Potential Big Changes in Indiana Wrestling

[Galagore]

57 minutes ago, rookie78 said:

W-R-E-S-T-L-E-B-A-C-K-S-!

 

Unrelated.

 

Also, who needs wrestlebacks? Just work harder, go to a club, etc. then you will be the bad draw.

[Coach Brobst]

1 hour ago, RHendricks9 said:

it would definitely take someone smarter than me to effectively restructure it. I just wanted to throw out what I thought of. And five of those six giant schools that you named are already in the same sectional, because it makes sense for that region. 

4 are in the same (Carmel, HSE, Fishers, Westfield)

and you’re correct, they don’t care about it and I’ve said it before, if we won’t class, we HAVe to balance the sectionals more evenly

 

Kids from Clinton Central, Frankfort, and Clinton Prarie HAVE to be better than at least one kid from one of those monster schools just to make regionals.

 

Meanwhile, a kid who goes to Tri HS can make it to Regionals some years just by weighing in.

 

Ask the small school coaches what a difference it makes when 2-3 extra kids make regionals or semi-state and how that motivates all the other kids.

 

Anyways, My point to your original post is you were trying to fix just one problem and created at least 5 more by just trying to get Brownsburg away from CG. That sectional is just one example.

 

[RHendricks9]

1 hour ago, Coach Brobst said:

4 are in the same (Carmel, HSE, Fishers, Westfield)

and you’re correct, they don’t care about it and I’ve said it before, if we won’t class, we HAVe to balance the sectionals more evenly

 

Kids from Clinton Central, Frankfort, and Clinton Prarie HAVE to be better than at least one kid from one of those monster schools just to make regionals.

 

Meanwhile, a kid who goes to Tri HS can make it to Regionals some years just by weighing in.

 

Ask the small school coaches what a difference it makes when 2-3 extra kids make regionals or semi-state and how that motivates all the other kids.

 

Anyways, My point to your original post is you were trying to fix just one problem and created at least 5 more by just trying to get Brownsburg away from CG. That sectional is just one example.

 

That makes sense. Honest question, would you sacrifice shorter drives to separate the big schools? Because I was trying to do the opposite by creating short drives without caring about school size. 

[Coach Brobst]

12 hours ago, RHendricks9 said:

That makes sense. Honest question, would you sacrifice shorter drives to separate the big schools? Because I was trying to do the opposite by creating short drives without caring about school size. 

Absolutely I'd prefer longer drives with better balanced sectionals over the opposite. I'd bet the small schools care even more. Some of those schools scrap and fight just to get 1-3 kids to Regionals in the Frankfort Sectional and then if you're in the Crawfordsville Sectional teams that are essentially the same caliber can send 6-10 kids to Regionals just because of the other teams that are in it. 

 

That makes a difference in program building!

[Wrestling Scholar]

4 minutes ago, Coach Brobst said:

Absolutely I'd prefer longer drives with better balanced sectionals over the opposite. I'd bet the small schools care even more. Some of those schools scrap and fight just to get 1-3 kids to Regionals in the Frankfort Sectional and then if you're in the Crawfordsville Sectional teams that are essentially the same caliber can send 6-10 kids to Regionals just because of the other teams that are in it. 

 

That makes a difference in program building!

Coach,   The IHSAA to some degree, has done that specifically in your sectional when they moved Zionsville out of the Frankfort to Crawfordsville.   You only have 5 super large schools instead of 6 now.   This brought it a little more in balance.

[indypharmd]

A few thoughts...

 

I grew up in Wabash County and my wife in Fulton County and have raised my family in Purplesburg. We chose not move back north after college because of job opportunities and when we had kids, the educational opportunities that exist in Brownsburg Community School Corporation vs. what the wife and I had in the late 80's up north. Some of the student athletes who attended Brownsburg HS when their siblings attended an other HCC rival have spoken volumes about how those opportunities in educaton were best for those kids...

 

Almost every single football visit my son took his junior year, the football staff spoke to him/us about wrestling almost more than football in all cases. They recognize the grind, discipline, etc. it takes to be an elite wrestler while being a P5 football recruit. He visited multiple footballs camps and even met the Red Cobra contingent at an exit in Iowa City following a football camp to catch a ride to Lincoln, NE for a week of wrestling camp during summer football workouts...

 

While being a multi sport athlete, you have to continue to train for wrestling while practicing football, track, baseball, CC, etc. You can't just pick it up in season... That requires A LOT of sacrifice of time, effort, etc.

• How many are willing to do that?
• How many coaches of those other sports are willing to at least look the other way while the wrestler still trains?
• And if the coach doesn't like it, are the parents and student athlete willing to continue with their plan/goals? (experienced this)

One of my son's future #SWARM23 classmates is a guy some may have heard of... Name is Ben Kueter - 4x Iowa State Champ, U20 World Champion, etc. He drives from Iowa City to Sebolt's Academy a few times a week. Check the distance if interested... And he plays baseball. Iowa's high school association has it set so that kids can do FOUR (4) sports seasons - as track and field is in the spring and baseball follows it into the summer and some of their best athletes are 3 or 4 sport kids and those coaches acknowledge that sometimes you need to let those elite athletes participate/train concurrently. Another walk-on classmate played basketball for his high school and wrestled AND made their state tournament! Another young man you will hear more about in the future, Aaron Graves - gatorade player of the year, 1000 career basketball points and 4th at state in wrestling - he will be a B1G DL of the year and likely a 1st rd draft pick in the future.

 

Some would say this is easy for someone from Purplesburg to say, but the training  he did consisted of  private sessions with C-Red outside of normal team or academy practices because of other time committments...

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is something along the lines of if you want something bad enough, are you willing to put the time and sacrifices into trying to achieve it...?

 

Class wrestling probably would help a few things - maybe shortening up the tournament series length by a week or two, shortening distances for driving to the regional/ss weekend, too. 

[ILUV2PIN]

18 hours ago, GenHeavyHandz said:

Mishawaka is a Medium sized school.

5A in football man... That is the second highest rung in our state..

[GenHeavyHandz]

8 minutes ago, ILUV2PIN said:

5A in football man... That is the second highest rung in our state..

You missed some content. I was bored and just wanted someone to argue with. Slow week.

[Coach Brobst]

1 hour ago, Wrestling Scholar said:

Coach,   The IHSAA to some degree, has done that specifically in your sectional when they moved Zionsville out of the Frankfort to Crawfordsville.   You only have 5 super large schools instead of 6 now.   This brought it a little more in balance.

I'm aware. They probably should move another over there as well, but better than it used to be for sure.

[casualwrestlingfan]

17 hours ago, Y2CJ41 said:

Again, yes there are ones that can uproot and move to a better school for athletics(or band, show choir, academics...whatever) and there are those that are not able to. Do we want this sport and sports in general at the high school level become one in which the ones with the money always win? Our sport has transformed drastically in the past 20 years in terms of who is having success. 

 

Class wrestling levels the field for the athletes to garner success against athletes that have similar situations. Having that success helps the smaller school programs tremendously. 

 

Flat out, small schools in this state are struggling and that is at the success and numbers level. There are 37 schools with over 2000 students and 44 with less than 300 in the state with wrestling. Yet, they are supposedly equal in terms of being able to get a state qualifier/placer/champ.

Why I keep pushing for 3 tournaments from the IHSAA/IHSWCA that won't happen. Revamp those Mishawaka, Connersville, Mater Dei, and etc as Classed Individual  State tournaments. Have one host 4A, another 3A, another 2A, and finally a 1A. More than likely will need to be a 2 or 3 weekend process with those locations mentioned being the finals. Definitely keep the classed team state duals, then proposed classed individual tournament, and then our current single class individual tournament to wrap the year up. 

[UncleJimmy]

17 hours ago, Galagore said:

It's not a real class wrestling debate until @UncleJimmy takes a least jab at the class side.

SMH...19 hours of a new Class topic and you dudes only have 4 pages..you all are slackin'! 

 

Again, I do not support class wrestling for all the reasons mentioned the past 10 years. I understand and respect your opinions/arguments @Galagore...but you're wrong! This will be my last post on this subject..this year. Carry on, class wrestling supporters! 

[blueandgold]

17 hours ago, rookie78 said:

W-R-E-S-T-L-E-B-A-C-K-S-!

Wrestlebacks ain’t helping small school kids. It makes it worse for them actually because all of the big school kids who lost to other big school kids are beating those small school kids most of the time. You’d see less parity on the podium for sure.

[rookie78]

1 hour ago, blueandgold said:

Wrestlebacks ain’t helping small school kids. It makes it worse for them actually because all of the big school kids who lost to other big school kids are beating those small school kids most of the time. You’d see less parity on the podium for sure.

not worried about wrestle backs necessarily. I would MUCH rather go to wrestle backs than go to classed wrestling.  

 

My main intent was to hi-jack the thread.

[Justdo^it135]

22 hours ago, Y2CJ41 said:

So what you are saying is you are fine with small schools suffering and that's "life." 

There crux of the whole conversation to me is centered around three questions:

 

Is the goal equality of outcome or equality of opportunity? 

 

Would pursuing equality of outcome be good for wrestling in Indiana?

 

How could equality of opportunity be measured?

[Wrestling Scholar]

3 hours ago, blueandgold said:

Wrestlebacks ain’t helping small school kids. It makes it worse for them actually because all of the big school kids who lost to other big school kids are beating those small school kids most of the time. You’d see less parity on the podium for sure.

Wrestling without wrestlebacks is a rip-off.    If we're going to do it, let's do it right.

[Y2CJ41]

1 minute ago, Justdo^it135 said:

There crux of the whole conversation to me is centered around three questions:

 

Is the goal equality of outcome or equality of opportunity? 

 

Would pursuing equality of outcome be good for wrestling in Indiana?

 

How could equality of opportunity be measured?

Is the goal equality of outcome or equality of opportunity? 

The goal is to try to level the playing field for athletes. This goes along the same lines that they do so in most other sports and even most every state.

 

Would pursuing equality of outcome be good for wrestling in Indiana?

Depends on who you ask. In the grand scheme of things most kids having a positive experience in wrestling will lead to more coaches, refs, fans, parents encouraging their sons to wrestle, amongst other positive benefits from the sport. We can define "positive experience" in many ways, but more kids getting a taste of success(qualifying for state or coming really darn close) will give more kids a positive experience in the sport.

 

How could equality of opportunity be measured?

One of the simplest ways, while not perfect is the system of classing via school size. As even stated in the first post the bigger the school the more resources which the statistics show that the bigger schools have more success at the state level. 

 

We are talking high school athletics in which the goals of high school athletics should be to give athletes a positive experience and learn lessons that cannot easily be taught by reading a book. Lessons such as teamwork, work ethic, setting goals, etc. are learned on the field/mat. The goal is to have as many people experiencing wrestling as possible as many of us believe wrestling teaches many great lessons that cannot be taught in the classroom. The number of forfeits has drastically risen over the last 10 years and mostly at the small school level. That is very telling that we are having issues within our state with our participation numbers.

 

As far as classing goes, our state has a huge variety of school types from big to small, rural to inner city and so on. We have schools with wrestling that range from 121 to 5300 students. The average school size is 955 students, yet the median school size is 625! With those types of numbers there are drastic differences in the schools that have wrestling.

 

Whether you agree with class wrestling or not, you will not argue that more people wrestling is a great thing for our state and society.

[UncleJimmy]

14 minutes ago, Y2CJ41 said:

Whether you agree with class wrestling or not, you will not argue that more people wrestling is a great thing for our state and society.

I don't know why I do this to myself every year...

 

I know not the answer to this question, and will not go to the basketball board to look, but are more kids playing basketball now that IN is classed? Or are more kids just getting a trophy? I grew up a big hoops guy, but I haven't been able to name more than one team in the classed finals since they started it and have not felt a need to attend it since. Is attendance for the hoop finals up or down since inception? I'd guess down. 

 

I can only formulate an opinion based on similarities, and if you believe that hoops is better in the state since classification, then I guess you can convince me wrestling could have the same result, but I don't feel that way and have yet to be convinced. 

 

Now get off my lawn, @Galagore...I blame you for sucking me back into this yearly freakin' thread. Quit taggin' me..I had this thread on IGNORE!

[blueandgold]

21 minutes ago, UncleJimmy said:

I don't know why I do this to myself every year...

 

I know not the answer to this question, and will not go to the basketball board to look, but are more kids playing basketball now that IN is classed? Or are more kids just getting a trophy? I grew up a big hoops guy, but I haven't been able to name more than one team in the classed finals since they started it and have not felt a need to attend it since. Is attendance for the hoop finals up or down since inception? I'd guess down. 

 

I can only formulate an opinion based on similarities, and if you believe that hoops is better in the state since classification, then I guess you can convince me wrestling could have the same result, but I don't feel that way and have yet to be convinced. 

 

Now get off my lawn, @Galagore...I blame you for sucking me back into this yearly freakin' thread. Quit taggin' me..I had this thread on IGNORE!

Who cares if more kids are getting a trophy? The best kids will still get theirs regardless. You just have other kids getting one as well because they work hard just as much as us from big schools, but only few will reach the top, if any sometimes. How are small school kids getting their own tournament hurting anyone up top? The crappy arguments everyone makes are, “It would ruin the best state tournament in the country.” Shut up with that. You all are so concerned about living vicariously through kids and wanting the sole spotlight to be on them that you can’t imagine another kid getting his or her fair share of the light when BOTH get a trophy. It is not such a bad thing for others to succeed to the same level as you do, and when you have no reason for why they shouldn’t be allowed to beyond “our cool state tournament will be ruined,” you really just look lame.

[Y2CJ41]

39 minutes ago, UncleJimmy said:

I don't know why I do this to myself every year...

 

I know not the answer to this question, and will not go to the basketball board to look, but are more kids playing basketball now that IN is classed? Or are more kids just getting a trophy? I grew up a big hoops guy, but I haven't been able to name more than one team in the classed finals since they started it and have not felt a need to attend it since. Is attendance for the hoop finals up or down since inception? I'd guess down. 

 

I can only formulate an opinion based on similarities, and if you believe that hoops is better in the state since classification, then I guess you can convince me wrestling could have the same result, but I don't feel that way and have yet to be convinced. 

 

Now get off my lawn, @Galagore...I blame you for sucking me back into this yearly freakin' thread. Quit taggin' me..I had this thread on IGNORE!

Since you don't want to do your own homework.

 

The average number of boys basketball players from 1993-1997(five years before class basketball) was 13,300 for the state of Indiana. The NFHS didn't do surveys in 2020 or 2021, so from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 the average number of basketball players is 10,828. That is a drop of 2,468 athletes or 18.5%.

 

The average number of wrestlers from 1993-1997 was 8,813 for the state of Indiana. The NFHS didn't do surveys in 2020 or 2021, so from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 the average number of wrestlers is 6,494. That is a drop of 2,319 athletes or 26.3%.

 

Overall in that time period just under 1 million more kids are participating in athletics throughout the country.

 

Here is my work

Edited March 3, 2023 by Y2CJ41
added my work

[UncleJimmy]

Ok..and this is why I don't do homework. Maybe my Ball U degree didn't really pay off, but so if I'm reading this correctly...the number of hoops kids playing went down after classing it, but we feel that won't happen with wrestling, in fact, just the opposite. 

 

What am I missing? We want to grow the sport thru classing but unless I'm reading it wrong, the evidence, at least in hoops, does not support that hypothesis.

 

Ugh...I vowed not to do this again this year, but here I am. Gimme all the smoke class system warriors! I will die on this hill.

Edited March 3, 2023 by UncleJimmy

[casualwrestlingfan]

57 minutes ago, Y2CJ41 said:

Since you don't want to do your own homework.

 

The average number of boys basketball players from 1993-1997(five years before class basketball) was 13,300 for the state of Indiana. The NFHS didn't do surveys in 2020 or 2021, so from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 the average number of basketball players is 10,828. That is a drop of 2,468 athletes or 18.5%.

 

The average number of wrestlers from 1993-1997 was 8,813 for the state of Indiana. The NFHS didn't do surveys in 2020 or 2021, so from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 the average number of wrestlers is 6,494. That is a drop of 2,319 athletes or 26.3%.

 

Overall in that time period just under 1 million more kids are participating in athletics throughout the country.

 

Here is my work

Interesting statistics. So regardless of classed or single class, athletic trends based on these 2 sports only show participation dropping. Oddly enough, the years where there were more participation, the FW SS/Jay County Sectional/Regional had state success.  However with less participation that same area is not experiencing as much as accustomed. The statistics would make you hypothesize the opposite happening. So is the decrease mostly from that area & nearby in participation and going out of state, or is it something else? As you mentioned participation is increasing throughout the country though. 

[bbulldog152]

1 hour ago, Y2CJ41 said:

Since you don't want to do your own homework.

 

The average number of boys basketball players from 1993-1997(five years before class basketball) was 13,300 for the state of Indiana. The NFHS didn't do surveys in 2020 or 2021, so from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 the average number of basketball players is 10,828. That is a drop of 2,468 athletes or 18.5%.

 

The average number of wrestlers from 1993-1997 was 8,813 for the state of Indiana. The NFHS didn't do surveys in 2020 or 2021, so from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 the average number of wrestlers is 6,494. That is a drop of 2,319 athletes or 26.3%.

 

Overall in that time period just under 1 million more kids are participating in athletics throughout the country.

 

Here is my work

The question would be how many kids in basketball tryout and don't make the team before classed and after... have the numbers with basketball dropped because of the number of players a team chooses to roster.... just curious. How many kids tryout for wrestling and get cut?

[Galagore]

A few points in this post...

 

A. My argument has never been about participation. It has been about fairness. Again, small schools are playing a different game. Go ahead and stick your head in the sand, give me the sad face emoji, etc. When kids from two kinds of schools are not starting at the same line, it is not fair to expect them to finish at the same line. And it is true that "life isn't fair." However, something tells me that wrestling is hard enough, and that there will be enough bad calls, bad draws, etc. that kids can still learn that lesson in a classed wrestling tournament.

 

B. The participation in basketball (classed) dropped by less than the participation in wrestling (not classed) during the time frame observed. So maybe it won't grow numbers, but maybe it will stem the tide a little while we figure some other things out.

 

C. Good to have you back, @UncleJimmy. It just wasn't the same without you.

[ReformedPoster]

I wonder if there is a push for classing girls swimming?

[ReformedPoster]

On 3/2/2023 at 5:13 PM, GenHeavyHandz said:

Jaylon Smith went to a 2A Catholic School with a long history of being successful at state.  They won 4 in a row .  He came up in the Metro League here that produces D-1 talent and NFL players and Hall of Famers. They've routinely beat larger schools like Snider and Carroll.  Not a good comparison.

I'm well aware of Jaylon Smith's background and Luers' success.  The point is, he still played at a 2A school.  Whether or not you think it is good comparison doesn't change the facts.