headlock83

Track wrestling sucks. It’s great when it works. But it is definitely hit or miss. I have seen Track Wrestling completely ruin several awesome tournaments because of the stand stills and down time. I have seen several tournaments have to switch to bout cards in the middle of a tournament which extended it like 2 hours. Not to mention 10 dollars for a subpar stream or one that never works is pure crap. You won’t see that money again.

I was actually on the same side of the argument as you or at least I thought. Not a good call was the point. Not sure what your point is. So, I say again HUH!

Huh?

Well said Dad. I don't know you, but it almost brought tears to my eyes. Your boy seems like an awesome kid. I'm guessing the he gets it honestly.

I don't know if I would have called the pin, but let's face it, the tilt does come with some degree of risk. I saw him almost do it in an earlier match either Friday or Saturday morning. Too bad.

I get it. It would be a lot fun to see the region get shut down at the state tournament due to some of the region arrogance that surfaces from time to time. Not to mention nobody likes to see the same winners all the time. It is fun to see giants fall. However, if you do the math, they still won more than their share of championships and got like 24 of the 28 placers they would have needed for their share of the medals. Down a little from past years? Yes for sure, but it took a long time for this person to finally get to make this statement LOL. Region boys as a whole did not wrestle well and some strange things happened like Poynter getting hurt, and Fattore pinning himself. Maybe Mudflap was the bus driver that kept the buses running Friday night and early Saturday morning! Just saying.

That's all I saw.

You are correct in the sense that I don't know what he said if anything, but I watched the entire celebration and saw nothing worthy of the call. Now, if he threw in a celebratory F bomb, I get it. But since the officials calling the match did nothing, I'm guessing it wasn't for profanity. Still don't get it.

I am by no means a fan of Portage wrestling or their fans. However, I have a problem with the ULC call against Peele at the conclusion of his 120 championship against Triana. After the buzzer sounded, Peele did a celebration where he simulated snuffing out a cigarette butt with his foot. The two officials calling the match didn't make any call on it. An official in the chairs took offence to it and made the unsportsman like call. Granted, Portage was so far ahead, they could have deducted 40 points and it wouldn't have made a difference. My point is, what constitutes a celebration going too far. Peele didn't stand over his opponent in a taunting way, and I saw nothing too unsportsman like. I personally think it was an emotional call based on the success Portage was having yesterday. I fail to see a difference in what this kid did and the many kids I have seen throw their ankle bands in the air and simulating shooting them with a gun, or doing a back flip. The kid was happy he had won and celebrated. The rules either need to be more clear, or all forms of celebration should be banned which would be ridiculous. I didn't get the call. If that point would have meant the difference of a team championship, this would have been an atomic bomb of a topic. On a side note, Portage did show up to wrestle. I haven't seen semi state domination like that since the Snyder coached Michawaka days.

Purdue would never let us in, but Mackey would be the best place to hold the semi state. Not a bad seat and tons of room. East Chicago is too far from everyone involved. They have a ton of room, but lets's face it, unless you hang on the railing of one small side of the gym, the view sux. Travel would suck for the region boys to come all the way to Lafayette though. I do think that this amazing tournament needs a better venue. Sorry ECC, you guys run a good tournament, I am just not a fan of the gym. Just my opinion.

Yeah, I really like this kid too. He is the only one I didn't predict to make it through last year as well. Unfortunately, I don't think he will beat the Mish kid first round. Even if he does, the Portage with 8 losses is much better than his record shows. I saw him wrestle a couple tough matches in sectional and regional on the facebook broadcast. I don't think Jake will make it back this year. I would have liked his chances better if he would have won last weekend. I think the Jeff kid's draw would have been a little better maybe, but I don't think he would have beaten Tolin either though. I hope I am wrong again about this kid.

Okay, I'll play along. I always do. First I want to say leave it to good ol classy Mudflap to use his annual "Leave the Bus Running" topic because that offensive remark never gets old. However, in concept I always agree with the facts. But for the record, I'm a bit offended by the toothless Lafayette Farmer comment even though I have to admit it made me laugh. I'm guessing the Flap doesn't have a lot of room to talk, because from my experience, the dentistry doesn't look much better in the region. Enough of that, I have some thoughts on a few things. I was pretty dead on last year, so let's see what I got this year. I am actually giving the Logan Regional 4 state qualifiers this year. No winners. At 106- I really like the Reagan kid from Frontier. He is a real solid wrestler even though schedule is weak. He got a good draw, I say 4th place. 113- Patrick from Jeff is fair, but I don't see him beating Tolin from Chest. 120- I like the Hickman kid from Ren. but he got Peele from Portage in ticket round. Sorry. 126- Burge from McCutch. got what looks like a good draw, but I don't see him beating the LaPorte kid in ticket round. 132- In my opinion, this Betourne kid from Harrison is by far and away the best wrestler to walk out of the Logan reg. this year. This kid was good last year, but relied on muscle too much. He has improved a ton! Total stud. If he doesn't get through, nobody from Logan will! I hope he makes it to the championship match, I want to see him wrestle the Bryant kid from Culver Acad. 138- Linder from McCutch got what looks like a fair draw, but his ticket round match has guys with a grittier schedule, I say nope. 145-The Douglas kid from Attica looks good for a young kid from a tiny school, but lack of schedule strength again will be his doom. Also, in the regional championship match, he didn't show much technical skill or motion. 152- The Ruble kid from McCutch looked good, but I don't see him being able to get past the Hobart kid. I might be wrong on this one, but I say nope. 160- Adkins from Jeff got a good draw, but he got a seasoned Merr kid in the ticket round. Merr. kids always rise to the occasion at semi state. I say nope. 170- Broken record, but McCutch kid Lopez is going to suffer due to schedule strength. Even if he beats the Merr kid, I don't see him getting past the Crown Point kid. 182- The Seeger kid looks okay, but he won't get past the Crown Point kid. I thought the Pugh kid from Twin Lakes might make a splash, but he didn't show up in the regional championship, so he got a crappy draw. So I say nope. 195-The Benton Central kid got screwed on the draw. He looks good, but the Schoonveld kid fro KV is too solid for him. I say nope 220- Now call me crazy, but this Kidwell kid from West Laf is kind of a dark horse for me. He is built well, and moves real well. I like his aggressiveness. He battles hard. If he comes in with a winners attitude, I say he qualifies for state. He got a great draw. He is going to have to wrestle out of his butt though. Heavy- Crider from Harrison is a freaking animal. He is not super technical, and can wrestle real funky but he is a brute. He qualifies, but there are some good big guys this year at East Chicago semi state. I see maybe 3rd place. Hey, these are just my thoughts. Be kind to me if you don't agree. My feelings are hurt easily! For the record, I fantasize of a day when the Logan regional kids go in there and mop up those boys from the region. But this aint the year.

I get what you're saying, but trust me when I say that in this day and age, if some nice fella bag could corner the market on oxygen we would have to pay to breathe. And no I don't think a very crappy stream of a high school wrestling meet is worth 10 bucks.

First of all, I would never pay to see a live feed of a high school wrestling meet. Ridiculous! If I did pay 10 dollars and still didn't get to see the matches I wanted, I'd be pissed!

Not a chance I would pay a penny to see individual rankings for high school wrestling. What a joke. Let's face it, rankings are an opinion of one or two people based on records and how they placed last year. I'm guessing the average fan could figure out the top 10 in each weight class with about the same accuracy. Don't get me wrong, they are fun to look at and I appreciate the time someone puts into figuring out the rankings. But to pay for that, aint ever gonna happen. The one exception to this is the preseason magazine that Indiana puts out. You are getting a good product with the early rankings, that is a different story.

I have have been around this sport for about 45 years and I have several theories why kids are leaving the sport. First of all, I agree that kids don't seem to be as tough nosed today as they were 20-30 years ago. It is true that the caliber of wrestling is much higher today than in the past, but the majority of kids are softer and much too quick to quit. Cultural shift is mostly responsible for this. Parents in the past simply would not allow their kids to quit a sport once they started. It was a responsibility issue that is not present with today's parenting. Technology is probably the biggest culprit. 30 years ago all kids had was sports, now they have far too many other things to occupy their time which makes quitting easier. Let's also face the fact that wrestling isn't a sport that you do just for fun or something to do. Unless you are good at it, it probably does suck to get your butt pounded every time you go out. However, my main theory why kids don't stay interested in wrestling is due to the lack of individual tournament style wrestling. The sport has mostly gone to super dual formats where you take kids to an all day event where you wrestle 6 times on one day and maybe even another 6 time the next day. I feel that most kids find this format unmotivating and quite frankly boring. When there are championship style tournaments the excitement factor raises about 10 fold for everyone involved. I realize the reasons why coaches prefer the super dual format. Their kids get more matches in and let's face it, super duals take very little effort to run and championship style tournaments are a logistical challenge. It is my belief, that if we provide a more interesting format for the wrestlers, the retention would be much much higher as would overall interest in the sport. It is almost impossible to sit and watch an all day super dual without wishing you were doing something else. But, when the end of year state tournament season starts, interest soars. As a fan of the sport, I have gradually quit going to any wrestling events until mid January. This is just my theory. And the big argument against my thoughts are that kids don't get as many matches with tournament wrestling. To that I say, kids probably shouldn't be wrestling 50 -70 time a year. Not sure the human body was meant to take that much punishment. These are just my thoughts on the subject.

Of these teams listed, I don't see Merr. losing to any of these schools. As much as I would love to see Harrison go up and beat Merrillville, I don't think the raiders' strength of schedule can compete with Merrillville's. These teams all better hope Penn sends the B team. Even then However, I've seen their JV go in and kick everyone's butt, probably not good enough to beat Merrillville though.

Holy crap Galagore! How can you possibly turn every topic into class wrestling. Start your own class wrestling thread and spout away dude, but for the love of God, please stop bringing it up in other threads so the rest of us don't have to see it anymore. It is a tired, very old debate that has been discussed thoroughly over the past 30 years! I think we have covered it! As far as the topic we were really talking about, the only time a coach might not want his wrestler to face a 50-0 wrestler, is if he is a beginner and would learn nothing and get turned off of the sport before he had a chance to get some good experience at levels closer to his ability. I agree in general, that you learn more from a loss than you do from a victory, but there's not a lot to learn when you get pinned in 12 seconds, or teched in a minute. Just my thoughts.

Okay, I'll play along. I believe that the Logan Reg. will get their token 6 wrestlers through. I see no champs, but I do see a couple of good scrappers and a couple great draws. Webb from Ren Cen has a shot of getting through his quarter of the bracket at 113. (good draw) He will have to wrestle his best. Jones from LJ has a good shot at 152. Krintz from Harrison is good (Maybe not as good as his record indicates) Good draw and this weight class doesn't look as strong over all in my opinion I think the Fair kid LJ got a great draw and has a chance to get through. Jones from LJ maybe gets through at 182. You never know about the Merr. kids with 13 losses like Locket . They sometimes show up and knock off wrestlers from the Logon Regional with good records. Merilville kids always show up to wrestle. This one is a bit of a toss up. I don't see Crider from Harrison losing in his quarter of the bracket at 220. He is a beast. The best shot at getting a Logan Reg. wrestler on the podium at Indy on Saturday in my opinion. * I do not see Anderson from LJ beating the Poynter kid from Port. at 120 This is a shame because this kid is probably the most talented wrestler of the bunch. * I also do not see the Beltorne kid from Harrison beating the Dembowski kid from Valpo at 126. will be a good match. Valpo kid will be too technical. These are just my thoughts and opinions. Please don't be hating on me. I have been wrong a couple of times in the past. I will also say that the Region as a whole will probably not experience the success at Indy this year that they have in the past 10-15 years. I hope I'm wrong, but something tells me it's gonna be a tough year for the East Chicago SS down at Bankers' Life.

You can't let every coach and wrestler in Indiana get into the state finals for free. However, any coaches that had wrestlers compete on Friday should most certainly get in free for the remainder of the event. That is ludicrous. I understand that the Field House is in it to make money, but WTH. That's when IHSAA pays a bit extra for all coaches whether they come back on Saturday or not. I have heard everything now! I almost can't believe that this is true.

I have never said an unkind word about the woman that ran the show at Merrilville. In my opinion she did it the right way. No personal attacks from me. Always respected what she did for wrestling.

Okay, this isn't going to be a very popular post ,but the second I heard that Merrilville was giving up the semi state I had a feeling I wasn't going to like the change. I realize that some people don't like change and I guess I am no exception. However, I have some pretty solid reasons why I didn't like the overall experience at ECC this past Saturday. I thought the people at East Chicago did a great job. The criticisms I have are not the fault of the great people that ran that tournament. It has to be a challenging undertaking. I didn't mind the parking situation because I am accustom to getting their early so parking was no problem for me. I also didn't mind the extra 30 min it took to get there from Lafayette. Having said that, I think one's opinion on how the change went had a lot to do with who you ask. From a coaches and wrestler's point of view , I can see how it seemed a lot better. The lower level was blocked off to all spectators and was enforced pretty well during the early rounds. I truly get it that it is about the wrestlers and they should be the main focus. However, from a fan's perspective it sucked pretty badly if you truly wanted to see the action. I have gone to every semi state at Merrillville since it began. I am a bit of a traditionalist, but I always appreciated that if you got to the venue early enough you could sit mat side and enjoy the action up close. Yes it was always crowded for the first two rounds, but never bothered me because the wrestling environment was like nothing I have ever experienced. I have always said that I enjoy the Merrilville semi state even more than the state finals when it comes to competitive environment. I totally did not feel that this year. It was very dull in comparison for me this year. I was so frazzled by the time they had wrestled the 160 pound finals that I left early which I have never done before. More room yes, but there were very few good seats. You definitely had to be in the nose bleeds to see all 4 mats or you had to secure a railing on the side of the gym that they let you stand at the rail and watch, which is what I did but standing all day to see the wrestling sux at best. Other things that I noticed that made it a poor experience for me personally include: They ran the semi finals on 4 mats instead of just two mats like they do at Merrilville. You need to slow that round down a bit to give people a chance to watch the best of the best. It sucked to miss that much good wrestling just so you could save approximately 40 minutes. And while I am talking about the semi finals, I might add that there was no good rhyme or reason to how the weight class were wrestled. At one point they had 145 pounders wrestling at the same time 285 pounders were going at it. It was absolutely impossible to follow the brackets. The wrestling was all over the place. The sound system was terrible, I'm not picking on the announcer but that was not good either. After the mats were broken down the lower level could have easily been opened up for spectators which could have been done for the semi finals like in past years at Merrilville because half of the crowd had gone home. Okay the spot light breaking wasn't their fault, but that experience wasn't going too well even before the bulb broke. Having said all of this I appreciated the efforts of the people of East Chicago Central. It is not their fault that I will never be returning to the semi state again. I think it would be way better to watch it streamed on the computer, At least then you can see the action up close and personal. This had to be said, but again it is just one man's opinion.

Short memory. Angel has to be considered. As far as high school wrestling goes, pound for pound Angel takes him. Sorry.

Scary thing is like 5 or 6 of the Merr. state champs will be back next year.

I don't know about "pound for pound" best out of this group of wrestlers, because there are so many talented young men in the field, but I'm sort of thinking that you'd have to throw a few northern boys into the conversation. Forte, Streck, and Hughes have pretty much been unchallenged. The Streck kid from Merrillville may be one of the best high school Heavy weights I have ever seen. He wrestles like a 120 pounder, but he is built like a tank! Just my thoughts.