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Thrine beats Clark in a war of attrition in OT 2-0 to become the 132 pound freshman/ sophmore state champ! Great match.

@138 Clouser vs McConnell freshman/sophomore state blood round. coach Swain is going to have to get some of those eating and lifting they are 2 and 3 deep at some of those weights. With strong wrestlers

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. I coach a 1A school in Indianapolis. 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) 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. We did well this year. We went 17-6 in dual meets. But somehow we're supposed to be ready for large schools in our sectional after wrestling a small school schedule all year. Our sectional has five large schools plus a bunch of solid small schools. 17-6 and this year, we got only two wrestlers through our sectional. From my perspective, wrestling is already classed. Its just the tournament at the end of the year where we decide to put small schools against large schools in round 1 of the tournament. For my program, this has devastating effect on participation. I lose nearly all of my first year wrestlers after they see our sectional. In six years coaching, all but one of my new wrestlers that I recruited to the program quit after wrestling in our sectional. I think this dialog comes down to the question of what we want to happen with wrestling in Indiana. The individual tournament is unique and cool in a lot of ways. Its about the elite wrestlers and who can prove they are the best...that's freaking cool and no other state has that. But the way it is administered has significant drawbacks for small schools. We see our new guys give up, wrestle without hope, kids quit before they get started. Then we lose training partners that can help the more committed wrestlers. Vicious cycle. My program almost died before we got started because of our sectional. There are 213 small schools and 99 large schools with wrestling programs. The participation level at small schools is not even close to what it could be. Small school coaches know this. But I don't think the big schools have the same problem so they think we are just bitching when we bring up this topic. So what do we want to do? Do we want to protect a system that is awesome for the elite wrestlers, or do we want more kids wrestling? In my opinion, we can have both. Small school coaches asking for classing are simply trying to solve a problem. But we don't need to class the final tournament to take steps to solve the problem. Changing a few things about how the tournament is administered could have a tremendous positive effect on small school programs. Attached is more about one such option that a growing number of small school coaches are supporting. The idea is to keep the individual tournament, but change the way wrestlers get there. I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts. Coach Hughes Indianapolis Lutheran ImprovingWrestlingforSmallSchools.pdf

https://www.nwitimes.com/high-school/chesterton/chesterton-coach-chris-joll-retires-trading-wrestling-for-walks-in-the-woods/article_5ff43fc3-423e-5e6b-a54b-b549d2abb0ca.html

Congrats to all placers and champs. This is a VERY important and underrated tournament. It’s a big deal to place at and win this event.

Herff Jones is the official provider for the IHSAA Championship Rings. Herff Jones is Head Quartered in Indianapolis, and has serviced Indiana, as well as the rest of the country, for over 100 years. You can get the tradtional State ring, or you can design someting else. You're local Herff Jones Rep. would be glad to help you. If you or your school does not know who your Representative is, you can contact the IHSAA or me. I've been a Herff Jones Rep. for over 21 years, servicing Northeast Indiana, but have coached wrestling and been a member of the IHSWCA for over 31 years. I love the sport of wrestling, and would be happy to help you guys out in any way that I can. Rod Williams Herff Jones Rep. Leo Head Wrestling Coach rwilliams@herffjones.com

At 132 In the semis you have Brevan Thrine vs Keegan Williams and on the other side Cameron Clark vs Braedan Spears! Should be a great semi/finals.. What are some other great matches to check out today?

Drew with a 6-1 victory in the MAC finals over Surtin of Missouri. Hopefully that title and his prior results will secure him a pretty high seed for NCAAs. He likely would have AAed last year if it wasn’t for the season getting canceled, so its nice to see him get another shot at a good NCAA run.

Yesssssir and he stuck the stud Atkins in the finals if I remember right!

Yes and Carson wrestled IU starter Nick Wilhelm that year. It was an awesome event.

I like his candid and honest takes about how a room full of good kids matters in terms of calling a season "good".

I strongly agree with this statement. I was impressed with so many of the kids I saw this weekend.

I believe this proposal deserves its own thread - it is well thought out and strikes a balance between traditionalists and small school class proponents

Unfortunately Noah was injured during his last match Saturday and couldn’t continue in the tournament. Will heal up and hopefully be back soon. Eating and lifting is definitely on his schedule!

They're loaded!

Wrestled with him a couple times last week. He will be a tough little freshman

The guy could have learned how to crochet in between matches.

I love it coach. I am only a fan so my support probably does little to nothing for your cause but you have it. Biggest hurdle is getting the IHSAA to give a darn. And/or making them realize that wrestling is actually more than just an individual sport. The participants compete as individuals but the team aspect builds bonds & friendships that can last a lifetime. In the end humans are group oriented animals, we can survive alone but we thrive together.

Sadly, Slivka fell right away again. And Fielden lost 10-0 and 4-3 to come up one point shy of NCAAs. Excited to see what the next few years hold for the freshman.

The 8 seed Fielden with a HUGE win over NCAA coaches' panel #30 Cassella, the 4 seed at the EIWAs. He needs top 5 to qualify for nationals and he's into the conso semi's with two shots to get it done. Next up is the 6 seed from Lehigh.

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.

Theres still another Warren coming..... Watch out!! He a big boy.

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.

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.

So if it is agreed the numbers are down, and that extra curricular activities are beneficial, then why is it getting a negative reaction from some people to explore options to try to encourage growth in the sport. We have the opportunity to try something different to build positivity in the sport. If 6k less students are participating, then why WOULDN'T we as a wrestling community try to do our part to bring that up, rather than just shrug and say it is what it is,

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

Blue River Valley didn't field a team at sectional the past two years and only had 4 wrestlers in 2018. I certainly hope the program is not done, however it doesn't look promising. No one here has ever said classing is a magic bullet, even Galgore has stated so a couple times on this thread alone. It will help though. Sometimes you need a sort of artificial shot in the arm to boost the participation. We are coming to a point where we will need to do something soon. As stated in the quoted text, we have lost almost 30 teams in the past 7 years just in forfeits alone.

Over the last 11 years Mater Dei has had 84 state qualifiers(2nd) and 44 placers(3rd). The next highest 1A school is Jimtown with 26 and 17, no other 1A school has more than 8 state placers. They are a heavy statistical outlier.

I showed you three programs that did not participate in sectional this year that were around at least the past couple years. As I stated before not everyone is going to do it at once, but it will happen slowly. No one really cares about Blue River Valley, I'm sure most couldn't even name what semi-state they are in. When a school shuts their program down there isn't going to be a big press release like they do in college. They quietly don't schedule events and everyone forgets it existed. We had 500 less wrestlers at sectional than in 2011, that is roughly 35 FULL teams we have lost in VARSITY participation alone. Maybe I'm chicken little, but that indicates a really big problem. Even if you take out the fun COVID year, we were down 400 wrestlers at sectional from 2011-2019 or just over 28 FULL VARSITY line-ups. Again we have lost the equivalent of almost 30 full teams in 8 years. That is not a good trend, if you cannot agree with that then we are in different solar systems. That goes along with losing 25% of the athletes in the sport from 2004-2019. Again, if you don't think that's an issue then we are in different solar systems. No one has ever claimed class wrestling is a magic bullet. We had 6600 athletes in 2019, if you double the amount of placements we would go from 1.6% of the athletes being state placers to 3.2%. Boy that is really handing out participation trophies. False, it will help those bigger schools also. Small schools would see an increase of 79% of their state qualifiers and big schools would see 21% more state qualifiers. Those ones that struggle will send more kids deeper into the state tournament. If more kids wrestle, the better off we are. I'm not sure how hard that is to understand. Overall the classed team event has helped about 15-20 programs in each class. Classed individual state will affect every team. Youth programs are not the only magic bullet either. Most schools have some form of a youth program, just look at the ISWA list.

Yeah...but they have an unfair advantage in that they have an established program and culture that's taken 50+ years to build and maintain.

What an individual classed tournament gives small schools is a foothold to sell all of that hard work. At our school, we have had two state champions. One was a guy who was 275 pounds and still athlete enough to run the 200m dash on our track team. The other was literally the best athlete in the history of our school. My point is, not people I can walk up to the average kid walking the hallway and say, "hey, just do what he did!" The class wrestling foothold gives us a chance to have more wrestlers of reasonable athletic ability who have put in the work show success, thus making the work more of a selling point. This in turn leads to more success, etc.

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.

Mater Dei by no means should be classified as a small school.

I showed three programs that were shut down within the last two years. We have had up to 312 programs at sectional and are down to 306 this year. Program drops will not happen all in one year, but would happen over the course of 10-15 years. No one really seems to care about Wood Memorial or Blue River Valley not having programs.

At the end of the day, I think most of us recognize that being from a small school means it is more likely that a wrestler has a more difficult path to success at the state level. Some of us are OK with that, and some of us worry that discrepancy will have long-term negative consequences on the future of the sport in our state. As I have said before, from the perspective of my athletes and my own kids in a vacuum, I am just fine with the current system. However, from a more global perspective of the sport state-wide, our current system really worries me.

21.70% of the population is at small schools, so that mutiplied by 14 is 3.04, so 3 state champions per year. 18 state champions in 11 years is 1.6 champions per year 1.6 divided by 3 is .545 or 54.5% I even rounded up If everyone were allowed 20(or another big magical number) of entries it would likely not affect the number of champs. It would have a small affect on the top four and even top eight placers. However, the further you go down the line, the more of an impact there would be. It would definitely affect state qualifiers as we can all name 10 backups that would be in the mix to go to state every year and some years more. It would affect semi-state qualifiers, regional qualifiers and so on. Give the top programs more qualifiers for sectional and it would get even worse for the smaller schools. When you keep stating the statistics should follow the school population you are basically saying that the system is setup to screw the small schools and that you don't care. Telling someone, hey just go to an academy and you'll be better is a nice underhanded comment to say "just work harder" because you obviously are a lazy POS. The system is broke, we have lost 25% of our athletes over the past 15 years. We have almost doubled the amount of forfeits at sectional. Those are NOT good numbers at all! We are losing wrestling programs and they aren't big school programs. As I have asked and no one has seemed to answer: What would it take for you to acknowledge there is a problem and there needs to be MAJOR changes? 1. Losing 25 programs 2. Losing 50 programs 3. Losing 100 programs 4. 5 forfeits per team 5. 7 forfeits per team 6. Dropping below 5000 athletes 7. Dropping below 4000 athletes No one will answer this question because their head is buried in the sand saying there are no problems with our system. Trying to claim everything is fine, yet the numbers show differently!

Good luck with that Galagore. And I don't mean that in any sarcastic way. But you are fighting an up hill battle, and I'm sure it must feel like you are talking to a wall when dealing with the IHSAA powers that be.

Trust me he will have all the input and final decisions! I am hoping for more than a stock catalog ring.

Joey Hannan at new Castle will be tough!

I think most (self included) agree that they love our single class system. However, what I love and what is best for our sport are two separate entities in my mind. A two class system would help preserve the sport, and that is what I love about it.

Another great match for Sollars and Mater Dei. Gabe has wanted this since his freshman season. He watched Matt Lee win his freshman year and Blake Boarman and Eli Dickens get one of their own last season. I think he decided it was his turn. He is alot of fun to watch. CONGRATULATIONS GABE!!!!!

The Sollars used to live up here and train in TheCounty. They moved south. I saw Mr. And Mrs. Sollars at a meet at EMD after the move. They are genuinely the nicest people that I have ever met... I mean... so nice of that if you didn’t know them you would think that nobody is that nice. Mr.Sollars expressed that fact that it has always been his dream to own a hog farm. Dude bought a hog farm! With all of that said.... Gabe is the nicest hog farm country boy in all of southern Indiana. County strong from the nicest family out there. Well deserved title champ!!!