RAJR

Not all small schools think it is a "waste of their time" to wrestle the larger schools in their sectional.  It all boils down to a coach and AD with common wrestling sense.  We have made a point to keep an evenly balanced schedule, wrestling several larger schools within our sectional and throughout the season.  It helps both our experienced and inexperienced guys on our team.  Currently, the only team we do not see in our sectional is Hamilton Heights.  We tried to work out a schedule this year for both schools, but could not find a fit.  Heights is loaded with talent, but we wanted to wrestle them for the competition and to see individuals head to head.  We have wrestled Pendleton Heights for several years, and picked up Noblesville, both in our sectional.  We understand going in, they are always two tough teams to beat, but why not chase the challenge?  Pendleton beat us earlier in the year, but we beat them towards the end of the regular season.  We see Delta, Greenfield Central, New Castle, Oak Hill, etc.  Again, not all small schools dodge the competition, from a team and individual standpoint.  Small schools that ONLY wrestle their level of competition or size of their school is hurting their program greatly.  We are fortunate to have a supportive AD who allows us to adjust our schedule as needed.  We have 10 teams in our sectional including us, we see 7 of the teams sometime throughout the year.  It took some time to get our schedule aligned, but it can be done.  It sure makes our sectional seeding meeting a breeze!    

Wrestling everyone in our sectional would be very difficult since most teams are nearly 2 hours away.  That, along with parents wanting to see their kids against local teams as much as possible, much the same as basketball and football.  Logistics/conference obligations/IHSAA rules start to compete against each other very quickly.

Wrestling every team in your sectional should NOT be a requirement. Wrestling half the teams is much more feasible and realistic. Some schools have very limited ability to change their schedules around to get different matches due to conference and other committed events.
 
For instance, talking to Kraus at Garrett here is what they have.
Conference super dual
Conference tournament
Al Smith
Team State
Carroll super dual(required conference duals and some sectional)
Home Invitational
 
6 duals with conference or sectional opponents.
 
They do wrestle 6 of the 9 other schools, but would have to drop one of their other events to pick up the other three.
 

Not gonna hijack the thread here, but this issue is really a competitive balance issue. Small schools see it as a waste of their time to wrestle the larger schools in their sectional because they know they'll get stomped as a team and would prefer to wrestle others on their level. Most large schools also view it as a waste of their time because what do you prove by beating them, and also prefer to wrestle duals "on their level", especially with 2 wild cards for Team State up in the air in December and January used for Team State and Conference tourneys.
 
Furthering the problem is the fact that everyone knows that these head to heads are so important so a significant amount of ducking occurs in some of those match-ups. 
 
When I first took over at HSE, we went to a dual tourney at Frankfort that had 3-4 of our smaller Sectional opponents in it and we would leave every year with a bunch of 72-6 wins, but a couple of the schools knew they couldn't win as a team and their good kids would either be "hurt" when we'd wrestle them and they'd forfeit that weight or they would bump the kid to a different weight class to avoid the head to head. The coaches at those schools have all since changed and I don't think our current set would do that anymore but it was a good strategy for them and a waste of a day for us, so we got out of that one and sought better competition for our guys instead.
 
Not sure of the solution, but it's happening everywhere due to our all-in system.
 
 
 

Someone else was asking for the Genius ratings. I'll clean them up and post them.

I agree with this too in general. There's no arguing he has an easier path to competition opportunities--but he's taken advantage of those opportunities to be consistently a 5th placer or medalist at Euros and worlds. Forget Indiana, American 57/61kg reps as a nation couldn't claim Micic's consistent high-level results before Gilman for the prior 15+ years.

IMO it doesn't help his case

It's tough to compare Howe in general. His international results suggest he was a perennial medal-level guy for 5-6 years, but he was behind arguably our greatest freestyler ever in Jordan Burroughs. I would have argued during a 2 or 3 year stretch at Howe's best, that he was the 3rd or 4th best pound-for-pound freestyler/folkstyler/whatever in the United States. But there's only space for one on the national team at each weight. So he's not as "accomplished" as some others, but he wins all the theoretical head-to-heads in my mind. Ha.

Gard’s comment is what sparked my response because at the end of the day, to be the best you have to beat the best. I would take the comment I referenced from the wrestler to my grave and will certainly take your advice on elevating this to our AD and the IHSAA. The draw is the draw at this point, but it’d be nice to know that nobody outside the IHSAA knows the formula in advance.

If your story is true, shouldn't you say something to your athletic director, the coach, or IHSAA since someone is leaking the information out instead of coming on a messageboard and saying this? If you feel coaches are getting the draws early and possibly telling their kids to throw matches it affects the integrity of the sport. I would consider this a very serious offense in which the IHSAA would not approve of.

Don't count out Caleb Mattingly from Carmel who Blake Wolf will have first round. Should be a great 1st round match

The missing part is some form of wrestlebacks. Tournament starts out seeded and then is performance based, nothing wrong with that IMO.

I hadn't seen this posted yet. IHSAA org still says TBD.  So I went to IHSAATV.org and saw that all the Wrestling Semi-States were listed as upcoming. So I cllicked on one, logged in and the following info is what popped up if interested:
 

If you include State, service fee is $1.05 so $26.05 total Pretty good deal IMO and no flo subscription required,  I assume if you already have flo you are GTG.  Caveat emptor, YMMV and all that jazz...

I hadn't seen this posted yet. IHSAA org still says TBD.  So I went to IHSAATV.org and saw that all the Wrestling Semi-States were listed as upcoming. So I cllicked on one, logged in and the following info is what popped up if interested:
 

If you include State, service fee is $1.05 so $26.05 total Pretty good deal IMO and no flo subscription required,  I assume if you already have flo you are GTG.  Caveat emptor, YMMV and all that jazz...

The missing part is some form of wrestlebacks. Tournament starts out seeded and then is performance based, nothing wrong with that IMO.

The missing part is some form of wrestlebacks. Tournament starts out seeded and then is performance based, nothing wrong with that IMO.

Last sentence here says it all. And then out of the other sides of their mouths, “we need to figure out how to grow the wrestling community, the sport “
This is a catch 22 

It’s been made clear by the IHSAA that the purpose of the tournament is to crown a champion. This system does that.
TBH, I’m surprised they even bother with 3rd-8th place matches at state. 

285 Burgett and Branham
 
NC 220 and 285 is a meat grinder.

The missing part is some form of wrestlebacks. Tournament starts out seeded and then is performance based, nothing wrong with that IMO.

The missing part is some form of wrestlebacks. Tournament starts out seeded and then is performance based, nothing wrong with that IMO.

Few I noticed:
 
Mooresville Regional
132 Joey Buttler- Whiteland 138 Cheaney Schoeff- Avon
145 Wyatt Krejsa- Center Grove  
Pendleton Heights Regional
113          Isaiah Fye- Alexandria Monroe 

Yep, Bet I know which one. 🙂   Cell service is spotty too. I have had them run out before in years past as well. I used to always print my own to take.  Now I just download the handy dandy IndianaMat brackets on my phone.  Be careful though, you become more popular there once the word gets out, plus the rankings included.  Well, to be fair, I am not that popular in the first place so.... HAHAHA!!

The IndianaMat brackets are on the brackets page