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Growing Small School Wrestling - with or without classing


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The intent of this post is to start a dialog about growing wrestling in Indiana.  I believe there's an opportunity to significantly increase participation in small schools.  There are currently 213 1A/2A schools with wrestling programs and many of these programs currently struggle with participation and retention of their student athletes.  That has absolutely been my experience as head coach of a 1A school. And I know I'm not alone because I've spoken with 45 coaches who have all shared they face the same challenges. 

 

A little about me.  I grew up in Illinois.  They had two classes when I wrestled.  I went to Naperville North, a large school in Chicago burbs so I wrestled in the 2A class.  Naperville North had a deep wrestling tradition.  My senior year, we had two state champs and we were the runner up in dual team state.  

 

I currently am the head coach at Lutheran High School.  We're a 1A school in Indianapolis.  220 total kids at the school.  I restarted their wrestling program 6 years ago.  It was previously cancelled due to lack of participation.  I started the program because I love wrestling and I wanted my sons to be able to wrestle.  In the first two years, the program nearly failed due to lack of participation and poor wrestler retention of the few kids I successfully recruited.  But we hung on and we went 17-6 this year in dual team competition and had our first state champ, Hayden Filipovich. 

 

To get there, I coach our youth team, I coach our middle school team, and I coach our high school team.  From my experience at Naperville North, I am absolutely aware of what a quality program looks like.  But there are some things I can't duplicate at a small school.

 

Despite the successes we've had, participation and retention are still a problem.  The biggest problem is our sectional, which kills our ability to retain new wrestlers.  We face 5 large schools, Warren Central, Franklin Central, Greenfield Central, New Palestine and Shelbyville...as well as several other quality small schools.  When my new guys see that sectional, they quit.  In six years, all by one of my new wrestlers has quit.  Then my tougher, more committed guys have less training partners the following season...a vicious cycle. We had a 17-6 dual team record this year and only two of my wrestlers made it through sectional. This sectional also makes it virtually impossible for us to ever get invited to dual team state. 

 

Coming from Illinois, classing seems natural to me.  But I understand the culture in Indiana values the single champ tournament.  If you're an elite wrestler, it is about as cool as it gets.  (Is it possible that most of us coaches were elite wrestlers in our day?)  However, the practice of putting small schools up against large schools, especially right away in sectionals, has significant negative impact on wrestling participation at small schools.

 

Coaches asking for classing are simply looking for a solution to this problem.  But there is a way to keep the single tournament AND grow wrestling at Indiana's small schools.  

 

Attached is a proposal that 45 small school coaches have worked together to develop.  The goal is to address some of the challenges small school programs and ultimately grow wrestling at small schools.  I look forward to your feedback. 

 

Greg Hughes

Indianapolis Lutheran

    

 

      

ImprovingWrestlingforSmallSchools.pdf

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Obviously a lot of work was put into this. I think the number one thing is that the IHSAA doesn't think it's their issue to grow the sport. They also think of wrestling as an individual sport, and think that a cross country runner, swimmer or tennis player have the same opportunities no matter the school size. 

 

So convincing them to class wrestling would mean convincing them to class every individual sport.

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I've heard that argument from the IHSAA about classing the other sports.  There's a bylaw they'd have to change or something like that. 

 

I think the approach we have to take is to argue that wrestling is different than swimming, cross country, track, golf, because in those individual sports, you both train and compete by yourself.  In wrestling you compete as an individual, but you can't train by yourself.  All coaches know the value of the "room".  As iron sharpens iron, so does one man another.  

 

I think changing the bylaw would be a big to do, but changing the categorization of wrestling to a team sport, that change impacts only wrestling so likely not the same challenge.  It will take some convincing.  The argument needs to be made.  No coach can disagree that training partners are critical, and if you have studs in the room, they make everyone around them better.  

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I like this.  It's a well thought out compromise that treats the duals as team and state championship as individual.  1A and 2A could easily promote the "semi state" as their classed state tournament.  Another benefit is that it takes the same number of weekends as our current schedule - The IHSAA will definitely like that.

 

In order for the IHSAA to consider this, it needs support from Athletic Directors.  45 coaches supporting this is great, but start getting ADs on board, too.  That's ultimately who the IHSAA reports to.

 

I'm not sure if bylaws need to change or maybe a new bylaw added that can put wrestling in it's own category.  But this could be a blueprint for classing individual sports without fully classing them.  Something like this could be implemented for tennis, track, or any individual sport that is dominated by big schools.

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I should have also mentioned, I don't think the proposal wouldn't require us to change the classification of wrestling to a team sport. 

 

The sport still remains a single class with all schools coming together in the end.  The main idea is to class the early rounds so you don't have small schools getting destroyed by big schools.  Only the best guys from the different school sizes come together in the end for a final round to determine who is the single champ.  

 

That's my thought on it.  It's not classing, just setting up sectionals based on school size.  Which the IHSAA could just define it as the new sectionals. In the end, all paths come together, so by definition the sport is still not classed.

 

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I think this proposal is a great compromise for both sides of the class debate that has been ongoing for years.

 

I would like to see either randomization of matchups in the Week 3 tournament so the same Sections do not always wrestle, or potentially even use a seeding formula at that time

 

I am very happy to have a concrete proposal that could possibly receive wide spread support and be moved forward through the ADs and IHSAA.

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I think the second part to it is that you need all your coaches to be in agreement.

 

2 years ago I sent a survey out to all the head coaches about interest in class tournament.

 

Results were divided up amongst different size schools, and no groups were strongly in favor. Overall it was about 50% and it was the same percentage for the small schools too.

 

When proposals are taken to the state, they are typically looking for around 80% agreement.

 

I understand that your proposal is not a true class system so results of that could be different.

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Greg,   I like this idea and i think the report and presentation you made helps sell this idea.   Ive actually mentioned something similar to this in prior years on the board.   I called it the "Grand State" concept.   I got the idea back in my home state of KS.  Back in the 70s, they actually got the KSHAA to buy into this for a few years from 76-78, and  they had a "Grand State" extension to their tournament.   Of course Kansas implemented classes back in the early 70s, but their State tournament concept was just  an individual state tournament with four  classes that took two weeks.  For the Grand state tournament, they took the top 4 from each class and the 1s wrestled 4s and 2s wrestled 3s and the class placers were randomly drawn into the bracket. For 3 years, KS had a single state champion or called Grand State Champion.    A guy from my school ended winning it one year.

 

Unfortunately, the  Grand State tournament stopped due to a few reasons.    One reason was the additional time required by the coaches  as  it added another week to the season.    The 2nd reason was it  required another two day tournament (they had wrestlebacks), and this resulted in the kids to miss another day from school as they also did in the prior week for the state tournament.   And 3rd,  this tournament even though held at a central location, it required travel costs and a lot schools needed hotels.

 

One advantage of your concept that in Indiana, it  doesnt really add time to the season as Indiana already has a ridiculously long state tournament.  Also, this would require two weekends in a row to travel to Indianapolis for the tournament, which is a centralized location, but still would require more travel funds for most schools which seems a small price to pay.   And also again, it would require to miss another day of school for the wrestlers,  which is IMO is not a big deal,  but the IHSAA is an organization strongly against missing school and would be a possible road block. 

 

I think a good idea and might some tweaks and compromise,  but the cool idea would be that Indiana wrestling could have its cake and eat it to.  

 

 

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Well put together.  Would like to debate.

 

A wonder I get from this is: we all want to grow interest in Indiana wrestling, yes true.  
 

But would this new way of doing things actually do that though?  Would more kids wrestle for small schools now, than the number of kids that would drop from big schools because now it’s hypothetically harder?  
 

It feels like you argue with your stats and your pie chart that essentially it’s not fair for small schools because they are disproportionately represented at state and they don’t have enough competitive parity, but:

-wouldn’t the chart and stats look the same if we looked at the proportion of students by IHSAA class just by virtue of school population?  

-Couldn’t Your competition issue be largely addressed on the off season at red cobra or other regional clubs/competitions?  What if you collaborated with another school (better than you) and practiced together once a week?  Or dueled for fun once a year somehow?  Aren’t there out of the box thinking things you could try?
 

I think we need to keep in mind also that a big school athlete does not “have it easy” either.  I was a Indiana state champion for Carmel High School, but I was JV by way of wrestle off until my junior year.  At some places you are having to win your own little tournament already to just represent your big school in the sectional state tournament.

 

Also, I’m not a fan of the proposed state championship approach.  In going to this from what we have, now we could be moving to a situation where we are farther away from the truly best 8 I’m the end than we were before because your draw is now arbitrarily impacted by school class.

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I don’t understand the class wrestling argument. Look at the number of small schools that dominated the 1-8 spots on all weight classes at the individual state tournament. School size doesn’t effect our sport as much- football, basketball, and track I get, but it will only hurt wrestling in Indiana. 

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1 hour ago, Scott Kelly said:

 

Also, I’m not a fan of the proposed state championship approach.  In going to this from what we have, now we could be moving to a situation where we are farther away from the truly best 8 I’m the end than we were before because your draw is now arbitrarily impacted by school class.

I would say the biggest weakness of the Indiana State tournament is that you dont truly get the best 8 due to the randomness of the draws, some guys just get lucky.   Throw wrestlebacks into this format, and I think you would be closer to the top 8.

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Interesting idea, but I don't see them even entertaining the idea to be honest. Not a bad idea, but I personally like to see other ideas happen before this.

 

Also what are the stats on how many of those teams in each class can fill at least 7 or more weight classes to be considered a team?

 

The biggest change is that we need to eliminate the 18 duals +1 tournament. 

Edited by casualwrestlingfan
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2 hours ago, 08grad said:

I don’t understand the class wrestling argument. Look at the number of small schools that dominated the 1-8 spots on all weight classes at the individual state tournament. School size doesn’t effect our sport as much- football, basketball, and track I get, but it will only hurt wrestling in Indiana. 

Lack of personal understanding (or preference) doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be considered. 
 

Also, why does classed track make sense? If you are fast, you are fast regardless of school size. Or if you can jump, then you can jump. And anyone can train by themselves sprinting or running, right? They don’t need teammates to get better since it is an individual sport.... maybe the larger schools have better resources to help those track athletes run better? Like better access to elite coaches and better weight rooms. But then again, why class anything ever? 
 

Don’t rule out potentially good proposals- especially those with good intentions and inviting conversation via a simple lack of understanding. 

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Unfortunately you will never get people on the same page on this debate.  The biggest reason is not enough people have experienced the realities of small towns and small schools. Without giving my opinion on if Id like to see a classed state I will give you some of my personal truths of coaching at a large school vs a small school (which I have done both)

Lets start with obvious ones we call can agree with:

1.  Less partners in the room make it harder to get better

2. Less quality partners in the room make it hard to get really good

3. More kids in the school directly equates to more athletes, which equates to more athletes from the pool to draw from. 

4.  Many School facilities are better in larger schools

5.  Many of the top notch coaches and families arent moving to a school of 300 kids. 

6.  High Quality Off Season wrestling clubs are more than an hour away. 

7.  If you travel to another school to workout with them, there is a chance your kid will transfer to the better school. 

8.  With so few kids in a small school, making Varsity 4 years in 3 sports is a real opportunity.  How many 3a and 4a school have those types of kids an opportunities? 

9.  Community support is usually bonded to just a few sports in small schools...most of the time wrestling aint one of them. 

10.  Families dont stick around small towns on a regular enough basis to start a tradition in large quantities. 

11. High quality assistance, middle school and elementary coaching is impossible to find because of limited number of people. Which weakens a program from bottom up. 

12.  It seems at smaller schools, coaches are less likely to accommodate other sports and are constantly competing for time causing athletes to make choices between sports. 

 

These are facts, are their outliers, sure.  Are there teams breaking the mold, sure. Are there athletes rising above the norm, sure. But as a whole, this is the reality for most small schools. Do large schools have their own hurdles and struggles absolutely, but I see these debates so many times and very few have lived both sides. I would like to hear from a coach who went from a successful large school to an less successful small school and made the small school program better than their previous school. Any examples like that out there? If not, why? If so, lets hear what they did different to make a small school better.  

 

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3 minutes ago, PreparetoWin said:

Unfortunately you will never get people on the same page on this debate.  The biggest reason is not enough people have experienced the realities of small towns and small schools. Without giving my opinion on if Id like to see a classed state I will give you some of my personal truths of coaching at a large school vs a small school (which I have done both)

Lets start with obvious ones we call can agree with:

1.  Less partners in the room make it harder to get better

2. Less quality partners in the room make it hard to get really good

3. More kids in the school directly equates to more athletes, which equates to more athletes from the pool to draw from. 

4.  Many School facilities are better in larger schools

5.  Many of the top notch coaches and families arent moving to a school of 300 kids. 

6.  High Quality Off Season wrestling clubs are more than an hour away. 

7.  If you travel to another school to workout with them, there is a chance your kid will transfer to the better school. 

8.  With so few kids in a small school, making Varsity 4 years in 3 sports is a real opportunity.  How many 3a and 4a school have those types of kids an opportunities? 

9.  Community support is usually bonded to just a few sports in small schools...most of the time wrestling aint one of them. 

10.  Families dont stick around small towns on a regular enough basis to start a tradition in large quantities. 

11. High quality assistance, middle school and elementary coaching is impossible to find because of limited number of people. Which weakens a program from bottom up. 

12.  It seems at smaller schools, coaches are less likely to accommodate other sports and are constantly competing for time causing athletes to make choices between sports. 

 

These are facts, are their outliers, sure.  Are there teams breaking the mold, sure. Are there athletes rising above the norm, sure. But as a whole, this is the reality for most small schools. Do large schools have their own hurdles and struggles absolutely, but I see these debates so many times and very few have lived both sides. I would like to hear from a coach who went from a successful large school to an less successful small school and made the small school program better than their previous school. Any examples like that out there? If not, why? If so, lets hear what they did different to make a small school better.  

 

You speak truths here.  I grew up in a very small community.  My HS size was 500 kids now 19 years later it is closer to 400.  I can't name one single sport varsity athlete at my old high school.  I played 4 sports football, wrestling, track/baseball.  I literally had 1 week off between sports.  Summers were spent busting my butt working in the melon fields (80-100hours/week). 

 

I know many small schools kids can be phenomenal athletes and achieve great things but without quality partners in the room it really makes it hard to succeed and I don't think large schools will every understand this. Everyone will say to build a program from the bottom up, but success at the top (HS level) helps breed excitement at bottom.  It is a vicious cycle.

 

I understand the argument being made to level the first rounds of the state tournament.  The smaller schools being brought up in this discussion seem to be near larger population centers mainly Indianapolis.  I truly think the issue at small schools comes down to splitting time in other activities and quality partners.

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I grew up in Indiana and now help coach in a state with classes - Michigan.  I am not against classes and I am not for them either.  I would like ask though if you are sure all your new wrestlers are quitting because they see how tough your sectionals are or if you just think that is the reason? 

 

I think it sounds like you have a plan to grow your youth and middle school programs.  You will have fewer and fewer first year wrestlers starting in high school.  Your youth will know what they face at sectional and will prepare for that.  You live in a city that has tons of close opportunities for off season development.  Build a team that has fun and wants to be together and they won't quit because of your sectional.  It takes time but it is a challenge you will face no matter if there are classes or not.  

 

I like that you have ideas for growth and change.  I don't know if they will work or not.  Nobody does.  I do think you have a lot of things going for you though and I am sure you will be successful either way.

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I can confirm the bulk of my kids who quit are quitting because of the sectional.  I've had multiple first year wrestlers have to wrestle a state ranked guy in the first round.  The new guys also see many of the best guys on the team struggle.  

 

One year I had a newer kid tell me he wasn't going to sectional.  I asked him why not.  He said he'd just get pinned and didn't want to be there all day.  (This was a kid just a little below 500 that season.)  He had a rugby game that day he wanted to play in.  I talked to him about all the work he's put in and how he's improving.  Talked to him about how it is a process.  Said he needed to be there for the team, etc.  He agreed to wrestle.  Got pinned in the first period by a kid from a large school. He sat in the gym the rest of the day and watched the rest of the team get dismantled.  Two years of work into him and he never wrestled again.  Shame on him for not being tougher, but when you're the coach of the team and that kid is about 18% of your program...uggh.

 

Let me know if you want more stories.  I have more.  If anyone thinks the issue isn't real, I would gladly trade sectionals.  Any takers?  

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So many truths on the post from Columbus East and Edgewood.  Totally agree with the challenges as outlined.  The post is a great representation of reality of limitations in training opportunities, differences in culture, differences when every athlete in your school is a multi-sport athlete (because there simply aren't that many athletes).  I want to add to that in that there's also a big difference in the regular season opportunities between small schools and large schools.  I posted this perspective on a different thread so adding it here. 

 

From my perspective, wrestling is already classed.  Or I should say, it is classed all year and then at the end of the year we switch to a tournament that is not classed. 

 

We are surrounded by large schools but wrestle none of them during the regular season.  If I were to ask the schools in our sectional (Warren Central, Franklin Central, Greenfield Central) for a dual meet, they would laugh me out of the room.  I don't blame them, we can't fill a roster, we have beginner wrestlers on varsity...normal stuff for a small school.  Conferences are generally set up based on school size as most other sports are classed. So all year, we wrestle a small school schedule. 

 

A small school schedule means less matches (due to higher percent of forfeits). It often means less competitive matches. Many large schools send their JV teams to the same tournaments we compete in.  (Sadly for me, we have only recently started to be able to compete with big school JV teams.)

 

I've had large school coaches in sectional seeding meetings argue that their guy is better because of "strength of schedule."  I think that argument is sound.  It makes the point I'm trying to make here.  Large schools wrestle a more competitive schedule all year.  It helps their guys improve at a different rate.  

 

But somehow our kids are supposed to be ready for large schools in our sectional after wrestling a small school schedule all year.  

 

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So if 312 is the correct number of teams in 4 classes, why not just go to 6 like football for classing the sport? 1A through 4A having 64 teams, 5A having 32, and 6A having 24. That could make it much easier for team dual and individual classed tournaments. I think that would grow the sport in the 1A & 2A current fields that would become the new 1-4. Don't get me wrong, I want all 4 tournaments (2 classed and 2 single class).

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I think there’s a lot of variations of this proposal that could work.  You could go with just separating sectionals into two classes initially and schools of all sizes come together in regionals.  That would help address some of the problems.  We could go with more classes, we could go with less.  The goal of this proposal is to address three problems.  1. Sectionals today lack balance.  2. Because Sectionals Lack Balance, Dual Team State criteria is inaccurate and unfair.  3. Only a small number of small school wrestlers make it to state. 

 

I think some may argue that #3 isn’t a problem.  The argument is the best kids should be at state.  Period.  If small school wrestlers aren’t as good, they shouldn’t go. 

 

When we created this proposal, my biggest worry was that the large schools would feel this way and resist the proposal.  They wouldn’t understand the challenges small schools face. They would also see that they face off against more large schools in their sectionals and baulk at that…the optic being that it is a much harder road than facing small schools.  That’s why we favored the big schools in having less teams in sectionals and having many more qualifiers from the classed tourney.  The data from 2020 shows that big schools (33% of the total schools) make up 67% of the wrestlers who qualified for state.  The proposal allows the top 5 wrestlers from 4A and top 5 wrestlers from 3A to attend state.  That’s 62.5%...pretty close to what actually happened in 2020.  The proposal sends the top 4 from 2A to state (that’s 25%).  In 2020, 2A made up 24% of state qualifiers.  Then the proposal sends the top 2 from 1A.  That’s the remaining 12.5%.  This is slightly higher than 2020’s actual 9%.  Not perfect but close.

 

But for a moment, let’s go with the philosophy that the tournament system should always send the best kids to Bankers Life.  No exceptions.  If that’s the case, we still have a problem that needs to be solved.  Issue #1 still is a problem in the current system which organizes by region.  Sectionals, Regionals, and Semi States are not balanced…not even close. The best wrestlers currently don’t make it to state because of this imbalance. 

 

If you set up the sectionals and regionals so that there’s a more even number of large and small schools coming through each, you’re more likely to create balanced sectionals, regionals and semi states. The proposal moves in this direction because we’re basing the sectionals on school size, not by geographic region.

 

When we wrote the proposal, I was worried that big schools wouldn’t understand it.  I was also worried that some small schools in regions where there isn’t imbalance wouldn’t get it either.  If you’re already in a sectional that is all small schools, then you’re already experiencing what this proposal is designed to do.  Here’s a quick case study to illustrate the current imbalance in the system based on geographic regions and not school size. 

 

I see some folks from Adams Central responding, so let’s compare Adams Central and Indianapolis Lutheran.  We’re both 1A schools.  We both had winning dual team records.  Lutheran was 17-6.  Adams Central was 15-9.  The only common opponents we had this season were Jay County and Batesville.  It looks like Batesville wrestled with only 4 wrestlers against Adams Central and 8 wrestlers against Lutheran, so that one doesn’t make sense to compare, so let's look at Jay County.  Adams Central lost to Jay County 42-30 in dual competition.  Lutheran lost to Jay County 39-30.  It suggests that maybe, just maybe, we’re comparable dual teams and maybe, just maybe we have comparable talent on our teams.  (Heyerly is a beast BTW, he’s my pick to win state next year!)

 

Let’s compare sectionals:

 

 Lutheran’s Sectional

Warren Central, 4A

Franklin Central, 4A

Greenfield-Central, 3A

New Palestine, 3A

Shelbyville, 3A

Indianapolis Howe Academy, 2A

Indianapolis Lutheran, 1A

Scecina Memorial, 1A

Triton Central, 1A

Eastern Hancock, 1A

 

Adams Central’s Sectional

Bellmont, 2A.

Jay County, 2A

Norwell, 2A.

Adams Central, 1A.

Blackford, 1A

Bluffton, 1A.

South Adams, 1A,

Southern Wells, 1A

Union City 1A                                                                                                                                       

 

According to a common opponent, we look like comparable teams, but our results are polar opposite.  Lutheran had only 2 wrestlers make it through sectionals.  Adams Central had 8 (four times as many).  Lutheran has 1 wrestler make it through regionals.  Adams Central has 5 make it through regional.  Lutheran has 1 wrestler make it to state.  Adams Central has 3.  Adams Central is invited to Team State.  Lutheran was not invited to Team State.   The difference (in my humble opinion)?  Lutheran has 5 large schools in our sectional.  Adams Central does not.

 

Every season, I’m fighting to retain wrestlers in my program because our sectional sets us back again and again.  If we had 8 wrestlers getting through sectionals each year, if we were getting invited to team state (or at least had a reasonable shot at it), we’d be seeing accelerated growth. 

 

Separating the sectionals based on school size balances sectionals.  It also helps make dual team state criteria more accurate and fair.  If equal numbers of large and small schools come together in later rounds…perhaps semi state…then we’re that much close to making sure the best kids are making it to state.

 

I personally like the proposal as written because I like having a classed state champion and also a grand champion.  But wanted to write this out to help illustrate other positives. This proposal is a roadmap to an approach that balances our sectionals.    

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One issue that really can't be resolved is that due to budgets, school responsibilities and potential bad weather around the time of sectionals - they *HAVE TO* be grouped geographically.

 

Whether there is one class or 4 classes, this can lead to imbalance.  There are hot spots where multiple strong teams are located - anyone else in that area is going to have a difficult time progressing in the tournament.

 

So, the goal cannot be to make it completely balanced.  One additional thing that could be proposed is that each sectional could shift a few teams each year with neighboring sectionals, to smooth out the impact of having a couple of hammers in your backyard every year.

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I hate to get sucked into the class wrestling debate. Before we go to classes, let’s balance out the sectionals, regionals, and semi states. This may allow small schools from all over the state to advance further through the state tournament as ghughes1974 has illustrated. In the Mooresville regional I see countless solid kids from small schools who are easily semi state level kids if they were placed in a different region of the state get bounced out first round regional. 

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12 hours ago, ghughes1974 said:

I think there’s a lot of variations of this proposal that could work.  You could go with just separating sectionals into two classes initially and schools of all sizes come together in regionals.  That would help address some of the problems.  We could go with more classes, we could go with less.  The goal of this proposal is to address three problems.  1. Sectionals today lack balance.  2. Because Sectionals Lack Balance, Dual Team State criteria is inaccurate and unfair.  3. Only a small number of small school wrestlers make it to state. 

 

I think some may argue that #3 isn’t a problem.  The argument is the best kids should be at state.  Period.  If small school wrestlers aren’t as good, they shouldn’t go. 

 

When we created this proposal, my biggest worry was that the large schools would feel this way and resist the proposal.  They wouldn’t understand the challenges small schools face. They would also see that they face off against more large schools in their sectionals and baulk at that…the optic being that it is a much harder road than facing small schools.  That’s why we favored the big schools in having less teams in sectionals and having many more qualifiers from the classed tourney.  The data from 2020 shows that big schools (33% of the total schools) make up 67% of the wrestlers who qualified for state.  The proposal allows the top 5 wrestlers from 4A and top 5 wrestlers from 3A to attend state.  That’s 62.5%...pretty close to what actually happened in 2020.  The proposal sends the top 4 from 2A to state (that’s 25%).  In 2020, 2A made up 24% of state qualifiers.  Then the proposal sends the top 2 from 1A.  That’s the remaining 12.5%.  This is slightly higher than 2020’s actual 9%.  Not perfect but close.

 

But for a moment, let’s go with the philosophy that the tournament system should always send the best kids to Bankers Life.  No exceptions.  If that’s the case, we still have a problem that needs to be solved.  Issue #1 still is a problem in the current system which organizes by region.  Sectionals, Regionals, and Semi States are not balanced…not even close. The best wrestlers currently don’t make it to state because of this imbalance. 

 

If you set up the sectionals and regionals so that there’s a more even number of large and small schools coming through each, you’re more likely to create balanced sectionals, regionals and semi states. The proposal moves in this direction because we’re basing the sectionals on school size, not by geographic region.

 

When we wrote the proposal, I was worried that big schools wouldn’t understand it.  I was also worried that some small schools in regions where there isn’t imbalance wouldn’t get it either.  If you’re already in a sectional that is all small schools, then you’re already experiencing what this proposal is designed to do.  Here’s a quick case study to illustrate the current imbalance in the system based on geographic regions and not school size. 

 

I see some folks from Adams Central responding, so let’s compare Adams Central and Indianapolis Lutheran.  We’re both 1A schools.  We both had winning dual team records.  Lutheran was 17-6.  Adams Central was 15-9.  The only common opponents we had this season were Jay County and Batesville.  It looks like Batesville wrestled with only 4 wrestlers against Adams Central and 8 wrestlers against Lutheran, so that one doesn’t make sense to compare, so let's look at Jay County.  Adams Central lost to Jay County 42-30 in dual competition.  Lutheran lost to Jay County 39-30.  It suggests that maybe, just maybe, we’re comparable dual teams and maybe, just maybe we have comparable talent on our teams.  (Heyerly is a beast BTW, he’s my pick to win state next year!)

 

Let’s compare sectionals:

 

 Lutheran’s Sectional

Warren Central, 4A

Franklin Central, 4A

Greenfield-Central, 3A

New Palestine, 3A

Shelbyville, 3A

Indianapolis Howe Academy, 2A

Indianapolis Lutheran, 1A

Scecina Memorial, 1A

Triton Central, 1A

Eastern Hancock, 1A

 

Adams Central’s Sectional

Bellmont, 2A.

Jay County, 2A

Norwell, 2A.

Adams Central, 1A.

Blackford, 1A

Bluffton, 1A.

South Adams, 1A,

Southern Wells, 1A

Union City 1A                                                                                                                                       

 

According to a common opponent, we look like comparable teams, but our results are polar opposite.  Lutheran had only 2 wrestlers make it through sectionals.  Adams Central had 8 (four times as many).  Lutheran has 1 wrestler make it through regionals.  Adams Central has 5 make it through regional.  Lutheran has 1 wrestler make it to state.  Adams Central has 3.  Adams Central is invited to Team State.  Lutheran was not invited to Team State.   The difference (in my humble opinion)?  Lutheran has 5 large schools in our sectional.  Adams Central does not.

 

Every season, I’m fighting to retain wrestlers in my program because our sectional sets us back again and again.  If we had 8 wrestlers getting through sectionals each year, if we were getting invited to team state (or at least had a reasonable shot at it), we’d be seeing accelerated growth. 

 

Separating the sectionals based on school size balances sectionals.  It also helps make dual team state criteria more accurate and fair.  If equal numbers of large and small schools come together in later rounds…perhaps semi state…then we’re that much close to making sure the best kids are making it to state.

 

I personally like the proposal as written because I like having a classed state champion and also a grand champion.  But wanted to write this out to help illustrate other positives. This proposal is a roadmap to an approach that balances our sectionals.    

I get what you are after, but time after time the biggest issue is the 18+1. No way should we mix the class and single class individual tournaments together in my opinion. Also do not like the idea of using the individual tournament as a means to determine the team dual tournament either. We need to have 3 separate tournaments period! My biggest complaint of the old single class dual tournament was the individual sectionals determining which teams advanced.

 

For the classed individual tournament, we should have 5 to 6 classes. Many in the wrestling community will be opposed to that as well. As I mentioned above, break down into 1A-4A of 64 teams (assuming the weight class has no forefeits). 5A 32 teams (same assumption) and 6A 24 (teams). For 1A-4A you would have 4 semi states that had 16 wrestlers each. The top 4 placers with wrestle backs would go to the 1A-4A classed individual finals that would have wrestle backs as well. For 5A you would have 2 semi states with 16 wrestlers and wrestle backs. The top 4 from each would advance to 5A individual finals where the 8 wrestlers would wrestle with wrestle backs. 6A would be similar to 5A but each semi state would have 12 with wrestle backs. Each classed individual tournament is 2 weeks that can be done in the end of December beginning of January before the single class individual tournament.

 

For the classed team duals, we need the number of teams in each class that can field either a mandatory 7 weight classes or 8. From then we can break down the classes based off of enrollments and what I call the Mater Dei choice. Treat it just like the football tournament. Let's say every team in each of the 4 classes could fill the mandatory weights and the classes are the same currently. So 1A & 2A would be like 128 team brackets, 3A the 64, and 4A could be rat tailed into a 32 team bracket. 1A & 2A have 8 sites of 16 teams in single elimination. Winner of each 8 would make up the state finals. In 3A have 8 sites of 8 and the winners move on to the finals. 4A have 4 sites with 9 teams and the top 2 from each site move on. Champs of each site get a runner up from another site (hopefully the rankings puts the top champ with "worst" runner up). I'd run these right after the classed individual tournament.

 

For the single class individual tournament, I'd keep the format similar except with wrestle backs for each week and run it after the classed team dual tournament most likely putting us in March. I do agree with balancing sectionals out more but still staying with geography. Maybe so many sectionals can have so many of each class. However, I'm not sure it's really going to matter too much. The cream rises to the top more often than not.

 

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