Coach Brobst

One of my favorite conferences in the state! The top end is usually tough as nails and has gotten even better with the arrival of Perry a few years ago. looking at some dual results, it appears Mooresville would be in line for third but duals and Individual tourneys do not always align perfectly so we’ll see. Good luck to all the teams there this weekend!

UR Broom of HSE wins by Fall over Zach White of Carmel in 2nd period at 195

Carrington was a beast all day! At Westfield the upper weights were all loaded! very rough sledding and lots of tight matches at 195, 220, and 285 all day.

At HSE I’d say the line-up would look like this: 106- Jacob Simone- 2018, 8th at 113 in 2019, but was a stud at 106 as a Sophomore and go pinned by eventual 4th placer David Pierson when leading 4-1 and in on another deep single when headlocked in the ticket round. Another option would be Klayton Anderson who qualified in 2015 as just a freshman, then moved to Missouri. 113- Austin Holmes, 2 time 4th placer at 113 and qualified as a Senior at 126. One of our all-time best! 120- Edreece Stansberry. Qualifier in 2014. 126- Thomas Pompei. 6th place in ‘06 and has gone on to an outstanding collegiate coaching career at INDIANA Tech! 132- Possibly the greatest Royal-Jack Chastain. 5th at 132 in 2015, succumbing to a terrible draw but scoring the only offensive points of the tourney against Nick Lee on Saturday morning. Also 5th in 2014 at 126 and qualified as a Sophomore at 113. Only 2 Royals have qualified 3 times, Chastain and Austin Holmes. 138- Mitch Snyder. With respect to One time qualifier Keegan Stansberry, Snyder was a 132 that placed 6th in 2013 and qualified at 112 as a Sophomore. We’ll bump him one weight. 145- Pat Robinson. 3rd as a Senior, NCAA qualifier at Purdue, so far HSE’s only one ever. He’s also on our staff here helping with the building of our program! 152- Jackson Bennett. 5th place in 2013 and current Head JV coach in our program. Corbin Gregg as a 6th placer is a close second. 160- Matt Irick. Cheating a bit here as he never wrestled 160, but finished 5th at 170 as a Senior and a was a qualifier at 140 as a Sophomore. He likely would have been 160 his Junior year, which was lost due to injury. He went on to be our second DI starter at IU. 170- Austin Neibarger. Really close one here as Irick was a 170 pounder and Patrick Turner finished 4th in 2004, but Neibarger was a two time placer, 8th as a Freshman at 152 and then 5th as a Senior at 170. 182- Spencer Irick. One of the biggest upsets ever on Friday night was his win over Andrew Davidson. He went on to take 3rd that year and was a qualifier at 170 his Junior year as well. 195- Brent Farrell. Our first ever two time qualifier and first ever placer. He was the runner up in 1996 at 189 and was our head coach for a couple years and is now a principal in the district (and father of Fishers’ 3rd placer this year, JD Farrell). They have another Farrell coming in next year that will be a very good wrestler as well. 220- Crae Kunkleman. Our highest 220 placer is Andrew Irick, but he will be our HWT starter leaving only qualifiers at 220. Kunkleman was actually a HWT qualifier in 2019 but would have likely placed at 220 (he only weighed 205), but was behind Irick. Only one other 220 ever qualified in Georges Brantley, and heck I’ll be biased with the kid I coached. 285- Andrew Irick. The third and final Irick Brother. He’s our highest ever placer as runner up this season and finished 4th as a Junior at 220, joining Austin Holmes as our only 2 time semi-finalists. Andrew is likely the most accomplished Royal and will try to win the starting spot and be our first ever All-American at the Division I level. We have many more talented athletes that could have been in the team, but that’s who I think would be our top 14. It seems like a recency bias, but we actually never had a placer until 1996 as little old Fishers used to be a tiny town and HSE wasn’t what we now know until the early 2000’s. Awesome to look at where a program has been. Gives motivation to our incoming Freshman and current HS kids to try to emulate and better themselves as we search for that first state champ.

Andrew Irick will be filling the second 285 pound slot. Don't know about the 220.

On track you have to decide beforehand. There are set-ups for these tourneys on there, you just have to pick the bracket-type you want. If you did it manually, I suppose you could definitely score it however you want. But even the pools were scored for bonus points, just no advancement points until the bracket, and then your placement points, of course. Perhaps an admin could change the scoring wrestler mid-tourney, I'm not sure. Someone like @redcobraor @trackgopher could probably tell you better than I.

Three options for this: You can set it up under Trackwrestling as 2 separate teams: for instance Alex-A and Alex-B and force coaches to choose who their "varsity" guy is to try to win the tournament but both teams score, just separately. Second way is to choose the "scoring" athlete prior to the tournament. This is what they do at the John Hurrle. You only score if you're the designated scoring wrestler for your team. The problem with this is of course, with random seeding (unless you do the tourney late in the year), sometimes your JV kid gets a better draw and actually outplaces the Varsity kid because they have an easier pool. Third way is to let everyone enter two per weight and everyone scores, similar to how they score an open tourney if they do team scoring. Downside here is there's a huge advantage to teams with full Varsity and JV rosters. Just a few options.

I like the idea. Not committing to coming or anything but it's a good idea. Zionsville hosts a tourney in December that does 2 pools and crosses over so you get lots of matches and at least a few at your level. The John Hurrle at Tech the first weekend is pretty much like that. A couple teams enter multiple athletes per weight, some don't and you have kids that are very talented and kids that are extremely new to the sport all in the same bracket, but by the end of the day, they've found their level. I will tell you, it takes a LONG time to run these tourneys because nobody is ever eliminated, but they're great for program development and meeting kids across multiple levels.

That would help and Scholars idea of giving a chance to win titles might incentive some for sure. But I can tell you as one of those small town boys that is now coaching at a large school that making a living is priority number one for most of us (Coaching is my passion, but doesn't pay the bills) and if you're a teacher there is a GREAT disparity between what I would make at a school such as my hometown school compared to here at HSE. A quick google search for what teacher contracts are at some smaller schools compared to pay scales at larger schools will show you why many leave. Obviously, if they don't teach, it won't make a difference, but having someone in the building to help with recruitment and retention is extremely helpful.

You'll get no argument from me that it is a locality issue more than a school size issue, but there are still sheer numbers, attraction of staff, and budgets on the side of the larger school. Unfortunately, classing based off of your "opportunity" is not really an option. And just like you are not as against classing as your posts may seem, I like one class just fine, but I still see the disadvantages of the small school and what they have to overcome to be as good. I appreciate hearing the other side as well and the sentiment you have brought forth is the common one here in Indiana, which is why I know classing will never happen here. It is great to see kids from small schools succeed despite the odds and upsets are fun. Nobody would say the tournament in Indiana isn't fun, I just wonder if it's what is best for the sport's health. For every coach up to the challenge like you, Courtney, and Coach King at Oak Hill, there's 2-3 coaches struggling to put together a full roster of bodies, let alone Regional/Semi-State level wrestlers.

Absolutely not stating that all small schools have poor coaching, don't get it twisted here. What I'm saying is that on average, the coaching received at a larger school is more solid and there's several reasons for this, namely the difference in pay between the large schools and small schools. I can tell you there are several coaches that have left smaller schools for larger because of opportunity to put kids into the state finals on a more regular basis (an issue that would be resolved with class wrestling), just as another reason. Put up a poll and see why coaches move from smaller schools to larger. I think it'd be interesting to see the reasons given. One obvious reason that hasn't been touched on is the fact that there aren't as many teaching jobs in small schools, so if they can get a great coach in place, he's often not able to be in the building to teach all day. This makes a big difference in the ability to recruit and retain wrestlers. And the larger the school, the more potential openings to get more coaches in the building and have more coaches period. I've been doing this for a decade and believe it or not, not every athlete I've coached has liked me or my style of coaching or wrestling. But I work hard to hire assistants who will stay in the same philosophy but have different strengths and expertise that allow us to be a well rounded staff. This catches many of the athletes that may not jive super well with me, but they really like being coached by one of my assistants. This opportunity is often lost at a small school where there is only one assistant stipend, if that. The ability to recruit and retain assistants is a HUGE difference between the different sized schools, eliminating even MORE of their potential athlete pool. I'm not trying to knock the coaching at small schools, I've known many awesome coaches at smaller schools that are still there. It's a labor of love for them and they are killing it in their own right. When they find their group of committed individuals they do great things and are just as successful, I'm just pointing out that it's a lot harder to get and keep a great coach at a small school with a limited budget. Of course it happens, but far more often it doesn't happen. I feel as though you point out the successes of a Mater Dei, Oak Hill, or Wabash, but neglect that there are dozens of 1A and 2A schools like Taylor Kokomo or South Vermillion that haven't had an individual qualify for state in years (Y2 just posted a bunch of this data, but I don't have time to review it all) and this year didn't even get a Regional Qualifier. I know the data suggests that 1A schools are qualifying the right numbers of individuals, but they're all from the same schools that have been able to buck the overall trends. That doesn't make it equal for all individuals. With regards to weight training, most small schools don't have a strength coach on staff so they're at the mercy of their own coach's expertise or the internet research they can do(which will be extremely variant from place to place). Is it a huge difference? Perhaps not, but these things all add up. Even if the kids from school A are only getting a 10% boost from their weights coach and a 10% boost from their practice partners, that's a 20% advantage (assuming they have equal coaching). I agree the crux is whether or not each INDIVIDUAL is on a level playing field, and I'm arguing they're not. A kid that grows up at Small school A with a coach that is part time because he owns his own landscaping company and can't afford to take off to help during the offseason and there is no local club and they have to drive farther for tournaments and they have to pay for hotels to stay there and compete and drive to a larger city to train just so they can have a practice partner that's able to push them is NOT on an equal playing field to a kid who grows up at Large School B where the coach is engaging athletes year round, they start wrestling in a club learning the system at the age of 4-8 and can train locally with quality practice partners whenever they please. Can these odds be overcome? Most definitely! But they are not on an equal playing field to start. It takes MORE sacrifice to succeed in our sport when you grow up in a small school system and that is by definition, not equal. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying these guys from large schools aren't working hard or sacrificing, they are and you don't succeed without it in our sport. However, there are inherent advantages to growing up in Avon/Brownsburg, Evansville, etc; compared to growing up in Fairmount,Salem, Bloomfield etc; that make the sacrifices slightly less (fewer hotel costs, a quality local club, more academy options nearby, etc;). I don't think anyone is saying that school size is the only factor here, it's definitely not, and I'd argue not even the biggest factor, but it's what everyone is used to using to classify schools, so there's the argument.