Wrestling Scholar

That is old school thought. Girls wrestling is pouring energy and participation into a sport that other wise was slowly leaking. I think fair to say its a Man's and Woman's sport now. Give it a few years, female participation will grow and you will see sanctioned female wrestling and the girls will only wrestle the girls. But in the mean time, I think its only fair to provide a platform for the girls to participate and continue to grow their niche in the sport. And in my opinion, religious indictments like this made by religious leaders is just using a religious cloak to hide sexist discriminatory beliefs. I just say too bad for parochial schools but you choose to not wrestle, you forfeit or lose. You have to step on the mat to win. With that said, about 5 years ago a similar case came up and it involved a catholic school in my home town back in Kansas. The small parochial school wrestled a tournament and a few wrestlers ended up wrestling some girls. The conservative Diocese over seeing that school and a handful of other Catholic schools pronounced an edict that the boys couldn't wrestle any girls. Note the other Diocese in the state didn't do anything. So it just affected schools in the Kansas City area. The problem was a few girls in Kansas qualified for the state tournament. Its true, again class wrestling in Kansas does make it significantly easier to qualify for state, but that's fodder for another post. Of course in a first round matchup, A catholic school kid drew a girl. And think the girl was a 4 seed and the guy was 1 seed out of regional. Of course the young gentleman had to forfeit. Made quite a stir. But again, maybe a good life lesson for the kid.

Really?? You might be correct. I always wondered what conservative entity dictated this. If true, was that the majority opinion of the state legislature 40 years ago, 20 years ago or now. Just for perspective, Indiana is one of the few states that restricts missing school for high school sports. I used to live in Ohio and they have a 3 day state tournament. Kids miss Thursday and Friday. I grew up in Kansas and we had went to two 2 day tournaments and the state tournament was a 2 day tournament. So we missed 3 days in the season. I had a son wrestle in Missouri, multiple two day tournaments including state.

Ive heard people say the best way would be to do a two day tournament and combine regionals and sectionals into one tournament. Benefits would be : You could eliminate the regional day and make a 3 week tournament, you would get the true placement benefit of wrestlebacks all the way to SS, you would eliminate a lot of redundant wrestling as a lot of guys in sectionals wrestle each other in regionals, you would solve the pigtail problem as everybody would have double elimination chance The only compromise would be is the 1st day would happen on a Friday and kids and coaches would miss a day of school. You would use 24 or 32 man brackets, but largest brackets would be or 23 wrestlers in rare case of no forfeits. I suppose this also would be a negative for small schools as that is there moment to shine as it would be much more difficult for them to win champions individually or team wise in the larger format.

That would be best case scenario and from the wrestling perspective makes a ton of sense. You would get legitimately get your top 4 out of semi-state, you would cut down the state series by a week and entertainment value would be great. Indiana state series is way to long. It makes sense, but since it doesn't fit into the IHSAA format of -(Sec, regionals, SS, State) it will never fly. I also this would have to be a two day tournament which is fine, but IHSAA would never condone kids missing school for wrestling. No problem in any other state though?

Galagore, You're not allowed to use the "C" word in this post

Yes the Frankfort increase is 52% or just 17 miles, with a slow moving school bus that's roughly 20 minutes there and 20 minutes back. I heard some sectionals started an hour late because track wrestling didn't work this weekend. So put it in perspective. Somebody, would poo poo it because it takes an hour more every two years. Come on. And each IHSAA region is some arbitrarily drawn line which for some reason is different for every sport. Everybody identifies with a region because the IHSAA has been doing the same thing for forever. I also bet some coaches wouldn't want to change because Regional X has a great hospitality room.

I know the higher amount of travel is a factor, but I don't think it would be that much more travel. For perspective here's current state and possible rotation combination for the New Castle SS. I tried to match up with the next most optimal regional distance to shorten miles. New Castle's Regionals Current state (odd years) North Montgomery= Crawfordsville, Frankfort Pendleton Heights = Elwood, Lawrence Central Perry Meridian = Southport, Shelbyville Richmond = Tri, South Dearborn NC's Proposed regionals in (even years) North Montgomery- Crawfordsville, Lawrence Central Pendleton Heights- Elwood, Frankfort Perry Meridian- Southport, South Dearborn Richmond- Tri, Shelbyville Here's a rough estimate of each traveling sectionals increased Mileage ( Delta of miles from former regional to new regional Frankfort Distance to North Montgomery= 33 Miles Frankfort to Pendleton Heights = 50 Miles Delta =17 miles increase Lawrence Central to Pendleton Heights = 24 Miles Lawrence Central to North Montgomery = 57 miles= Delta = 33 miles increase Shelbyville to Perry Meridian HS = 30 Miles Shelbyville to Richmond HS = 62 Miles Delta= 32 miles increase South Dearborn to Richmond = 63 Miles South Dearborn to Shelbyville HS= 66 Miles Delta = 3 Miles increase Now each high school would have there own travel distance increase or maybe decrease based on the new regional, for a quick SWAG, I used the distance from sectional to regional to give us a general idea on the travel increase. Generally, teams in the worst case scenario will be traveling a half hour to 45 minutes more.

I can see scheduling as many sectional opponents as possible to create head to head matchups for seeding. But what purpose does wrestling regional opponents accomplish? Maybe you might schedule with the exception that there somewhat regionally close to you, but doesn't affect that much. Also, look at it this way. If you look at regional opponents over a two year span, you would have a large pool of regional opponents to choose from.

You make the point that a teams lineup is different each year, but if you look at rankings or genius ratings from year to year, there is an amazing amount of consistency in dominance of the top teams. Look at Maligned's Quota ratio for each Regional for the last 5 years, and its really amazing how very little variability there is year to year. The weak Regionals stay weak and the strong regionals are always strong. How many straight years has EMD won their regional? And every year they have a different lineup. Brownsburg, Cathedral, Perry Meridian have been perennial top 10. With this plan, every other year, half the teams in the same regional will avoid the dominant blue bloods and maybe somebody new might have a shot at winning one, well at least every other year. I think a little change might make things more interesting. I bet some coaches out there would be happy about avoiding EMD, Cathedral every other year.

Just throwing out a new paradigm. Im thinking outside the box. Here's an idea and looking for open minded opinions. Good or bad. Here's my idea: Rotating regionals. Instead of having the same two sectionals going to the same Regional which is current state, the new idea is to have every other year, move four of the sectional teams or rotate to a different regional. The benefit of this would be diversity and variety in the teams wrestling. Consistently, there's a complaint that some regionals are stacked while others are soft. Is it fair for the teams going to the tough regional to always have a tougher road to state while other teams get through Regionals easily? So under the new plan, one year a team could hypothetically get the easier path with the weaker regional while the next year you have to go through a tougher one. Regional locations can stay the same and four of the sections would always go to the same regional, but every other year there's a different sectional coming. There's some pros and cons, including maybe a little more travel in some cases. But this wouldn't be a monumental change and could be easily implemented. Ill use the teams from the East Chicago SS to represent one of the possible combinations of rotation. Current State Year 1 (Odd numbered years) Crown Point = Crown Point and Laporte Penn = Mishawka and Plymouth Hobart = Portage and East Chicago Logansport = Twin Lakes and Lafayette Jefferson Proposed Change Year 2 (even numbered years) Crown Point = Crown Point and Lafayette Jefferson Penn =Mishawaka and East Chicago Hobart= Portage and Laporte Logansport= Twin Lakes and Plymouth Anyway, I understand in wrestling formats, there is rarely a change and is very difficult to get inertia to change with the IHSAA and the coaches association, but still we can brain storm and think of what possibly could be. Would this make things better. Maybe? Note my combination is just one possible scenario. Note it this also could be done with a 3 year rotation. The Scholar

Which brings up the question, has Maligned posted his annual sectional and regional quotas based on Genius ratings? He normally has out by now. I would think the quota rankings would compare similarly or be agreement with the data Joe just posted.

I think its a moot point to argue. The IHSAA executive committee, the entity who has the power to change policy and rules like implementing wrestle backs into regionals, SS over state has proven in past requests to not like or approve of wrestlebacks, nor IMO do they have much understanding of wrestlebacks. Yes, wrestlebacks is an efficient and effective way to obtain proper placing in wrestling and due to the individual matchup nature of wrestling, its somewhat unique and essential to it. To my point, the majority of IHSAA Committee is made up athletic directors whose coaching background is mostly and basketball and football with a couple of exceptions like a baseball softball or maybe a cross country coach. I could be wrong, I don't think there's any former wrestling coaches on the board. With that said, there's not an equivalent of wrestlebacks in basketball, football, softball, cross country or swimming. I think their thought process is if you don't do it in basketball or football, why should wrestling get the benefit. So maybe we need to lobby to get some former wrestling coaches on the executive committee to get some representation for our sport.

SOS bragging rights is a big deal. With four nationally ranked teams not getting baked in, they probably should get Brownsburg a complimentary astersisk that says Browsburg had the toughest schedule.

Do you ever notice Mike is always the first SS ranker to get his semi-state rankings out? Accurate and timely.

Mr Faulkens personally attended the controversial 2017 Lafayette Jeff Sectional seeding meeting mentioned in this thread, and I heard that from a credible source. Let that be a precedent to see how he would interpret.

You forgot coaching Coaching- Carroll- No Brainer: Does anybody have a better asst coach in state

Probably the biggest advantage of the 8 Team bracket vs 12 is it doesn't require each team to sit out a round for a bye. Somebody mentioned ealier that the 8 man bracket is more understandable for fans. Also, IMO in the 12 man bracket format, seeding really affects youre outcome. In the 8 man bracket, you get 3 pool play matches so you get more of a chance to out wrestle your seeding and placement is more of a result of wrestling than seeding.

Is that a coincidence that the top 20 of 2020 comes out on 1/20/2020? Which reminds me, I might need to get some Mad Dog 20/20 to help my vision read this clearly like 20 20 vision today.