Coach Brobst

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

Westfield

Hamilton Southeastern

Hamilton Southeastern