Wrestling Scholar

I would say the kid and Coach werent sure if he was in violation. In this article, it's reported that the kid was cleared earlier in check prior to match and was cleared in prior week. So coach had a head cover just in case. Also, the rules says hair can't go beyond the collar, but I'll say some refs have high collars and some have low collars. It's judgement. My question was what's wrong with the head cover? Was it a swim cap or was it just not attached. Again the ref could of compromised, and this infamous scissors and had some slits cut into the hair cover. From what I say, I see 4 red flags from this ref. 1. Was late to weigh ins. 2. Failed at pre match check in hair and nail check as he changed his evaluation at match time from prior check. 3. Got in fist fight with another ref. 4. Calls the other minority ref a racial slur. Why is this referee still officiating?

I wonder if the team state seeding meeting gets as animated and intense as the team state "Committee of Power" selection meeting? Somebody will have to leak some footage.

If head gear really wasn't attached, why didn't somebody cut slits into the hair cover to attach, which would of been much easier and legal. It was also reported the official in this incident had an incident where he had called a fellow African American official a racial name. Something is fishy here. I do think that wrestling has an underlying perception problem of being a white red neck sport. This story doesn't help that perception. If we're going to grow the sport, we need to increase minority participation.

Even weirder, how does Harrison beat Hamilton Southeastern 46-22 and Hamilton SE ranking increases to 17 and Harrison not ranked.

Must of been entertaining, but the rules say if any team from the Logansport regional gets a top 20 win, then they get the extra gold star for the week or the toot of the horn. Its good to see Harrison taking on tough HCC opponents like the old days before they got expelled out of the conference.

I saw Harrison (West Lafayette) had a dominant 46-22 win over #18 ranked Hamilton Southeastern. At 160 Merkel beat #10 Hiner 3-2 At HWY Crider won in Ultimate tiebreaker over Kunkleman. Didn't have a score.

I know the level of wrestling might not be the same as Brownsburg or Avon, but the Logansport Regional still has some good drama and suspense. I know the DevilDog schedule might be busy, but it would be cool if the DevilDog made a cameo appearance and made the long drive up I-65.

If you do like your local newspaper coverage, you should give a shout out to them for doing a good job.

I have a subscription for our local paper which I like and I realized I haven't seen a wrestling result posted or an article concerning wrestling this year. I was frustrated by that. I was just curious on how wrestling gets covered around the state, so I decided to do a poll.

I think the best way to get on there is to have your son beat somebody that's on the list. Then he'll get noticed. You also could buy the ranker some tacos, but that probably wont work.

Again, I get back to the point. When my son wrestled in Indiana, he didn't miss a day of school for wrestling tournaments. From what I see, the two day tournaments in Indiana occur on Thanksgiving weekend or over Christmas break, or maybe they start on Friday night so kids don't miss school. My other son wrestled in Ohio, and he missed about 4 days of school each year due to wrestling. I didn't have a problem with it. You ever notice the State tournament in Indiana starts on Friday night so kids miss less school. It also takes a month to run the state tournament because they could easily eliminate a round by consolidating regionals with sectionals or semi-state but would require a two day tourney. So most Indiana kids don't have to miss school even for the state tournament/state series. Its just the culture in Indiana dictated by the IHSAA. When I wrestled back in the day in another state. We missed a lot of school for wrestling, it just wasn't a big deal. Due to wrestling having big tournaments, it has a tendency to be a sport where you miss more school. Again, its just the culture of the IHSAA as they do not like absenteeism for sporting events. And this policy is just not germaine to wrestling as other sports generally don't miss much school. Obviously, that perspective is different for the Louisiana athletic association and I would say most other states Ive seen.

My home state of Kansas has a very similar rule. KSHSAA only allows member schools to travel 500 miles or less from the state perimeter and only allows competition from schools within 500 miles. I think there are a few other states with similar rules.

One thing that underlines multiple IHSAA policies is that they want to limit the amount time student athletes miss the classroom. I think the travel rule is implemented to eliminate the chance of our kids traveling long distances resulting in the athletes missing school. Also, IHSAA is conservative and old fashioned and doesn't want high school athletic departments spending a large amount of resources on travel expenses. I disagree with the rule also, but the IHSAA is very set in their ways and we've had discussions on the board in prior years relating to the topic. Like mentioned earlier, football and especially basketball coaches would like to take their teams to compete nationally and have been denied. They would be drivers for change and IHSAA would not make an exception for a wrestling team to for example compete at the Iron Man, which is sad.

That's the most interesting meaningless fact that i'm going to hear today. Hook and a Half is a walking MD history book.

I didn't like the "committee" video as much.

Im letting this guy take over as annoying Logansport regional expert.

The Cornerstone of Ed's argument is the Sliga workout partner legacy which resulted in Riley's state success. Of course Ill also recognize GrecoCoach's expert coaching as a factor the success of both wrestlers. But that brings the key question up concerning to transfer or not. What do you do when you're a talented wrestler with goals, and your school doesn't have a workout partner like Sliga and you don't have a legendary coach like Greco Coach or Ed Pendoski? Do you stay put, and hope you can find a way. For every success story like Seth Riley, there's hundreds of Johnny Potentials that had the desire and talent, but were in the wrong situation and never reached their full potential and ended as the SS ticket round victim. How about the kids that did move and reached there potential as a result. My example is Tanner Lynde. He transferred to Delphi because he got himself a badass workout partner in Braden Atwood and also benefited from some valuable coaching from Braden's dad. How about the 2012 182 lb state finals: Tanner Lynde (Delphi) 8 - Luke Shaeffer Westfield 1. You cant argue Lynde benefited the same way from a workout partner the same way Riley did. Maybe Lynde would of done as well if he didn't transfer, but I say he was smart to put him in good situation. It didn't hurt him getting a Purdue scholarship either. If you have big goals, I say evaluate your situation to see if it will get you there. If not, then maybe make a change that improves your chances. Joe, how come you cant use the word A M B I T I O U S, on your site? If you type it you get this result, ***NO NO NO***ious.

I don't think using Sliga at Fishers is a good example. I think its contradictory to your point. Fishers has had some solid teams throughout the years, its like you're the assumption that Fishers sucked back then. There still one of the biggest schools in state with a lot of wrestlers coming out (plenty of workout partners), there facilities are good and they wrestled a challenging schedule. Maybe they're not competing for state champs, but they were very solid when he was there. They also have access to some of the best clubs in Indianapolis. I don't see why Sliga would have wanted to move. Why don't you use the example of a wrestler from a small school that has an inexperienced wrestling coach, poor facilities, weak schedule, low participation, or in summary the place a kid has little chance of improving or winning anything. But you say you're the Lorax (my kids used to love the book) and speak for the trees, maybe the whole transfer thing might be healthy for the sport or the trees as your symbolically using as a metaphor. To make my point, maybe we shouldn't try to use over controlled IHSAA rules to make sure that all the schools are healthy. That's not real. Maybe we should make sure that most of the trees are healthy and not waste resources on the sick ones. There's schools with 2 to 3 wrestlers participating. It is it really economically feasible to spend coaches salaries, procure equipment and travel just for the benefit of a couple of wrestlers. Maybe if a kid wanted to transfer from one of these schools, because he wants to be a healthy tree, but by keeping him in an environment where he cant progress, were ensuring he's not going to be an healthy tree. Also, on a similar note. Why doesn't the ISHAA jump on the bandwagon and let small schools coop with each other to create bigger competitive teams. To clarify, School A and B don't have wrestling team but school C does. Let kids from school A and B wrestle for School C. Kid doesn't have to transfer, he just has to drive a little bit for practice. This would be one little piece in solving our transfer problem. We're all Lorax's who speak for the trees, we just have different Lorax ideas.

Ok, even though I like a good class wrestling debate as much as anyone, its way to early for that and its digressing from the topic. Im cutting that off. Back to the topic, the advent of athletic transfers is nothing new in Indiana. Wrestling has seen its share over the years, and it hasn't destroyed it yet. At least not in the manner that Ed described. But the I think the game changer was open enrollment/ and school voucher law passed in 2013. As the hypothetical process described which is the the elimination of wrestling programs, seems somewhat feasible. I would say if you look at the big picture, you can see it in the elimination of Indiana schools. Look what it did to the Indianapolis school district. When enrollment became open, the better students left the weaker schools and went to the bigger schools. Next thing you know, 3 schools aren't cutting it any more and their doors are shut permanently. I think this will be a continuing trend in Indiana. And that's the way we will see the loss of more wrestling programs, due to school consolidation. On the athletic side, the one factor not mentioned by Ed was the fact that the IHSAA is cracking down on transfers more than ever and punishing the transferees by not granting eligibility. I think this tactic has been somewhat successful already. Even though these complicated transfer rules deter transfers, the problem with them is the hypocrisy of them. By that I mean, the State government of Indiana encourages kids to transfer for a better arts program, a journalism program, a chess team, a robotics program, a better offering of classes or just because a school has a better academic environment. But on the flip side, its wrong to transfer because of wrestling, football or gymnastics. It doesn't make sense, because these athletics programs are just as much of the school academic environment as the other extra curricular activities mentioned earlier. And from a legal perspective, lawyers love to the fight that argument because the unfairness is very to prove and they normally win. Look at the IHSAA record on transfer lawsuits, they normally don't win and they also cost a lot of money in legal fees. But looking at the current state of wrestling, we have over 300 programs which is good. Also, I think the IHSAA participation data was wrong. The forfeit numbers are real, and we're seeing less participation. But as described earlier, a lot of these programs are not so healthy with a only a handful of kids coming out. It has to be de-motivating for a kid and a coach to only have 4 or 5 kids participate. Also, lets be real, there's currently less than 10 schools that can win the state title in any given year and those are almost always the same 10 teams. Albeit through great home grown coaching or some kind of migration of talent through transfers, the best teams normally find a way to stay on top. So where's it going. What's it going to be like in 30 years when Ed's grandson or grand daughter is dominating the wrestling scene. I think well have less wrestling programs (see school consolidation), but we still will have well over 200 programs and those programs will be much fuller than we have now. So here's the question: would it be better to have less programs than currently, but say most of these programs can actually field full teams, instead of the current situation where half the programs in the state are riddled with forfeits?

The real question is: are any of the wrestlers going to get the big no, you're not eligible from the IHSAA.

I saw Culver had some good recruits coming in. Too bad Bryant left as they could of have a stacked team. I guess that changes things a little bit. I suppose at an academy, you can get some surprise blue chips and can lose some.

Yes, see the texts from Helickson trying to get guys to change there stories. Looks like to me somebody got to him.

It is weird that OSU is getting all this negative exposure at the same time. But still based on the timeline and locations and people involved, they just are not really related. I also don't think it helps Jordan seeing high profile coaches like Meyer getting slammed for neglecting abuse. I think in perception of the public, it just demonstrates how susceptible some people can be in not covering various types of abuse.

You're right when you say Helickson knew these guys, but these guys knew Helickson too. Helickson's problem is he let the Jeanie out of the bottle and you cant put it back when DiSabato got Helickson to admit on video about Strauss's sexual assault. Everybody on here loves ripping Disabato, the guy is smart, and he smart to get that interview from Helickson to admit it before it the fan. Helickson didn't forsee this coming back to haunt his buddy Jordan. He was being honest at that point, but he also didn't think about his own personal ramification of him ignoring the situation Know he's trying to make up for his mistake by trying to coerce the wresters to back off and recant, but the Jeanie's out. Kind of naïve to think texts like this wouldn't get out to the public. Helickson might have put himself in some legal trouble for obstructing an investigation. At least Helickson still had enough loyalty to not turn his back and throw his former wrestlers under the bus just to protect his career like Jordan. Again, Jordan's strategy to attack the whistle blowers kind of is weak when 6 more wrestlers have stepped up and said he knew this.