Wait. Wait. Wait. I didn't claim it as mine and that's why I put it in quotations. I should have put "Unkown" or something. Still, it's a great quote. I wasn't sure who said it at the time and I'm not so sure I'm closer to knowing but thanks for giving me some direction, Charles Kendall Francis Adams.
Nevertheless, although I'm a little fuzzy on all the IHSAA State finalist this year, I look at the Fargo roster and I don't see all of the familiar faces I saw at Conseco. Although I'm just now starting to dig my heels back in to Indiana H.S. wrestling, at first glance it seems that there are so many regional and national tournaments Indiana is trying to fill rosters for, Fargo has unfortunately gotten watered down. I could be way off though.
In my experience, it was almost a given that all of the State finalist wrestled at Fargo. In '95 for example, I recall we were loaded with most of Indiana's top wrestlers: Leavell, Cassidy, Deters, Hill, Brimm, Kerkhoff, and host of other 1x, 2x, and 3x state champions and state placers. Like I said, it was almost a given. Interestingly enough though, Indiana still only had a couple of AA's that year.
I think the level of elite wrestlers coming out of Indiana has slowly but surely increased over time since then, however, with more Indiana wrestlers making legitimate strides at making a name for themselves nationally (Howe, Escobedo, Humphry, Tsirtsis, etc.) We're definately on the right track but we do have to make some adjustments in the upcoming years to raise the bar.
I do know of others staes, like Illinois and Pennsylvania for example, that seem to have a higher quantity of successful collegiate wrestlers that coach at the high school level. I don't have time to do the numbers but, I bet if someone did, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some disparities. Maybe someone or some committee could analyze the issues that "The One" shed light on and I bet we'd find out some interesting trends.
Either way, congratulations to Team Indiana for representing us as well as they did! Although we did not walk away with more medals, everyone got some good exposure and there will be some wrestlers who participated that will use this opportunity and be that much stronger next year.