OldGoatGrappler

Blake took care of business and dominated the interview speech too. Congratulations and thank you for all the years of excitement. Look forward to watching you dominate at the next level too.

Fantastic young man and great family. Good luck blowing those wins away Evan!

Final Team Scores: 1. Cath - 254.5 2. LN - 243.5 3. NC - 229

NLCards, on 29 Jan 2016 - 1:07 PM, said: Not only on TNT - you can get a college athletic scholarship for video gaming too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/06/25/a-u-s-college-just-made-video-gaming-a-varsity-sport-heres-how-to-get-on-the-team/

Redacted and added emphasis to show the most important part of this entire thread.

You can find many Indiana "non-track" tournaments here: ISWA: http://www.iswa.com/event-schedule/ and HYWAY: http://www.hywaywrestling.org/page/show/1809769-schedule

If school size is the biggest factor, shouldn't the largest school in the State forever (Carmel) produce the most champions? Are they an EXTREME anomaly too? Could it be that they focus on sports other than wrestling? Carmel hasn't had a state champ for almost 20 years. Carmel is far from the only huge school with dismal wrestling success compared to their size. Just because cheese is round and the moon is round, doesn't mean the moon is made of cheese.

Do you think they might give ISSMA (the band league) a good deal too?

35,000+ wrestling fans in one venue for a dual?! Grapple on the Gridiron... Seriously though, is there any way to pull off a IHSWCA State at Lucas Oil? Room for 24 mats like USAW Folkstyle Nationals at the UNI-Dome (or Freestyle/Greco Nationals at the FargoDome) Using 24 mats, you could go up to 8 mats and 16 teams per class Give all teams 4 matches and place all 16 Having 24 mats going all day filled with the best teams in Indiana would be incredible! Some numbers I was able to scrape together show that IHSAA State Football Championships, which do 3 classes x 2 days, at Lucas Oil pull in about 20,000 people per day. That's only 6 football teams per day. I know football teams are bigger and football is more popular, but a centrally located IHSWCA State with 48 wrestling teams could pull some serious fans... no? Oh, btw - IHSAA charges $15 for the State football championships at Lucas Oil too.

The best in the whole wide world... that is simply awesome. Way to go Zach!!

Comparison of B1G programs. Percentage of "in-state" wrestlers on their official rosters. Graph available here: https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPi9jDRKMJC4FrccE7wDVGSfJAgFFjU3iu5sFbr Northwestern 20.00% Nebraska 25.71% Maryland 31.58% Michigan 47.22% Purdue 48.28% Iowa 54.05% Minnesota 55.56% Indiana 56.67% Wisconsin 56.67% Penn State 65.63% Ohio State 69.05% Illinois 79.31% Rutgers 82.14% Michigan State 90.91%

Does anyone know the intent behind the travel limitation for IHSAA member schools? 10-1 Out-of-State Contest Limitations The address of out-of-state schools participating in a Contest against a member School as well as the site of such Contests must be within Six-hundred (600) miles round trip travel from the Indiana state line and shall be sponsored or co-sponsored by a member high School. http://www.ihsaa.org/Portals/0/ihsaa/documents/about%20ihsaa/2015-16%20By-Laws.pdf

What's it going to take for HS football coaches (especially line coaches) to wake up and smell the coffee...?

Wow, how sweet would a Gelen v. Wesley Bernard (Rutgers) match be?!

If anybody ever asks you why you are part of the wrestling family, just show them this story.

Double thumbs up! Add another vote for a Bankers Life encore.

We only have one mat left. Mat #1 - 31'x31' dark navy with yellow circle. $2,000 obo. Thanks.

Mat #1 This mat is freshly reconditioned. It is a dark navy blue with a yellow circle and red/green starting lines. Mat is a 3 section and overall size is 1.5" x 31' x 31'. Value of the mat is over $3,000, we will sell it for $2,000 or make an offer. Mat #2 - Sold Any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Westfield has no state champs. They do have a runner-up, Luke Schaefer (2013), who is wrestling at the Naval Academy. If you're a betting man, don't count on the "no champs drought" lasting too long for the Shamrocks.

Congratulations Kayla! Lot's of hard work and overcoming adversity behind your success. Good luck in your continued international and upcoming college careers.

Way to go T-shirt!!! 1st of 4.

A couple of high schools have as many or more than the entire state of Indiana (Blair and St. Ed's)... hmm... Oh, that's right - they don't count since they are private schools that "recruit" and we all know what a dirty word that is. Hanover Central is Indiana's poster child high school this year... and with Micic coming out next year too... look out. Howe, Petrov, and Micic... if you're not paying attention, you should be.

Maybe we could award "Honorary" State Championship medals based on class each year: 3A - Zero (0) Honorary State Champs 2A - Seven (7) Honorary State Champs 1A - Fourteen (14) Honorary State Champs These would be much like the honorary degrees given by universities - like when Obama got a degree from Notre Dame for giving a speech there. These State champs could use these "championship medals" to lure the 1,000s of unsuspecting college coaches who have no idea how a classless system works into recruiting them and giving them full-ride scholarships. Additionally, we could award "Honorary" State Team Championships based on tenure: Every five (5) years, an Honorary State Team Championship will be awarded to all member schools of the IHSAA who have not received an actual (aka "real") team championship during the proceeding five (5) years. Member schools are entitled to a state championship every five (5) years based on tenure.

If classing is all about getting kids scholarships, we should then class academics as well. 3A = No additional GPA bonus 2A = 1 pt. GPA bonus 1A = 2 pt. GPA bonus So a kid with a 3.0 GPA at a 2A school can now put on his transcript that he is a 4.0 GPA student. This will open up a huge number of academic scholarships. Just think, with 1A students even average kids with a 2.0 can now also say they are a 4.0 student.

Maybe the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA) should implement classing? Maybe then the wrestlers from Azerbaijan (pop. 9 million) would then have a chance to win an Olympic Gold medal... oh, wait they just won two (2) freestyle gold medals (out of 7) at the last "classless" Olympics... how could that be? hmm... Our great country also won two (2) and, in case you haven't been keeping up, we have a population of 314 million. The situation in the last Olympics for Greco-Roman is also interesting. Iran has 77 million people and won 3 of 7 gold medals... USA zero. Don't you guys get it? Championships are won by those (Countries, States, Communities, Organizations, Schools) who focus on it. It's what the community focuses on that will make it successful (EMD, Perry, Yorktown, Franklin, Delta back in the day, and Carmel very soon). If you don't like losing, build a program. It takes time, dedication, hard work, commitment, courage, buy-in, grit, determination, and luck). Don't take the easy way out by creating more prizes. In the USA we wrestle folkstyle / high-school / collegiate whatever you want to call it - we are the only ones in the world who wrestle our form of wrestling. We focus on it. If there was our form of wrestling in the Olympics we would dominate, but there's not. So the countries that focus on freestyle and Greco are the ones who dominate. I've been fortunate enough to see both classed and unclassed systems in place. I grew up in classed Wisconsin and we had this little town by the name of Mineral Point - they were one of the "small" schools, but year after year they'd produce top quality state champion wrestlers. Many years, their kids could beat the snot out of the big school kids but never got the chance. I spent a long time in Nevada (3x state championship official). We had 4 classes in Nevada for most sports, but wrestling they put the 1A/2A small schools together, which gave us 3 classes. A little town by the name of Battle Mountain would smack people around even though they were only a 2A school at the time. In the beginning of the classed system they would have all three championships in different locations (in a high school gym). Now they do it all together on three (3) mats in an events center. One year they tried a "Super" State where all of the winners from the classed championships got to wrestle it out for the overall champion... it didn't work. The big school coaches got upset that the little school kids were winning all the super state medals, so it only lasted a year. It was also confusing as when a kid said "I'm the State Champ", are you the State Champ of just one of the classes or the Super State? I liked the Super State and it is comparable to what we luckily have here in Indiana (one state champ per weight class) - although you had 2 other guys at each weight-class walking around saying they were the State Champ even though they got beat by the Super State winner. That, I didn't like. Eight years ago I moved to Indiana. Not yet having any experience with Indiana wrestling, I saw that the State Championships were being held at Conseco so I grabbed my son and we headed down. I saw that the finals were scheduled for like 7:30 PM, so I figured we'd get there about 6:45 to enjoy the show... you can just imagine my surprise the moment I walked through the entry -- and I bet you can also guess where we got to sit (wish I would have had some nose-plugs with me). I'll NEVER forget that moment the rest of my life... I'd been to many a state championships, but nothing like that ever before. When they turned off the lights and went through the intros etc. the excitement was incredible and something I never want to miss ever again (haven't yet, thank God). Some of you really don't understand what a very special precious gift our classless system is, if you did - you would protect it.