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Westforkwhite

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  1. Westforkwhite
    How do you anticipate multi class wrestling will help the quality of Indiana HS wrestling, or hurt it? Please limit the discussion to perceived improvements/detractions to Quality. Thanks
  2. Westforkwhite
    So again I ask the question.. Does fairness mean that the wrestlers representing 11-12% of the students should have 33% of the success?
  3. Westforkwhite
    Article in the Muncie paper is on point with some of the discussion here: http://www.thestarpress.com/story/sports/high-school/2017/02/20/dcaa-wrestling-back-its-former-glory/98165424/
  4. Westforkwhite
    Absolutely. But where is it written each school should have an equal chance regardless of their population? This assumption that all schools should have an equal #s of qualifiers and placers is farcical. Your amount of success should be dictated by your numbers, which gives each respective male in the school an equal chance of being a qualifier or placer.
  5. Westforkwhite
    So would you expect to as many good apples in 1 bushel as you could find in 10 bushels? No of course you wouldn't, probability would dictate more good apples coming from 10 bushels.
  6. Westforkwhite
    I think a major factor in the lack of placers is the abundance of multi sport athletes in 1A is disproportionate to the other classes. I'm not saying work harder, I'm saying that you can't expect to have to success of an athlete whose sole focus is wrestling, when you spread yourself over 3 sports. Placers represent an elite group of wrestlers, and your numbers show that as a whole the kids placing are specializing in one sport. Are you in essence saying that 1A kids shouldn't have to dedicate themselves to one sport yet should have equal success with kids that do? There are a lot of benefits to competing in multiple sports, and kids should always have the option to play more than one sport if they so choose, but there are sacrifices when you make that choice. You can't expect to have the same level of success (on average) as the kids that wrestle year round. The multi sport kids gets to have new and different experiences with their other teams, and the year round wrestler has to sacrifice those experiences to achieve success on the highest level.
  7. Westforkwhite
    Absolutely, BBall is a different beast, but it was King for nearly a century. Now football is King, and classing the sport had a major impact on that (see the 45% attendance drop in the first year of class) How big of a crowd has softball or baseball ever drawn? So IHSAA wrestling tournament (which set another attendance record this year) is a different beast than those sports which had only marginal fan interest prior to classing.
  8. Westforkwhite
    I'd be careful to compare to IN basketball which has significantly lower attendance and participation than it did pre-class. Yes attendance has been rising slightly but it has still yet to approach even 60% of the fans they had the year prior to class. Participation has dropped the last several years and is much lower than pre-class.
  9. Westforkwhite
    NY classed in 2004 70 14,500 71 15,000 74 18,000 76 18,226 81 18,760 86 15,784 91 12,460 96 11,414 01 11,980 02 12,646 03 12,013 04 12,013* First year of class (but it appears they just went with the prior years #s) 05 12,879 06 12,879 07 12,879 08 13,932 09 13,932 10 13,932 11 14,367 12 13,668 13 13,668 14 13,668 15 13,668 As Y2 pointed out previously these #s aren't 100%. We can see with NY that often times the number was used for 3-4 years, thus we don't have a complete picture. Given the national climate of dropping numbers and relatively small population growth in NY over this time frame it appears multi class has benefited NY. That said I'm certainly not an expert on NY wrestling and don't know for certain that class wrestling was the cause, but I have to assume it is without any knowledge to the contrary
  10. Westforkwhite
    Thank you. This is what is was trying to avoid. A very good question. There are multiple layers to participation. In order of importance(in my opinion) 1) total number of kids wrestling in HS 2) total number entering the state tournament 3) fan interest, as this is a driver of participation We don't want forfeits and should work to eliminate them, however the total number of participants is the number we should be focused on. It is the greater indicator of overall health of wrestling in IN.
  11. Westforkwhite
    ...again this isnt out of line with the students represented. My bet is several of these teams won't have qualifiers 10 years into a class system either. If the goal is to improve participation why is all the focus on 1A? Shouldn't we direct our attention were the ROI is best? I'm saying to continue to explore ideas that expand 1A participation, but there is limited potential to ultimately increase total numbers beyond a few hundred kids. Let's discuss how class wrestling would impact our 2A & 3A schools. If we have any real hope of getting back to 9-10k kids statewide we need to push numbers in the schools that make up 88% of the student population.
  12. Westforkwhite
    This is another very valid point. When you apply the entrant factor of 82% (they only put 82% of what would be their 1/3 of participants) it levels out a bit, but is still lower than where it should be.
  13. Westforkwhite
    Here is a list of years each respective state adopted a multi class system and the number of classes. GA 67-2 71-4 01-5 13-6 17-7 IL 74-2 09-3 IA. 57-2 69-3 KS. 66-2 71-3 73-4 MI. 61-2 74-4 MN. 76-2 97-3 NY. 04-2 OH. 74-2 76-3 PA. 74-2 WA. 31-2 58-3 69-4 WI. 80-3
  14. Westforkwhite
    I don't doubt your experience with growth in that program whatsoever, but that doesn't equate to class wrestling replicating that at high levels elsewhere. It might, and you certainly make a good argument, but it's anecdotal and could represent an isolated scenario. An isolation scenario possibly mirrored by the current high rate of 1A qualifiers/placers that come from only a few of the 101 1A schools? So if multi class wrestling does have an impact on quantity or quality how wide is that impact spread?
  15. Westforkwhite
    I think that is a very logical thought, but hard to prove statiscally or otherwise. Not being able to prove it doesn't mean it isn't true, but I think it will be hard to build agreement on that as a given result of classing.
  16. Westforkwhite
    Joe has provided some really good forfeit statistics in the past. If I recall correctly it spoke to fewer forfeits in surrounding states smaller classes vs. ours, but it showed an increase in forfeits at the larger class level. As it relates to overall participation numbers, I think it's worth a closer look. Let's say that multi class wrestling has the same effect here, how would then numbers be effected? How many wrestlers represent a forfeit in 1A vs the wrestlers represented in 3A forfeit? In other words, if we have one less forfeit in 1A how many wrestlers could we expect to add to the rosters is it 1.2? or a little higher? Now let's look at how many wrestlers we would expect to lose by adding one forfeit in the large class. Since 3A rooms are much larger on average, if we had one more forfeit it would likely mean 1.5-2 less wrestlers per team. Even though it would be a net wash for participants entering the state tournament it would have adverse effects on our participation numbers in the state as a whole.
  17. Westforkwhite
    This is a very valid point, however its got a little of the chicken and egg thing going on. Without having a program to begin with how do you have the success that leads to more participation? If there is apathy towards wrestling at a given school is class wrestling likely to change that? Do we end up with just a few elite programs at the lower levels that dominate their respective divisions (much the same way it is today)? I think the programs with clubs particularly at youth level will be the ones to reap the multi class benefits. I still question what effect this would have on the programs that don't have club or major commitment to the sport in place. We essentially have 4-5 1A programs, the rest just field teams (mostly incomplete) does class bring parity or does it just create a few dominant schools who place and win state disproportionately to their peers in the class.
  18. Westforkwhite
    You said "you liked watching Brownsburg wrestlers go down", and it was in context of Mills match vs. Rooks. So you did express joy in seeing a HS kid lose despite not knowing the kid. By posting on the 120 finals page you made it personal against one kid.
  19. Westforkwhite
    Ours isn't too bad when you consider Mooresville regional teams are all closer to Ft Wayne than to Evansville by 45 minutes to an hour. (and its all interstate) I think it's always going to be difficult to create parity and equal distances.
  20. Westforkwhite
    We are looking at this from totally different angles. You believe each "school" should have an equal chance regardless of how few students that respective school has. Which means you believe 12% of the population should have 33% of its success. I on the other hand am evaluating what the statistical probability a boy "student" would have to qualify or place. Which suggests proportionate representation in qualifiers (slightly above) and a less than proportionate share of placers (low, but not as far off when you apply the entrant factor of 82%)
  21. Westforkwhite
    The facts don't all point in the same direction on this. There are numbers that support multi class and numbers that don't. My hope is that we can sift thru them and get some people to see the other side, regardless of which side they now reside. I also hoped to avoid some of the tired arguments such as... "Why don't we just give everyone a trophy" - Adding 2 or even 3 classes is hardly everyone gets a trophy, we still are only giving medals to a very small % of wrestlers, and they still mean something. "I bet those kids from multi class states bury their medals in the back yard" - A single state championship means more, period. Of course those multi class kids are proud of their accomplishments (as well they should be) but you can't say it doesn't mean a little less. Our tournament is recognized as one of the 6 best in the country(USAW and others), classing would more than likely cause us to lose this distinction.
  22. Westforkwhite
    We lost more in one year (the 1st year of multi class) than we did in the prior 15 years combined. Losing 45% of your fanbase in one year, is huge and directly linked to classing the sport. That said we don't know that it would have the same impact on wrestling, but it's hard to formulate a coherent argument against the fact that class bball hurt attendance instantaneously.
  23. Westforkwhite
    Here are the IHSAA basketball tournament attendance figures from 1992-2008 2008 427,974 2007 456,960 2006 474,881 2005 497,266 2004 475,023 2003 474,088 2002 438,430 2001 457,010 2000 387,710 1999 429,140 1998 434,752(first year multi-class -352,728 fans in one year) 1997 786,024 (last season of single class) 1996 786,852 1995 812,859 1994 775,670 1993 839,545 1992 861,124 If 352K people drop off the attendance in one year and that coincides with the year they changed to class wrestling, it suggests without too much speculation that that not near as many people cared about it as did prior to multi class.
  24. Westforkwhite
    I'm making some quick observations not laying out a complete factual case. 1) You are speculating 2) So the 70's is really the mean and without listing each state it gave an accurate glance when looking at the info as a whole 3) This supports your points, don't fight it 4) No it isn't an opinion, attendance numbers were down significantly immediately following multi class, and the participation #s dropping are straight out of the NFHS. It only requires evaluating the rate of decline pre class vs post class and comparing that to the national rate of decline. We were doing better than the national average before class, and worse after.
  25. Westforkwhite
    I've added the information from several states into a spreadsheet, for easier handling of the data. I'll be attaching it shortly. Some initial observations. 1) Wrestling is down nationwide (we all know this), but from historical high of 355K wrestlers in 75-76 we have fallen off quite a bit. 2) Class Wrestling was largely implemented in 70's and had little (if any) effect in curbing the downward participation trends. I have no reason to believe multi class wrestling was the cause of the drops, as I believe a myriad of societal factors played the biggest role. 3) NY has shown increases since going to class, but has receded in the past 4 years. NY is the most current example of a state going to multi class, and a better comparison I believe than many of the states that classed back in the 70's. 4) IN has recently classed a sport which is entwined in the very fabric of the states identify, and that hasn't gone quite as well as we hoped. IN has seen major drops in basketball participation since multi class, which doesn't coincide with the major national decline which subsided prior to multi class implementation. The friday night bball game was under pressure from societal forces but multi class drove the death knell towards public apathy. That apathy translated into less kids that were interested and thus less that played in HS.
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