehman Catholic	14	121
Reading	13	84
	227	1948	8.5  per team average
Most of the information came from https://www.baumspage.com/wr/archive/2020Sectionals.htm
*** were hand counted from the brackets
### came from trackwrestling

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by ENoblewrestling

[bulldog145]

4 hours ago, Coach Brobst said:

I think the part you seem to be grossly missing is that it's not about next year. Or the year after that. Wrestling, as a funded High School sport, won't die in the next 2-5 years. It's in the next 10+ that it may be in trouble. 

 

I think all class wrestling supporters would concede that you're correct, not too many non-wrestlers will suddenly decide to come out just because the tournament is classed and then place that year (though there would probably be a handful). HOWEVER, now we have a situation where success breeds desire to be a part of something. 

 

Let's play a hypothetical: Indiana goes 2 classes for this past season and Cael Albaugh of Clinton Central qualifies and places (made it to semi-state this year, won his sectional, so not too much of a leap). Those other Clinton Central Bulldog football players see this about him and think to themselves "That looks fun, I like Cael and I think I could make it that far as well." Not all of them, mind you, but 2-3 of them. 

 

The following season, 2 Bulldogs make it to state and place. 3-4 others are in the semi-state. Then 3-4 new kids want to come out, and maybe one of them has a little brother or 2, then suddenly those kids are in club, where they would usually just be playing basketball. This sets up Clinton Central for some long term success that they can point to.

 

In 3-4 years, a small school that has 1-2 semi-state qualifiers every 2-3 years, suddenly has a program that can fill most, if not all, weight classes with competitive wrestlers instead of just bodies. The whole sport is better off for it.

 

Will there be programs that struggle no matter what? Yes. And will this scenario play out at every school? No, for sure, not. BUT, if it happens at 1-2 dozen schools in cycles it helps grow the sport in places it's not been flourishing recently.

 

There will always be exceptions of small school kids that overcome the odds and small school programs that find success. But Geography plays a HUGE role in which of those programs find massive success too. But that's a post for another time.

 

 

 

 

BINGO!!

 

 

[Galagore]

Post retracted due to misreading information...doing more research and will repost...

Edited February 26, 2021 by Galagore