indiana buck i

I was transfered here from Ohio about 5 years ago and the differnce is the mind set. In Ohio the kids who don't make the wrestling team go out for basketball (not the otherway around like here) and every football coach has their linemen in the wrestling room. Most of our schools sponsor the youth clubs and they start in kindergarden. The biggest difference is that the youth and middle school seasons start in October not January/Febuary. My son was in the elementary state finals in 2004/05 and they were held at Bowling Green in front of 10,000 people (he was in third grade), how do we compete with that? That being said for having half the ammount of people in the state I think Indiana does a very respectable job nationally, when we try to compare ourselves to the Ohios and PAs it's like comparing apples to oranges. There just isn't the population base or opportunity to support that kind of success on a broad level, at the top we are very strong but drop deamatically from there. When we moved here the one thing I did like more was the emphasis on the olympic styles, in OH it was all folkstyle all the time. I think the exposure to the other styles makes our kids alot more adaptable.

If I could add some perspective: I came from a state that had class wrestling and a school that had at most 250 kids. After transfering to Indian my son is a freshman in a state with 1 class and a school with 2500kids. However much everyone wants to think things are the same, they are not and this is not about college scholarships it's about student athlete opportunity. At my alma mater the team has to use the cafeteria as practice space so the first 15 minutes of practice was folding up the tables and setting up the mats, the last 15-20 minutes is spent rolling up the mats and putting the tables back in place. My son's school has a dedicated wrestling room with mats wall to wall and a complete fitness center the next door down the hall way. There is no possible way that those two situations are going to achieve the same outcome. When my drill partner was sick or god forbid was hurt for an extended time there was noone within 40 pounds of me to spar with. There are probably 15 athletes within 5 pounds of my son in the room, so not only is there always a drill partner but a constant change in style to work with. Once again there is a decieded adjvantage that is not the fault of the student. I do understand the arguments that having one state champ makes it "special", but in Ohio the best kids always wrestled eachother during the season. There are many high profile tounaments that these matches took place (North Akron Ironman, Alliance Top Gun, etc). But the whole idea behind student athlete is to make them a well rounded individual, that's what I love about wrestling that sports like football and baseball especially at the youth level have lost. I don't see how more kids getting thier hands raised could be a bad thing, I'm not tryin to be a tree hugger but it's about opportunity. Wrestling accepted me even though I was the fat kid 20 some years ago and it made me what I am today, and I don't think anyone can get me to believe that more kids having success on a level playing field will not be benificial to our sport. Beside the title is great but the opportunity for more kids to make Indy is whats important...the EXPERIENCE matters. Sorry for the rant