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Friday night at Maconaquah was filled with some great action and a lot of young ladies putting themselves on the line, but I wanted to share with all of you a photo I took that really hit me. Heritage High School hasn't (according to IndianaMat results) won a dual meet in the last four years and they are 0-47 in that time. But every time I see coaches Lockett and Martin, I am impressed at the way they run their program. They are full of energy and passion for their kids. I have seen it at home dual meets, at the ACAC duals and I saw it on Friday night. Heritage had one girl wrestling. One girl. Yet the entire team (almost, I think) and both coaches were in attendance and coaching their hearts out and laughing with their kids. This made a huge impression on me and I will be rooting for the Patriots the rest of the year. The whole team spent six hours in a gym to watch Amber Hoy wrestle four matches. Kudos to the Heritage team and to both coaches for the role they are playing in their program and congrats to Amber Hoy on her placement Friday night.

If we do 4 classes with 1A and 2A having 12 teams and then 3A and 4A having 8 teams each it would probably satisfy everyone. 1A and 2A could run their own schedule(with a bye round included) and probably get done about the same exact time as 3A and 4A. Boom compromise done! Just call me the great negotiator.

Not so much the case in 1A. We were a vote in one year and won the title. I believe Prairie Heights was voted in once or twice. Bluffton was left out as a vote in this year and would have been a contender. The crazy thing with 1A is that 1-2 kids can make a significant impact for that teams competitiveness. Team depth is the over whelming factor that makes 1A different than 2-4A. By dropping the number of teams in 1A, you are potentially going to continue (or increase) to leave out teams that could contend. Tony Currie

If we have 8 teams per division... why not have a straightforward bracket that we can show to non-wrestling people, publish in a newspaper, put on a t-shirt, promote without sounding like weirdos, predict results without round-robin tie-breakers, etc. Are we thirsty for a fourth/fifth match at the championships? Why not have 4 rounds: quarters, conso/semis together, conso, finals and place six or eight?

100% of the teams at Team State wouldn't be wrestling at Team State if the IHSWCA didn't do an awesome job at putting on this tourney.

2013-14there were 22 kids on the Garrett squad 2019-20 we started with 51 and are 49 or 50 now 16-17,17-18,19-20 we made it. Felt we were snubbed one...maybe two years. We knew we were close though. Funny thing is that we were a “bubble” vote in team this year yet we got 2nd. We’ve been seeded 5th twice and placed 2nd both of those years. Unseeded to 7th another year. We knew we could win it this year or compete before we were voted in. In 18 we knew we had a shot as well and came close in a runner up finish. This has definitely attracted kids! Believe it or not...our success has improved our feeder system and we have good wrestlers coming up. ......I’d bet that the same exists for other programs who are excited for the opportunity to win team state.

Yes. Give us our 12 team slots in 2A and we'll be happy. Reduce the amount of deserving teams being missed.

I was ok at math back in the day. You can can calculate stats or percentages to support pretty much whatever you want. All I know is that 12 teams per division pretty much included everyone who had a shot regardless of which division they were classified in. Splitting 3A up really just adds an opportunity for the lower enrollment 3A teams to have a legitimate shot to win a title. Which is fantastic. Now why would you take away that opportunity from programs that are smaller yet? One of the initial goals when this was started was to increase excitement and try to grow small school wrestling. Back to percentages- on any given year we have 12-15% of our HS boy population out for wrestling. I feel that is a high percentage considering not all boys walking the hall are athletes, and you subtract out the basketball players and swimmers. Team State is something we highlight and use as a tool to recruit kids. I am sure by the excitement and fan support of the other 1A schools, that they also consider it an honor to compete in this event. I would like to see it stay at 12 teams per division.

Really. Your talking about percentages and being fair. What s the percentage of 1a wrestlers to winning a title at state compared to 3a. Team state was the one thing we had a shot of going to and maybe placing or winning but now that is again moving in favor of 3a schools as well. I just don't get it I guess.

the 25% was including EMD and IC in 4A....but yes you are correct it is false, its 22.85% while the other three classes will be around 13%. Not sure why the classes cannot be more evenly distributed, this isn't football. We want to grow the sport, making it less inclusive to smaller schools does not help in my opinion.

I will be doing a mass import of the past couple years worth of results hopefully this week.

I have no problem with the change with the exception on how they are divided where basically 25% of the 4A schools will "make" Team State, while the other three classes will have around 13% of the schools "make" their respective Team State. If the change is made why not divide the classes up equally as in the past to ensure the percent of teams participating are the same in each class. This change to me clearly is favoring large schools.

We may be splitting hairs here, but Davison's win over Shakur Rasheed today mean's he's a lot closer to the upper echelon than you may think. Granted it was only Rasheed's 2nd match of the year, coming off an injury, but an impressive win nonetheless. Shakur, if he can get to 100%, may just be the #2 wrestler at that weight by the end of the year.

One hour before tournament starts

Yeah, so kinda like Johnny Wrestler from Podunk High who doesn't really have a shot at an individual state title now..yet class wrestling supporters are clamoring and advocating for class so he can get his title shot in 1A/2A!!! So let me try to understand, as I'm getting confused...take away Podunk High's bids and deny them the chance for "growing the sport" due to their participation in team state (notice I didn't say winning) and that's fine cuz they don't have a realistic shot at winning...but then the same poster is gonna say how we need to class so Podunk High can have a state qualifier/placer/champ and thus promote wrestling in/for his school and grow the sport??! This is not a shot at you, Scholar, just the hypocritical justification on here about taking away bid numbers from the smaller classes to go to larger schools for team state (notice I didn't say percentage..I agree that is about the same) yet then advocating for individual classes to provide more opportunity and growth. To me, limiting team state chances are worse because you have a "team" of 8-20 kids going to the event then back to school talking to their buddies about it as compared to one Johnny Wrestler going back and saying he participated/placed/won at an individual classed state tourney. Where's the Grow the Sport class supporters rancor? Beside boomer and WoodJC...and I"m not even a class supporter but I do feel the classed Team State is fantastic and I do support that. #Confused

The 1A wrestler generally has a disadvantage for not having workout partners, resources and stronger competition. But looking at a small sample size, 7.1% of state championships were won by 1A wrestlers last year compared to that 10.1% of the enrollment comes from 1A schools. So not that much of a disadvantage.

35/8...if EMD and IC are in 4A they are 4A so its 8 spots not 6. If they don't move up is 33/8 And I really thought one of the reasons to class is to grow the sport...its just my opinion this new format divided the way it is creates less opportunity for the small school TEAMS to increase their participation numbers. And its obvious EMD and IC do not need the help to increase participation at their respective schools. And it regards to my math, it must be from all the years I have lived in Yorktown.

Ok, to put in percentages. You're correct that approximately 13% of the team 3A and 4A will get bids, but the 1A and 2A will only get 9% of their teams receiving bids. Another perspective: 3A and 4A make up 71% of the enrollment, but only get 50% of the bids. Where 1A and 2A will also get 50% of the bids even though there enrollment totals 29% of the total enrollment. Ill admit that I overstated that the bottom 3 teams rarely finished in the winners bracket, so Ill admit my mistake. But a majority of the time the last 3 teams in don't make it to the winners bracket. The 1A and 2A teams results seem to deviate more from the prior year tournament points scored under Maligned's system. The consequence would be having a team like Garrett in 2a that significantly outplaced their score, wouldn't be able to participate. Ill add its a shame all teams don't have a shot to wrestle there team in the current year, and only have their circumstances based on the prior year state tournament results, but you still can help your team next year by doing well in the current year state tournament. The system works and by expanding the current system by 4 teams, more wrestlers will have a shot to participate.

Always a great day of wrestling. I wonder when the brackets will be released

Yes, 1A and 2a will lose 4 spots going from each class, but the number of teams in each class will be reduced proportionately. So if 36 teams joined the new 4A class pool, wouldn't the number of teams in each class (1A, 2A, 3A) decrease by 12 teams, thus making it easier to get one of the 8 qualifying spots. For simplicity sakes, say we had 300 teams eligible (which is close) due to having enough wrestlers to meet the criteria. Then the prior qualifiers to total teams ratio would have been 12 to 100 per each class. Now it would be 8 qualifiers to 88 teams for classes 1A,2A and 3A. So its not fair to say the small classes are loosing 4 sports exactly In another way, previously there was 1.2 spots for every 10 teams, under new calc there would be .9 spots for every team. Doing the math we can quantify this, and the results are class 1a and 2a are only losing 3 teams each and not 4 as previously reported. A few teams might be shifted to a higher class, but that's not that a big of deal. With that said, almost always the last 3 teams in that previously qualified rarely had an impact on the championship and normally finished in the losers bracket. That's logical due to that we predicted them to be not as competitive. I'm sure Maligned can statistically confirm this. I think the 8 team per class format is much more balanced and enables the tournament to run easier without a large amount of byes. Under the new format, we will have more competitive matchups and a more fluid tournament, less sitting around and more schools and wrestlers participating. Sounds like a win win, with only losers being small school bubble teams that know they do not have a realistic chance at winning the championship.

So a group of schools with a total student population a quarter of that of 3a has the same amount of teams and the same chance to win a state title? Seems more than fair to me. And... 4a really only has 6 bids. Because EMD and Cathedral are not going away any time soon and will bump every year. So to say 25% of those teams are going to make it is false.

It was canceled by the IHSAA because teams that qualified for regionals or higher chose to hold out several varsity wrestlers that were also in the individual tourney. The IHSAA didn't like seeing this happen so axed the team series after this happened several times.

Will we see the Top 10's updated for this season sometime soon?

We hope to talk about them in upcoming Gorilla Radio episodes.

Davison from Chesterton had a purdy good few days / Nocked off Brunner from Purdue. Then he beats Rasheed from Penn st. A couple of nice wins. Good to see a Rat on a roll !! IU lookin purdy misrable. - they won one match in the last 2 duals. There are 3 rats in da line-up - need turn it up a notch boys

Your reasoning is why I'd have both. Smaller 1A schools with not much history could aim for a class system individual champ. 1A teams with success could strive for a single class champ. Teams like AC work towards the class team duals and the MD, PM, CP, and etc could work for the old single class dual. Still could track like the IHSAA does for state like now for both systems.

All this talk has put so much emphasis on state champs. One place I think small schools would really see a bump in interest is the number of athletes winning sectional, qualifying to regional, making ticket round, etc. I know we are all supposed to aim high, but "high" is defined differently for some than it is for others. A lot of guys in our line-ups over the years climbed to their athletic peak by winning a sectional championship and/or making it to the ticket round of semi-state.

This just seems to be going in the wrong direction. Isn't the goal to get the IHSAA to recognize the success of the classed team state tournament and make it a sanctioned IHSAA Team State event again but with classes? All of us who are a part of the sport recognize how great this event is and how awesome it is to find success there, but school administrators and community members who don't closely follow wrestling continue to put the * beside it since it is not IHSAA. Example, our school's athletic recognition hall has a rule that in order to have a team picture up, you must be IHSAA Regional Champs or better. We now have two IHSWCA team state runner-up finishes (first losers) but you would have no idea because they don't have the IHSAA stamp of approval so, there's no photo, banner, or plaque displayed to recognize those teams. I know this is a specific situation that probably falls more on our school having a poor policy but how great would it be to have this tournament be desirable for adoption by the IHSAA. Following up to that idea.... Why are we reducing the number of teams? I get it that the numbers work with 8 teams in 4 classes which means we have to go from our current amount of 36 to 32, but that seems like taking away any teams will begin to take away fans. Maybe the thinking is that losing 4 bottom level teams who don't bring many fans won't hurt the attendance very much? I would think that attendance numbers are significantly important to IHSAA for adopting the event ($$$) ? But then again maybe the idea is that by creating the "extra" bigger class that that might accomplish increased attendance? (someone more "in the know" might be able to provide some more input on that perspective with recent attendance numbers?). Aside from attendance though, it seems like every year there is competitive teams missing the cut from our scoring system and then don't get the vote. Then they put together a really good following season but don't have the chance to compete at team state. Maybe they wouldn't win, but going, having a good performance, and placing high continues to build that community support and recognition. Cutting down to 8 teams with possibly only 1 vote in spot could cause some deserving strong teams to miss out and puts a whole lot of accountability into the scoring system being used, which does a good job of predicting strong teams the following year but there is exceptions every year that should be wrestling in the coliseum at the beginning of January and aren't (ex: Bluffton this year). I thought that maybe the move for the tournament would have been to include more teams if anything (maybe not possible for a single day tournament)? The scoring system seems to do a pretty good job at predicting top teams in the bigger classes but the smaller classes seem to be where competitive teams are left out more often. Cutting down to eight teams for 1a and 2a seems like a sure fire way to miss deserving teams when we are already missing top teams with 12 teams being there. The IHSAA is already all about full inclusion for the state tournament series, they aren't going to be impressed by a tournament missing successful teams.

This is a valid point. No I don’t wanna start another class thread but as it pertains to team state I think it’s spot on. Hopefully I’m just missing something ..

Ok, let me see if I got this straight. The 3a class is getting split so they will go from getting 12 teams at team state to 16 and the 1a and 2a teams will get reduced to 8 teams each. So the one tournament that small schools look forward to is getting harder for them to get in because of the reduced number but easier for big schools. The big schools already have the state tournament to win which the small schools have next to no chance in winning. Just seams silly to me that once again the small schools are getting the short end of the stick. I am also surprised that the 3a schools are ok with this, wont they just be winning a watered down title. Will there be a final match with the 3a champ and the 4a champ so we will know who the real champ is ? Just frustrated I guess. I know I know, just work harder.

The private school comment is a B.S. statement, I truly hope you're joking. I know of several private schools that can't field a full team much less compete for a 4A state wrestling championship.

So basically this is just taking the 3a class and dividing it up into 2 classes and now making less 2a and 1a schools able to compete or am I wrong?

North Posey won 42-28.

This shall now be referred to as the "Carroll Rule."