Hornet

138 has to be the deepest weight-class.. I agree with the top 4 (including Grammer) but they are going to have to earn it, just about everyone has a talented kid at 138. Carden was impressive at Twin Lakes this past weekend. Layer (Cass) deserves a mention at 145. Like Wrestling Scholar said, another deep weight-class.

I believe Tsirtsis and Short wrestled in the finals at Fargo a few years back..

Rossville has wrestled both Lapel and Faith Christian this year.. Are you sure this list of dropped programs is accurate?

As always, the referee's at Harrison did an awesome job throughout the tourney.. I bet I heard my team say 20 times "man these Refs are good". Kudos to Harrison for making sure we had top notch officiating. There are always going to be judgment calls that Coaches want to argue, but overall I thought the officiating clinic was almost as good as the wrestling.

I think the Frankfort Times has done a fantastic job recently with all of the county wrestling teams. Last year our County and Conference matches were "headliners".. On the other hand, in my opinion, the Lafayette J&C is horrible at covering wrestling. Just this past weekend there were 2 tournaments (Jeff and Harrison) that received little to no coverage that I saw. I actually purchased a paper on Sunday to get individual results and there were only a few box scores from Jeff, nothing I couldn't have pulled from this website.

Pat Easterday Asst Coach Rossville

Rossville is now looking for a new Middle School Head Coach. If you are interested please contact the Rossville AD, Bob Knapp at rknapp@rcsd.k12.in.us or 765 379-2552, ext 301. Rossville is pleased to announce that our new High School Head Coach is Billy Birge, originally from Frankfort. We are excited to welcome Billy, his brother Josh, and Brett Vaughn (assist coach) into our program.

Rossville is looking for a Head Wrestling Coach again this year.. We have a very solid, young, team that had a lot of success last year. Also, several good MS kids moving up that are varsity ready. If you are interested in applying for the position contact the Rossville Athletic Director, Bob Knapp: Phone - 765 379-2551 ext. 301 email - rknapp@rcsd.k12.in.us

I've been against the idea of a classed individual tournament for a long time, but I have to say that after seeing the stats and the arguments made on this topic I'm being more open minded to the idea. I coach a small 1A school and I can tell you that our school has to literally pick which sport(s) they want to be competitive in, I believe other 1A programs are the same way. One reason we don't have football is because if we did there would be no kids playing tennis, cross-country, or soccer. Also, it is not uncommon for me to hear other small team coaches complain about trying to compete with Basketball because their school wants all the "talent" on the court (to win a 1A title). If there was a bigger carrot dangling out there for 1A schools they might get more support for wrestling from the school. You have to admit that this topic is an interesting concept that just might give 1A wrestlers more motivation.

Does "class" individual wrestling help the sport at the college level? I have my opinion but I thought I'd throw it out there. I had a "moment of clarity" last night while watching Iowa vs. Wisconsin on B10 network.. Would it be fair if teams like U-Indy and Wabash had to compete in the same individual tourney as Big 10 teams? Are Div-II national champions less proud of their accomplishment because they didn't get to be on ESPN like the Div-I champs? Smaller college's have the same type of competitive issues that small high schools have in relation to bigger programs. Less of a recruiting base, lower quality facilities, less experianced coaching, smaller budget, etc.. Not trying to dog any Div-II programs, I'm just trying to make a realistic comparision vs. using another sport like Basketball.

I think that wrestling on the knees and funking out (leg pass) was made popular by the PA kids. If you go back and watch PA state on Flo from a few years ago you will see a lot of the same trends you saw this past weekend. IMO we are just catching up with PA and following their fads, same as injury time-outs (water break).

One last reply on this topic.. Like I said earlier, I coach a small 1A school, one of the smallest. the kids on my team are very talented, work hard, listen to instructions, and have a lot of fun with the sport. But, I believe the main reasons that none of them are competing tonight are: - None of them are extremely gifted naturally. - They don't work hard enough in the off-season. - Very few of them have any ISWA/HYWAY/Club experiance and those that do don't have much. - Most don't have a great enough passion for the sport. - Those that have the passion don't get the proper support at home. None of these reasons have to do with us being a 1A school. Granted, the larger the school the more access kids have to clubs/camps etc.. But, if any one of my wrestlers really wanted to get to state they could do it barring injury. You've just got to have the proper commitment, the kids competing tonight have paid the price of admission. Check out Jeff Scott, 1A school, won semi-state.. We don't need a classed individual state, we just need to get more kids to love wrestling enough to be willing to pay the price.

I attended a camp at Michigan back in-the-day and I remember Zeke Jones asking how many of the kids in our group were state qualifiers.. Most of the kids were from Michigan (classed) so almost everyone, except my team-mate and I, raised their hand that they were a state qualifier. I recall thinking about how there was a tournament at the end of the camp and I was going to get crushed due to all of the "state" caliber kids. Later, during he tournament I destroyed several of the Michigan "state" kids without issue, I was a Regional qualifier in Indiana. At that time I remember thinking that classed wrestling was stupid, being a "state qualifier" should mean something. I now help coach at a very small 1A school, we haven't had anyone make it to state in several years. I can tell you that for us the classed team state is a very big deal. One of our main goals is to make it someday and place as a 1A school. So, I still feel that the one-class individual state is ideal, our state qualifiers and champs need to be the cream of the crop. But, the classed team model has given small schools something to strive for, and someday when we get an individual back to state they will be "special"..

Not that I think this makes a significant difference to the end result, but I believe that Rossville is being undervalued by the current 1A ranking.. This past season we lost by 1 match to Lewis Cass and Clinton Central (twice), we also beat Fountain Central and several "big" schools. To top it off our entire varsity lineup returns next year with the addition of some good freshman. I'm not sure if you have all of our information, but I feel like we should be ranked higher than the current scenario shows.