Coach Brobst

Sorry. Don’t want you to get what I’m saying twisted, I think Alexandria is doing an OUTSTANDING job of doing things the right way! Every time I go to a youth event and see 30-45 little Tigers out there and all the parents getting into it, I get excited for what that town has coming up! My entire family minus myself are Tigers, and you are absolutely doing fantastic things! just pointing out how you (and others in your boat) could have more immediate success at the HS level of it were classed and the work would be lessened. Burn out in our profession is very real. And many small towns don’t have another guy to take up the torch when one leaves due to it. Keep up the great work! No doubt we’ll start seeing maroon and gold Tigers at Bankers life soon!

First, Totally agree on fixing youth events, that's a totally different topic, but they are awful to run, be a part of, etc; and changing those would CERTAINLY help numbers WAY more than changing the tourney. However, I don't think the "chance to win a title" is what gets or keeps more kids out. It's seeing kids in programs that have had very little or limited success on the state level, have more consistent success. It's been a few years since Alexandria has had a state qualifier/placer. Don't you think your room could benefit and you'd be able to get 5-10 of those athletes that are "lifting for football" or "getting cuts in for baseball" if they knew they were going to have success year in and year out, not just one kid qualifying/placing every 5-10 years, but 2-3 (or more, you guys are getting good) placing/qualfying every year. Winning breeds winning. Failure is important. I think every kid who wrestles will fail. I don't think adding in an extra champ and placers at each weight will take that away. The struggle to achieve that will still exist. Ultimately, Alexandria will be successful because you have a Head Coach who is building the program the right way and you have assistants that are great to keep each other from getting worn down. But running a wrestling program the way it needs to be done to have sustainable success takes LOTS of qualified hard working individuals and smaller communities lack the numbers and availability to find people with not only the time and work ethic, but also the expertise to help build a wrestling program. Oak Hill built one, Elwood used to have one. I think Alexandria is well on their way, but it sure would speed up the process if you already had kids placing this year, wouldn't it? I know as wrestlers we like a challenge and want kids to embrace it as well. I just think that classing would help more communities buy into wrestling and build what you are starting to do there with less man power (which many lack).

Wouldn't it still accomplish the same thing and be more reasonable if mat-side weigh-ins were only done at the first match of the day? You still couldn't cut a ton or you'd get killed in that first round, but you don't have to worry about making weight again the rest of the day. As far as the weight management system, it's just far to easy to cheat if your AD doesn't take over and unfortunately, we have people who are my colleagues that will do whatever it takes to get a kid "certified" at a weight. But it's likely the best we'll ever get. I don't think Mat-side weigh-ins will ever be a thing. Too many logistics.

I like the idea in spirit but why should small schools be punished by losing anywhere from 2-20 matches regular season and having to participate in the "big school" tournament just so big school kids can say they "beat everyone" on their way to the title? You're taking away matches from these kids so that we can keep a one class system for what purpose? Which kids exactly does it benefit?

I'll agree to the first point. Winning a state title in Indiana, or even placing, certainly carries a great weight with it, but if your children are attending Cathedral (just a guess based off of your profile pic), they will be on the biggest stage anyways. How would dropping schools like Fremont, Madison Grant, Eastbrook, and Clinton Central from your class impact your child's recruitment at all? Would you begrudge those programs having success because it means if they randomly have a stud wrestler your athlete wouldn't get to compete with them? I coach at a large school and every kid that gets recruited from us starts getting letters because of what they do in the offseason (Fargo, Folkstyle Nationals, Virginia Beach, etc;). Your point is fair though. Thank you.

The bolded section of the quote above is the key here. I love that our state has passionate fans that care what happens, but the sport is for the participants and any argument that is based on "the atmosphere at state" or "losing the great bloodround at the Semi-States" is simply a selfish argument. Small school kids that are needed to play multiple sports to make their Athletic Departments work and can't dedicate an entire year to wrestling are definitely on an uneven playing field from lack of ability to recruit and keep good coaching, less funding for the program, and fewer quality practice partners in the room (if any). We've all heard to exceptions to the rule: Wrestler A finishes top 4 at state from Class A school, so the system is not unfair! There will always be exceptions. However, if you look at long-term sustainability of wrestling at the small school level, more tastes of success would encourage more ADs to buy into it. So it stands to reason that if we split to 2 classes, schools like Madison Grant, Clinton Prarie, Owen Valley, and Wapahani (just random examples) who have not had a ton of success, may get a state qualifier or 2, then maybe that leads to another random "football/track" athlete that picks up wrestling and finds success and the ball starts rolling and suddenly a program which is perennially done by Regional Weekend (on a good year) and has 7-12 guys on the team is getting 3 extra weeks of practice and numbers go up to 15-25. This happens at even 20 schools and numbers are up by 100-200 athletes! Please note where I coach. This isn't a selfish decision for my program. HSE will be the biggest class regardless of how many divisions are set up. I've yet to hear any argument against classing that says it's worse for the kids or that one class is better for the kids. I'm generally open minded though, if you have an argument that says it's better to be one classed for the athletes, I'd love to hear it.

I guess I should get on this board more often but the Northeast side of Indy from as far southwest as Fishers to East inShenandoah and New Castle and as far north as Frankton and Alexandria, has a little league we call the Pioneer wrestling league. A lot of the meets would be perfect for your location in Muncie. Shoot me an email at nbrobst@hse.k12.in.us and I can send you the dates and locations for the rest of this season. It is typically $3 for each adult that attends with wrestlers being free. Prices may vary slightly at each location. Good luck

As a coach of someone who just committed to IU and has another being recruited there, I can say for sure the cache of being a 4-time state champ from Indiana and his relative youth is what is pulling kids towards IU. They see in him something they can aspire to be. I love Coach Ersland, but I think it's hard for some of our HS athletes to see themselves in him. They don't have the ability to think that far ahead. The stark difference in "fun" status between the two universities is another big thing that they've been siting. For better or worse, Purdue has a great academic reputation, but not so much for off-campus activity. Indiana has both going for it. As a Purdue grad myself, this pains me, but I think those are the reasons you're seeing so many Indiana wrestlers committing to IU. Ersland will be fine at Purdue, because he develops talent and will continue to nail down a few out of state guys each year. But Angel is placing on premium on keeping Indiana kids in Bloomington. We'll see if it pays off for them, but at the very least, he's going to make fans out of nearly every one in state because we all know the guys up and down the line-up.

Since moving to HSE 3 years ago, I have been a part of the Pioneer Wrestling League and let me tell you, if you market it correctly to your club members, it keeps kids out so much better. 2 years ago, when I only coached club at HSE, we attended them almost as a practice, but we really pushed ISWA more to everyone so they could get better competition. I was dead wrong to do that. Any beginning wrestler that tried ISWA, quit that year. Many quit after their very first experience. Last year, we split club into beginner's and advanced and we only sent beginner's to PWL tourneys and our retention rate went from 50% from year 1 to year 2 to over 75% from last year to this year. We have many of last years PWL kids going to those again this year, but adding in ISWA beginner's tourney such as the fabulous ones run at Westfield or Zionsville the next two weekend. And before I get the "this is why Fishers kids are soft" message, I just want to point out we also have 15-20 kids in our new Advanced Club that only go to regular ISWA duals and tourneys (they're beyond PWL). Our "Intermediate" club goes to PWLs and Beginner's tourneys, and our Beginner's (4-6 year olds) only do PWLs (and some choose not to do even that). The concept is that learning the sport and loving it is more important than competing all the time. In today's day of Youth Baseball player playing 150+ games a year, it's hard for some parents to understand, but those that do are better off for it. I'm really glad that HSE has been a part of it and I think it will continue to be a great experience for our youngest wrestlers. As a matter of fact, we host one tonight at HSE in the Aux gym. Bring a kid or just yourself and check it out. If you ask for Coach Brobst and just want a tour of how we do it, I'll even let you in for free.

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.