NarrowGate

This subject will be debated for years and years to come. I coach in our club, as well as pop warner and one of my sons travel baseball teams (yes I'm crazy). All three of my boys (9th, 7th and 5th grade) have been playing football and baseball since they were 5 and started wresting 3 years ago. It's tough from a competitive standpoint to push them to the highest level when other kids are getting more swings in or more mat time or going to various year round football camps. As a parent, at some point, you have to start making tough decisions regarding year round sport activity, not just from a progression standpoint but let's not forget a financial one as well. I've seen many travel baseball players slowly walk away from the sport around the age of 13/14 and its been discussed in great length in the baseball community that part of this reason is because they simply start to lose their passion for the sport. Some of these youth baseball teams are playing 70-90 games during the season, which is insane. However, wrestling seems to be a sport where only the passionate survive. You can't really force a kid into wrestling as it typically doesn't end well. Because of this, I honestly don't see wrestlers losing their passion as quickly as a baseball player might, not to mention that baseball is probably the biggest self esteem destroying sport out there from a statistic stand point. College recruiters have also said they prefer multi sport athletes, but that can be misleading, because they aren't recruiting mediocrity either. The real problem here are parents: Parents have this crazy notion that their son/daughter should always be at the same level as Johnnie down the street. Truth is, Johnnie matured earlier, has better muscle tone and at the age of 13 is done growing. Kids develop at different rates, regardless if they practice year round or not. Year round wrestling isn't pushing people from the sport, parents are.

Here are my 2 cents. Bolin and Carter have battled several times and I believe the series is tied 3-3 in recent matches, with each wrestler seeming to alternate wins, Bolin lost the last time, so if history repeats itself..... Craque beat Layman 6-1, although Layman just came off an injury and is now back to 100 percent, will be a lot closer this time. Winland beat C. Taylor 7-4 in regular season and has beaten Nisley 3/4 times they have wrestled recently. Johnson should be able to beat Mohmed if we use the common opponent thought process, but this is why we don't wrestle on paper. Beckman has been wrestling really well lately and his momentum should carry him into the finals.

It's crazy the kind of things we do as parents once our kids get involved in something. I dabbled with wrestling in high school, but coming from a small school in Ohio, there wasn't much push back then. So when my kids started wrestling a few years ago, I wasn't exactly sure what we were committing to. Now that they have shown great interest and are starting to have some success, I've become that crazy wrestling dad too. Fast forward to now and I'm like a sponge, listening to everything our club coaches say, learning as much as possible, getting bronze and copper certified, etc. Heck, even somehow got volunteered to serve on our club board. This sport is amazing and I'm so glad my 3 boys have decided to be involved. Thanks for posting this thread............much needed reminder that we all come from different places, but in the end our love and passion for this sport is what drives us!

Chesterton advanced all 14 (10 champs, 4 runner ups)

Chesterton was nursing a few injuries, nothing to worry about. Evan Bates stepped in just fine for Girgenti and Brock Ellis wrestled well against Mcintosh. Portage looked pretty unstoppable. No Idea on Rumph. Rumor had it, they bumped almost everyone in class.

Piggy backing here.........my boys have been attending these RTC's the past several weeks and they are amazing. Great energy, great instruction, great conditioning. Seriously, well done coaches! Sounds like Krause might attend one soon, has this been made official yet?

Completely agree, there needs to be a decent balance at the younger ages imo. I've been involved in coaching travel baseball for awhile now and you can start to see a negative trend of sports injuries and/or burn out syndrome with players who do only baseball year round. These players almost seem robotic in their approach to the sport and many times their lack of passion is evident.

Good Luck Andrew!