Coach Brobst

Hamilton Southeastern Junior High is actively searching for a new Head coach. A few teaching jobs are available, mainly in Special Education. Great opportunity for a younger coach looking to build their way into coaching. Contact me on here, at nbrobst@hse.k12.in.us or Athletic Director Chad Guest at cguest@hse.k12.in.us with any interest

Great ideas, Dave! I've had up years and down years with numbers over my career, but more up than down recently and there's only one real reason why: The focus of the culture is on developing good young men, having fun, and winning along the way....in that order. Still have days/weeks/moments when I lose sight of why I do this and think my only purpose is to build a team that wins championship, and that's definitely part of what I want to do, but ensuring they're having fun has to be goal #1. Even with this in mind, in a decade of coaching, I've still never had a team that didn't have at least 2-3 kids quit, sometimes there's nothing you can do, the sport just isn't for everyone. Here's a few things I've found works: 1) Make Dual Meets fun! If the student body gets fired up about going to a wrestling dual, more athletes will want to be a part of the program. A major disadvantage we have is that we aren't a "glory" sport, but shining a light on the hard work the boys do helps with recruitment and more importantly, with retention. Look at what Brownsburg has done in their turnaround there. Turned the sport into an event that is must-see. You think it's a coincidence they have stud football players showing up in the room winning state titles? 2) Monthly, in season or out, we try to do something as a team that is fun. Go to Cedar Point. Take the team to the Indiana Dunes. Go camping. Team Camaraderie goes a long way when interested kids ask current wrestlers why they wrestle. If they respond, "It sucks, but I love it," you may have an issue recruiting new kids. When they say, "I wrestle because it's fun," something has gone right. 3) Involve yourself in the feeder programs. We have 4 Middle Schools, 2 feed 98% of their students to us at HSE, the other 2 are split between us and Fishers,It'd be easy to ignore the other 2 schools as 80% of their kids go to Fishers HS, but I try to run a practice or 2 at each MS immediately following the HS season. And I make it fun! I try to get to know the MS Athlete when they're in 7th grade, so when I reach out as they are incoming, they already know me. This was a lot easier at Mooresville with 1 MS, but I have a great involved staff of Assistants that help out and attend MS events and practices as well so that they're always seeing someone with HSE wrestling gear on in their corner. 4) Spend time, as a head coach, with your JV kids. Not just on the mat, but off the mat too. A lot of coaches have a tendency to focus on the best wrestlers (State Qualifiers and Placers make us look good), but I've been around to see what happens to a program when the emphasis is only on the Varsity kids winning as much as possible and the JV kids get run off. What happens when those Varsity kids graduate? You wind up with a lot more holes in the line-up than you should have because average wrestlers or developmental kids who may have turned into a solid starter leave because they didn't feel anyone cared about their success. I attend every JV event that doesn't conflict with a Varsity one. I may be late due to practice or Youth Club, but I show up to show the kids that I care, and I have 3-4 Assistant Coaches that understand why working with these less capable wrestlers is important and do a great job in practice and at meets. In my experience, these are some of the most valuable people to surround your kids with. I'm going start stealing some of the ideas Dave uses as well. Ultimately, you have to find what works for each school. All 3 that I've worked at have been different, but ultimately, the #1 reason kids do a sport is to have fun. Sometimes, it's hard to remember that, but if you do, growth isn't far behind.

When I have taken teams to Wabash's Camp in June in the past, they don't count forfeits and it used to peeve me off when teams wouldn't try to fill their teams because they knew they had 8 really good kids and maybe a couple duds, but instead of finding 4 other teams' back-ups they would leave them as "forfeits" thereby not counting against them. I think this would happen frequently. I know as a scheduler, I would never schedule against a team without a full team then because it could mitigate my best wrestlers' effect on the dual. Right now, I have 7 kids who are huge point scorers for us and 7 that are young and win some/lose some. It'd be really easy for a team to beat the crap out of us if they just got to not face my better guys with no 6 point penalty.

I have coached both sports for the past 8 years and it is a hard sell to the Head Football guy that losing even 10 pounds is going to be okay for the kids long term future. It was much tougher at smaller high schools as to fill out a line-up it was going to take 7-8 football players and obviously weight classes matter so to get in the line-up a 190 pound linebacker may go to 182 for the season. That does bring into question the mat-side weigh ins a little as well though: If I'm at a smaller school and have 2 kids that weigh 164 naturally and a really good kid that weighs 178, obviously 178 has no problem maintaining for 182 and one of the 164 pounders easily goes 170, but the other one is fighting an uphill battle to keep under 160 on a regular basis. At HSE, I can probably find another athlete willing to do the sport because of our sheer numbers. When I was at Mooresville even (1400 students) or TC Howe (300 students), probably going to be a problem for me and may increase forfeits. I think the rule nets positive overall, but probably won't happen because of small schools and trying to fill weights becoming more difficult.

Love the idea here too. Evens the playing field a bit and would likely grow the sport a lot because Football athletes (and coaches) are often not huge proponents of our sport (even though they should be with all the transference) because of weight cutting. They don't want their boys getting smaller for any reason.

Intriguing thought on Tech Fall, but I feel as though the Major decision would then need to be 6 or complete disregarded if that happened. 8 for major and just 2 more for tech fall wouldn't make much sense. LOVE the step-out! Prepares for International styles and forces athletes to wrestle at all times instead of stalling. Would eliminate the ability to stall on the edge with a lead that so many have grown to love.

The current down-swing that Delaware county and the Elkhart area is having doesn't help this Semi-State look very nice either, but Allen County and the surrounding area is really where I think there's untapped potential. I think eventually someone with more time and money than I have will invest in building an Academy up there. Maybe a branch of CIA or Red Cobra perhaps Pride or Contenders, right in between Carroll and Homestead HS. Kind of an untapped market right now. I know CIA is doing some satellite training at Wabash (or at least did last summer), but the major large schools that should be powerhouses is where I would think someone should try to open something. Then you can pull from not just Homestead and Carroll, but also Leo, Belmont, the Ft Wayne City Schools, Garrett, Huntington North, New Haven, and Woodlan just to name a few. If a high level clinician did something there, it'd only be 4-5 years before you'd start to see Ft. Wayne really scrapping again and these numbers would be much closer to the other Semi-States. There's some promise up in that part of the state. We wrestled New Haven this year and saw both Leo and Huntington North individuals at North Montgomery. All had impressive individuals and are only a few small pieces away from being extremely good teams. It will be interesting to see how things change over the next decade or so.

Maybe it won't matter! You could be right! However, that's not a reason NOT to do something. I didn't ask whether any positives would come, but what are the actual negatives? You stated diminished value of the tournament. Just like you can't make the leap to more kids wanting to wrestle because they can compete, I can't buy that losing 2-4 of our normal qualifiers to the 1A tourney would diminish anything. Do we think it would stop College coaches from recruiting our champs or placers? Would it make the Flowrestling guys rank our guys lower? I just don't see any actual negatives for wrestlers. I get the fan experience, I do, but as Joe said, I don't believe that what we are currently doing is what is best for the participants.

I’ve seen lots of arguments for and against class wrestling but this is the one I always love the most! My question to you is this: is the sport about the participants or the fans? I think we can agree participants, and if that’s the case all arguments for/against excitement in February are pointless. It’s not about fans! It’s not about us coaches! It’s about providing an equal opportunity for all athletes. While I don’t believe it will ever happen, class wrestling WOULD help the wrestlers at small schools where they often must play other sports to help the athletic department. My final question is this: When the fan experience argument is gone, what is the downside? Plenty of possible positives, but not one person has said what the negatives would be to the actual wrestlers.

Yes, Andrew and Carson I believe. 113 and 120. Maybe twins as well? They're both listed as Freshman at least. @rhayescould tell us.

Great pick here. Breken was in the MS program when I was coaching at Mooresville and in the off-season at club practices kid would scrap with Seniors like it was nothing. Tons of heart, some good technique too. Gotta root for this kid. He has another teammate that was literally 4th string JV 220 as a Freshman, a backup last year and now is in Semi-State (and is a cadet state champ this past season) in Robbie Gentry at 285. Great attitude, fun kid. Two athletes I’ll definitely be pulling for while coaching in New Castle.

This is one ticket round match that I think will be really interesting. Carrender when good is great. Anthony is more consistent and way more battle tested at this point in the tournament (wrestled Chundi twice and Crousore). Will be a fun match if they can both get past their first round opponents. Good luck to both!

Did Heavyweight even get touched? Sounds self serving (because it is one of my athletes), but Kunkleman from HSE beat both Dorien Keys of Brownsburg and Alexander of FC at Conference last weekend and the top 13 remained unchanged with Kunkleman, whose losses were all months ago when he was in Football shape and two of the 5 are to #1 Watts, who outweighs him by 60 pounds, remains at #17.

Hamilton Southeastern

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