Leaderboard

NO ONE WANTS TO SIT ON WOODEN BENCHES FOR 2 DAYS

Respectfully disagree. Smalls schools and large schools are not playing the same game. The gap between the games they're playing grows wider every year.

Our first RTC of the 2023 off-season was hot out of the gates. Over 50 total in wrestlers and coaches. We were joined by 10 state qualifiers, 4 of those were placers, and 1 state champion. Coach Zack Johansen brought a great group all the way from Hobart, Midwest RTC’s Chris Fleeger was in the house with the young New Prairie studs, Jimtown’s SQ’s, Crown Point’s Orlando Cruz, Elkhart hammers, Wawasee SQ Salazar, Marian and head coach Wes LaFluer, & SB Riley all represented tonight. Our goal is to keep building this room one week at a time to benefit northern Indiana and southern Michigan wrestlers

Bethel wins the “best to never place” battle, but it pretty difficult to put a “never placed” wrestler ahead of guys who made the semis 3+ times.

Opportunity for Indianamat to sell some branded gorilla cushions...

It would be lovely to keep debating, but for now, I have to go help with MS wrestling practice. Maybe next year I will decide to truly work hard and go for it, but for now, the Cavs are stuck with my half-hearted efforts...

Thank you. So thus if you are generating stats based on school size is that really fair? Even though Carmel has 5000 students only 14 get to wrestle at sectional, yet you are including the other 4984+ students your stats. Your stats seem skewed to the point that bigger schools get more entries, but in reality they get the same number of entries as the smaller schools.

Is it too late to just say this is bullpucky that we even have to move it? It's what contracts are meant for. I would like to see the clause that says. "If there is something better that weekend you guys can't have it." What lawyer looked at the contract that was originally signed or who created the contract? Did the IHSAA at least get some kick back for being thrown out next year or at least a discount for the year after? I hope so because it is just bad business. Don't worry about the loyal 13000 wrestling fans that have supported your facility and downtown district for many decades.

Hoosier Heritage Conference Had 14 total State Finalists, 9 total state placers,4 being Semi finalists with 1 State champ!!! Not too shabby at all! @106 /3rd,6th,SQ @120 /4th,8th,SQ @126/ State champ @138/ 6th @145/4th, SQ, SQ @170/8th @220/5th, SQ,

Just want to congratulate everyone on their awards, and thank Joe, Mike, and everyone else on team IndianaMat for the amazing coverage you provide for our sport. Thank You Coach Lorek

And set up chiropractor sessions for the next 2 months with gas money saved!!

You got options in Mackey: 1. Use the gas money saved to buy tickets in Purdue Club section and get stadium seats and near the action. 2. If they go general admission, then used that saved driving time to get their early and get club stadium sheets. 3. Use saved gas money to buy Goriila cushion from Indianamat. I heard Joe's marketing dept is putting this together. 4. Buy a Beaver cushion from Rookie78 with saved gas money. 5. Buy a boiler cushion at gift store with saved gas money.

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

I’m sure those kids work extremely hard. And I think they should continue to do so because I think anything is possible on the individual level. I think even the dying programs could be revived if they established a good culture and used that to build a strong youth program

Let's get a DAC vs HCC dual going this off-season.

Mr. Football was from a 2A school. Jack Kiser was a 1A player, Jaylon Smith was 2A. The position award winner for QB this year was 2A.

The best linebacker (John Purdy) and best running back (Luke Hansen) were both state placers. You don’t have to be a single sport athlete to be successful

Like I said above, I don't disagree. But I don't think that's a reason to class the individual state wrestling tournament based on school size.

Pretty much. The individual state championships are not being arbitrarily handed out based on the size of the school you attend.

These 2 things go together. Will Sheridan have chairs with cushions? If so I vote for it and that will help my butt.

Secondly, your state series realignment is great, however the IHSAA is very much tied down to who is willing and WANTS to host a state series event. The semi-states are not going to change location any time soon, so you need to draw the lines based on them and then move inward.

As far has hosting State, yes. State should be located to lower the over all amount of travel as possible. By having it in Evansville you'll be asking a good chuck of the state to increase traveling to state by anywhere from 1 to 3 hours more than they already travel. The fact is State should be in Indy but if it can't the goal should be to keep it as close to Indy as possible. As stated theres a hand full of teams that compete in the Evansville Semi-State that are close to Mackey than the Ford Center.

Zingerman’s Deli is outstanding!!

Fair point.

I’m surprised no one hasn’t said Austin Bethel yet. Four-time state qualifier who beat both Brayton and Joe Lee and immediately was an All-American as a true freshman at Wabash.

Not the case this year, at semi state. Hardly knew they were there. (Except at the scorers tables)

Is Evansville in Indiana????

I may be biased, as I’m part of the Gorilla Crew and have only frequented college wrestling boards otherwise, but there’s a reason this website has an award-winning reputation. Joe has made this forum better and better over time, and it’s still easily standing the test of time against the social media era, which as Joe said above, hasn’t been great for message boards. But yet I, and many others, are still daily-or-near users even in the off-season. Simply put, we are absolutely blessed with this board. Joe and the other OGs have built something that just keeps getting better. All of our rankers work their asses off to try and give an accurate product. And all the regular users just coming on to hype up their kid or school, or even just discuss wrestling because they love the sport, make for a great experience. In my time on the IM staff(roughly 7 years), my ranking position has progressively transformed from “this is a cool side-job, hope I do well” to “this is something I take a lot of pride in, and I want to do a good job for myself, the website, and the kids who look forward to them.” I’ve been recognized out at a bar before because I was wearing Indianamat gear. Indianamat has surpassed a normal forum at this point, we’re a full community.

Add in that this was the first time in I think 40 years that Portage didn’t have a qualifier. If based on rankings by the expert @ontherise219 DAC: 35 ranked HCC: 28 Ranked Very close, but I think DAC has the edge in tournaments and possibly duals. Merrillville was a really good team this year both duals and tournaments, and lost to Portage. Portage had a tough team. Chesterton and Zionsville have beat each other in tournaments. Zionsville took 2nd at HCC, Chesterton took 4th at DAC.

Believe me I would rather drive 10 minutes to the Fort Wayne Coliseum, but if it means more comfort while watching the state series, I would rather go to the Ford Center than sit on wooden benches at Mackey. I think Mackey would be a neat venue but I can not imagine sitting on wooden benches for 3 sessions of wrestling!!

I can't begin to respond to the whole thing, but here's the basics: 1) The IHSAA will NOT change Sectionals/Regionals/Semi-states just because one is loaded with talent. 2) I drew one up a couple years ago keeping same venues as hosts, but shuffling based on school sizes alone and balancing that out (since presently FW has only 2 4A schools), but mine, like most others, fell flat because ultimately any time one person does this, we look at it from a skewed lens of whatever benefits the teams/area we root for. Examining the rezoning above, it is clear you definitely mean that school size doesn't matter at all when designing these Sectionals. Sectionals 3, 4, and 5 each have just one larger school (3 has Harrison, 4 has 3A McCutcheon, 5 has Lafayette Jeff) but Sectional 6 gets Noblesville, HSE, Fishers, Carmel, Zionsville, AND Westfield. But don't worry Clinton Central and Sheridan kids still have just as good a chance because school size doesn't matter! We'll see what changes will come about, but my guess is 10-15 schools max will change sectionals, maybe half that change Regionals or Semi-State. In any case, it will take a committee of people to ensure there's no bias, or at least limit it.

So you’re saying only big schools can have elite athletes? I don’t think that’s necessarily accurate

Plus a lineman going to Iowa which is a HUGE accomplishment and indicates a big commitment to football to get to that level

No one wants to sit in a car for 4 - 5 hours to see their kid lose to the #1 kid in the State on Friday. And then sit in a car for 4-5 hours again on Saturday.

I don’t know the exact number but I know for a fact at least 3 state champions are multi-sport athletes so they would not be wrestling all year round

North Vermillion head coach: Robby Davis, 2x regional qualifier. Brownsburg head coach: Darrick Snyder, state placer and D3 national qualifier. Coaches are not always limited by their own success but their track record especially when one coach has 18 years more head coaching experience. There also is not many RTCs or other wrestling training facilities nearby to Vermillion County but I believed there will be as Indiana and even Illinois wrestling continue to grow.

Qualifiers, Placers, Finalists, Champs Adams Central 89 34 6 1 Ben Davis 110 58 19 13 North Central 88 49 20 10 Fishers 18 9 2 2 Fishers has only been a school since 2007, so the stats are very deceiving. Even in the short 15 years they have double the amount of state champions that Adams Central has. North Central, while having one less state qualifier overall, has 10x the amount of state champions and 2.5x the amount of finalists. Ben Davis kicks AC's butt overall.

I get it, EMD loses the homefield advantage. But we can make offset that disadvantage by agreeing to have the EMD table workers work the clock and scoreboard.

Lets's just have it in that corn field north of Sheridan so no one gets butt hurt.

The SIAC conference had: 9 qualifiers 8 placers 5 semifinalists 4 finalists 1 champ

Finally

Just got word we are hosting it in Columbus Ohio for 1 year only. IHSAA wants to see how far schools really will travel to look at instituting a new travel rule to put in place. Heard Evansville, West Lafayette, Louisville, St. Louis, & Detroit just missed out!

You're not opening the Wrestling Scholar Bed and Breakfast with all you can eat tacos? You're missing out on a great opportunity!

Better reserve a room in the Lafayette area now, or you guys might be staying at the "Lincoln Lodge Hotel". I dont think they're a Priceline Insurance affiliate. Because the insurance cost more then the hotel room.

Purdue threw their hat into the ring late in the process per what I gathered while at the IHSAA. It sounded as if they had a location ready to finalize and Purdue made a strong late push that the IHSAA is considering.

I saw Joe eating breakfast at the Hotel during state finals weekend. I wanted to go up to him and let him know what an awesome job he is doing. But decided that he should not be bothered when he is with his family. So I'll say it here, Joe you do an unbelievable job with this website. I don't post much but there is hardly a day that goes by that I am not on here. The information I gather from here is incredible. Keep up the great work. Congrats on 15 years and many more.

Gridiron Digest forums took a hit when someone created a Facebook group called something like Indiana High School Football fans. I'm grateful for Indianamat. It's got to be a top 3 high school forums/website in the nation.

One of our neighboring states used to have a very lively board, but it petered out and put all of its season-specific info under a paywall. Joe has endured much for little and added a lot for less. I will be forever grateful.

Well as @Y2CJ41 would say there is a website for that ... but I'll save everyone sometime. I liked the idea of a Final score that @purdue02 came up with. I kept this list to people who finished with a final of 30 or less. State Qualifier = 16 Starting with the Original best to not win Ralph Clark- East Chicago Roosevelt 2,3,2,3 final score (10) Shannon Stout- Delta 6,5,2,3 Final score (16) Damon Hummel- Rochester SQ,2,2,3 Final score (23) Mac Taylor- New Castle 6,5,3,3 Final score (17) Tim Maldonado- East Chicago Central 4,SQ,6,2 Final score (28) Robert Maldonado- East Chicago Central 4,SQ,2,3 Final score (25) Randy Baker- Bellmont 3,3,6,7 Final score (19) Andy Uhl- East Noble SQ,4,3,2 Final score (25) Matt Jaggers- New Castle SQ,5,7,2 Final score (30) Craig Macke- Evansville Mater Dei 4,2,2,3 Final score (11) Tyler Goble- Bloomington South 4,5,5,SQ Final score (30) Kyle Mosier- Yorktown SQ,4,4,3 Final score (27) Justin Brooks- Warsaw 5,4,4,5 Final score (18) Derek Bevans- Yorktown SQ,5,6,3 Final score (30) Justin Kieffer- Roncalli 7,7,4,3 Final score (21) Josh Kieffer- Roncalli 5,2,4,2 Final score (13) John Sims- Evansville Mater Dei 6,4,5,2 Final score (17) Tyler Willis- Indianapolis Cathedral 7,2,3,4 Final score (16) Connor Mullins- New Castle 5,3,2,8 Final score (18) Luke Welch- Castle SQ,5,5,2 Final score (28) Zachary Davis- Penn SQ,6,2,2 Final score (26) Vincent Corsaro- Indianapolis Cathedral 6,2,2,2 Final score (12) Chandler Carroll- Yorktown 3,5,4,5 Final score (17) Ben Harvey- Indianapolis Cathedral 7,3,SQ,2 Final score (28) Brandon James- Perry Meridian 3,5,2,3 Final score (13) Connor Knapp- East Noble SQ,4,3,4 Final score (27) Gunnar Larson- Avon SQ,5,2,3 Final score (26) Tristen Tonte- Warren Central SQ,2,2,2 Final score (22) Skylour Turner- Warren Central 8,7,5,5 Final score (25) Gleason Mappes- Center Grove SQ,4,4,2 Final score (26) Kasper McIntosh- Portage 8,2,5,6 Final score (21) Christian Hunt- Yorktown 6,SQ,2,2 Final score (26) Ty Mills- Brownsburg 2,3,2,3 Final score (10) Nathan Walton- Brownsburg 8,3,3,2 Final score (16) Alex Mosconi- Indianapolis Cathedral SQ,7,2,2 Final score (27) Logan Boe- Danville 8,5,7,3 Final score (23) Mason Winner- Jay County 7,8,5,5 Final score (25) Drake Campbell- Brownsburg 5,5,6,5 Final score (21) Raymond Rioux- Avon 6,3,2,2 Final score (13) David Pierson- Warren Central 4,5,4,4 Final score (17) Ian Heath- Leo SQ,5,6,3 Final score (30) Brock Ellis- Chesterton SQ,4,5,2 Final score (27) Aiden Warren- Perry Meridian SQ,3,3,3 Final score (25) Isaac Ruble- Bellmont SQ,2,2,5 Final score (25) Delaney Ruhlman- Bloomington South SQ,2,2,2 Final score (22) Cheaney Schoeff- Avon 2,2,3,3 Final score (10) This list should (mathematically at least) bring some light to the conversation. I loved going through the old records and reliving some of these moments/ careers.