gstemv81

In 1996: Antoine Neal, Lawrence North. Actually, this discussion is incomplete without considering all the outstanding wrestlers who got left by the wayside back in the day (early 1980s) when only the top TWO qualified for state, and only the top two qualified for semi-state.

Y2 - Sorry if I miscounted the teams listed in your link. I could have sworn your third class in a 3A had 79! I can assure you all my mistakes are accidental. By the way, I think you have a great site and I don't mean to give you a hard time about class wrestling because its the only thing we disagree on. I have to admit that class wrestling isn't the worst idea in the world - it's just not a great one either! Maybe the pros are only slightly outweighed by the cons in class wrestling. Considering that IHSAA won't treat wrestling any differently from other individual sports like track or swimming I just don't see any point in expending any energy on the idea if its not clear that its a clear improvement on the current arrangement. What I do know is that our state series (both team and individual) is outstanding in every way, and I think the kids would agree with me. Blackshirt - one heck of a post! I hope everyone reads it. Too many folks only have a vague notion of what the consequences of going to multi-class would be.

I doubt that class wrestling would bring more fans. We might get more "homer" fans because junior qualified for small school state but we'll lose a lot of real fans who won't show up for a watered down event. There's no evidence that class wrestling would produce more scholarship money for otherwise unrecognized wrestlers. This money is pretty much only available for D1 schools that want to see national success at Fargo, etc. D2 and D3 tend to be more walk on. Assuming that college scouts would discover a kid at small school state that they would otherwise overlook at single-class semi-state is a stretch. Scouts are savvy and know what they're looking for. In a multi-class system, the scout's job of evaluating potential recruits is just made harder not easier because it's trickier to figure out if a kid has legit college potential or not. Single class actually produces clarity. To put it another way, a scout might look at a small school kid with a 25-5 regular season record and not be sure he is college material unless the kid qualifies for semi-state or state in single class. In class wrestling this same 25-5 kid may not get any credit in a scout's eyes for qualifying for small school state. What Indiana needs is more in-state college wrestling opportunities. No amount of class wrestling will fix not having more open slots.

SEMI-FINAL RESULTS: Mishawaka 41- Perry Meridian 15 Yorktown 30 - Castle 27 FINALS: Mishawaka - Yorktown

So out of state schools will be fooled into recruiting a small school state champ with a 30-10 record? Let's get specific. Which kids THIS YEAR might get overlooked or "underrecruited" who otherwise would be recruited because they would have been a small school placewinner? How about last year? Let's have names! It seems to me that we need more in-state Indiana college wrestling. Y2 says that IHSAA would handle the logistics of a multi-class state series for individual and teams. But what does that mean? I think it means we would kiss Conseco (and the lights) goodbye. The "new and improved" 3-day state meet will be a glorified summer ISWA tourney. The numbers in Y2's enrollment charts don't add up. Out of 285 schools he shows a 3-class system breakdown of 103 each for the top two classes and only 79 for the bottom class. This is a big deal because it determines the bubble teams. With Y2's chart the smallest three teams in class 2 would be Fairfield (558), Indianapolis Washington (563) and Evansville Mater Dei (564). It looks like Alexandria (545) is the biggest school in class 1. I'll bet Fairfield and Alexandria didn't know they are the bubble teams! Good for Alexandria, sucks to be Fairfield. This is what I mean by balkanizing Indiana wrestling. However, if the three classes are divided evenly MD would be in the small school division. Who determined the class divisions? Is anybody making the case for classing the catholic schools? That way MD, Cathedral and Roncalli, etc. can be in their own little parallel universe and not beat down on the poor public schools. As far as I know only New Jersey does this on account of Blair Academy. Our individual and team state series are outstanding as they are. In particular, individual state is truly something special and unduplicated almost anywhere else in the country. The kids know its the real deal. We see enough liberal social engineering fantasies coming out of Washington D.C. - no need to replicate it here in Indiana.

None of my questions from page 4 (bottom) of this thread have been answered. How are we going to run a 3-day state tournament with 12 mats at Conseco? Do we want to run 3 state championship matches at one time? (no lights) For team state, is Garrett small enough to be in the small school division and win team regional every year without beating Bellmont or Yorktown? (where are the cutoffs?) Is there a small team (-600 say) in the state that can hold MD to under 65 in a dual? - or score 15? Indiana is one big happy wrestling community. ;D Let's keep it that way!

Since we're all about hypotheticals, what would the cutoffs be in a three class system and which teams would magically fall right below that cutoff? I have a hunch that Garrett just might wind up being a top dog in the small schools of northern Indiana with Bellmont and Yorktown in the middle of the pack of midsize schools. (I'm just being ornery here - I'm sure Y2 sincerely believes in class wrestling regardless of convenient coincidences.) Are there any small schools under 600 enrollment that can hold MD to under 65-70 in a dual? Is this what we want every year? As for individual state do we want to see a state tourney run over 3 days and 12 mats? Do we want to see 3 championship matches going at the same time? As far as I know Conseco only has one overhead spotlight!

With class wrestling one thing that never comes up is the "balkanization" that would happen to the wrestling community. I don't like the idea of segregating teams and having to pay attention to who is in what class, etc. As for 8 teams getting more "media exposure" - is it earned? This media exposure comes AT THE EXPENSE of the top eight who have earned it. Put differently, the top 8 at Team State have EARNED the undivided attention of ALL wrestling fans in the State of Indiana, and all real fans of wrestling would be at ONE SITE on that weekend at Center Grove. Yes, I'm saying that all those "fans" who stay home because they don't have a kid/team competing aren't real fans - they're "homers." The segregating of schools by class would create a new issue for small school State. Every year the final would be MD vs. whoever. How boring would that be? Mater Dei may be down the last couple of years but they would still score 60+ in a dual against any small school team in the state, at least for awhile. Depending on the cutoff, only a Yorktown could compete with MD. However, Yorktown is a real team with a great tradition. This weekend they get to go after Castle and Mishawaka. Would they want it any other way? So, if Yorktown is small enough to meet the cutoff they wrestle MD every year, year in and year out for a meaningless small school state title. If they're above the cutoff they have the opportunity to take on real competition while no one will care what MD does - not even their fans. I imagine that in that event MD will continue to decline and they will never be back. A divided team state series would just create new dominant team scenarios. In the Southland (without MD) it would be Castle and Evansville Reitz for the team regional every year.

I have a question: were any tapes made of matches other than the finals? There was live videofeed of ALL matches at State shown all day last Saturday. If no tapes were made, why not? I wanted to see Roach(CP)-Sims(EMD) Saturday morning but I mistakenly thought I was stuck with the Mat 1 matches all day ( I didn't figure out until later that I could switch to other mats). So how did Roach and Sims match up? All I know is Roach won 7-3.

OK, I've been watching the live webcast all day at ihsaasports.org/live_video_webcast/wrestling with no problems thru the consolations. Then it went OFFLINE and still shows offline after 7:30pm. Does anyone know if the finals will be webcasted or do you have to be a paying customer, ticket in hand at Conseco, to see the finals?

I hope its not about class wrestling... :-X

2003 - Evansville Mater Dei had 8 placers - 4 champs, 1 runnerup, 2 3rds (I think) and a 6th.

Pinned through state series - sectional -regional-state 1974 Sam Lamb (Evansville Bosse) at 132 lbs. theckman can confirm.

One thing about the crowds, it has to be remembered that Conseco is a different venue. MSA atmosphere just had a different feel. Maybe its Conseco's multi-tiered seating. MSA was pretty much all one level.

171 - Josh Boots, EMD dec. Andy Wiseman, Penn 7-6. Evansville SS #4 over Merrillville SS #1

Why would anyone have a problem with binoculars? You'll need them in the balcony! When taping is banned it is either because private tapes cut into revenue from lost official tape sales (think IHSAA) or taping WRESTLERS OTHER THAN YOURS for scouting purposes gives an unfair advantage relative to those individuals/teams who don't have the means to go scouting and taping on their own. Bigtime programs supposedly have enough advantages as it is, and allowing taping (assuming they have equipment and surplus fans/volunteers to travel and tape for scouting purposes) would only add to their edge. It least that was how it was explained to me.

Evansville Mater Dei also got 11 through to State in 1996, with 10 in the Semi-State championship matches. All 14 had qualified from Castle Regional and all 14 won first round at Seymour Semi-State. MD had 5 champs, 5 runnersup, and 1 3rd, with the other 3 losing in the ticket round.