NickS

The individual accomplishments are as separate in football/basketball as in wrestling. What name does it say on the Heisman Trophy this past year, is it Sam Bradford or Oklahoma? What name is on the NBA MVP trophy last year, is it Kobe Bryant or the LA Lakers? And I bet you'll never find 22 football players or 5 basketball players, "with the dedication to work hard enough to achieve what is required to compete at the collegiate level." During my wrestling days, I went to this Ohio high school in the summer to get some mat time, weekly. I remember this basketball player coming in, almost everytime as I did, with only one other person to work on his game. Could've been a coach or his dad, I never bothered to ask. Where was the rest of his teammates? Why was he training by himself, in a traditional team sport? Sounds very similar to how some wrestlers train if you ask me. I bet there are tons of cases like this across the country in traditional team sports. How is it misleading a kid to have him think and work for something that is bigger than just himself? What opportunities would a kid be cheated out of? Ask the Perry Meridian, Mishawaka, Mater Dei wrestlers if they feel cheated or mislead in anyway. Do you even know what egomaniac means? According to thefreedictionary.com, egomanic means obsessive preoccupation with the self. Here's the link, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/egomaniac So now that you know the definition, what's more egomaniac? A. Individuals that are team builders and want others to succeed as well. B. Individuals more worried about themselves and own accomplishments. Basketball and football begins with each individual's development as well. What good would a team be in those sports if none of them had proper basic techniques? I played football and remember getting my butt chewed out when I made mistakes. I also remember coaches pulling me aside when my mechanics were off. Not the team, just me.

I've noticed lots of articles on Triton's and Rochester's basketball team recently. Why is that? Because it's basketball, you know the sport Indiana has grown up on and the 2nd most popular sport in the country. Mater Dei has been the most successful wrestling program for Indiana in the past 20 years. Yet I remember reading a thread about how horrible the coverage the Evansville press gives wrestling. Just going off memory, not sure of the details.

CLASS WRESTLING??? I've been looking through the pages and having difficulty finding anything on this controversial subject. Can some of you give me your opinions on this please? Y2, Karl, Mansvwild, where do you guys stand on this subject?

I know we have like an unofficial middle school state tournament that's been ran the last few years or so. What's everyone's thoughts on having a Junior Varsity State Tournament. It could be ran similar to the varsity state tourney (maybe not as many rounds). You could have one week of sectional qualifying tourneys, then have the state tourney the following week or whatever. I've heard cases of kids who'd rather just quit than be stuck on the JV squad. This would at least encourage these kids to reconsider. I think it would be cool to see some of the best wrestlers, that couldn't quite make the line-up, get their shot at somewhat of a spotlight. Has this ever been brought up by the IHSWCA or someone?

From what I've read, the IHSAA is unwilling to class the team portion while leaving the individual alone. It's all or nothing apparently. Oh the IHSAA and it's stubborn ways.

Judging by the favortism towards individual success, I can now see why only a few teams dominate year in and year out. Personally, I really don't see any major differences between wrestling and football/basketball. In traditional team sports, every individual has an objective to take care of in order for the team to succeed. For football, it could be an o-lineman with a blocking assignment, wide receiver with running a route, or a d-lineman plugging a hole. In basketball, it could be a guard bringing the ball up court, a power forward with a block out, or someone creating a screen. In wrestling, the concept is the same. Every individual has an objective to take care of in order for the team to succeed. Alot of the times the objective is simple and basic, just win baby. But there are many cases when two teams match up very well. So the objective for a certain wrestler (whose inferior to his opponent) could be to give up the minimum amount of bonus points that he can. Or if you have the superior wrestler, his objective is to get the fall. How many matches were determined by bonus points at team state this year? There could be situations that call for wrestlers to bump up or switch weight classes because it could best serve the team. This is something that people with individualistic mindsets don't account for. I also hear that wrestling is an individual sport because not everyone on a team wrestles in the off-season. I have a hard time understanding this notion because I bet there are a ton football/basketball players who don't participate in their sports in the off-season.

Just FYI, I'll be looking up D2 and D3 #'s. Can't promise on how long it will take though.

What I would like to see personally, is the expansion of the tournament from 224 to 448 qualifiers. I know we talk about class wrestling all the time, and wrestlebacks get shot down year after year. But has there ever been discussion or plan about expanding the tournament at one of those board meetings?

Figured some of you guys would find these numbers interesting, D1 wrestlers by home state. I went to each team's official website to figure these numbers out. The number on the far left represents the number of D1 programs that particular state has. For example: Pennsylvania has 14 programs, New Jersey 3 programs, Ohio 4 programs, and so on. [table] 14 3 4 5 7 3 4 6 8 3 - 2 2 1 2 - - 1 2 2 1 1 1 - - 1 1 1 - 2 1 1 1 - 1 1 1 - - - 1 - - 1 - - - - - - - - - - - - - Overall Pennsylvania New Jersey Ohio California New York Illinois Michigan Virginia North Carolina Iowa Florida Maryland INDIANA Minnesota Colorado Washington Georgia Missouri Oregon Oklahoma Utah Wisconsin Arizona Kansas Texas Tennessee Delaware Idaho Alaska Massachusets South Dakota West Virginia Connecticut Montana Nebraska North Dakota Wyoming New Hampshire Louisiana Nevada South Carolina Hawaii Maine Rhode Island New Mexico Alabama Kentucky Germany Japan Mexico Mississippi Mongolia Morocco South Africa Texas Uzbekistan Vermont 343 205 190 189 158 127 100 98 82 80 59 59 50 49 46 44 43 43 34 33 33 32 27 27 27 25 22 21 18 18 17 17 15 14 12 12 11 10 9 9 8 5 5 5 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 In-State Pennsylvania California Ohio Michigan New York North Carolina Virginia Illinois Iowa New Jersey INDIANA Maryland Oklahoma Oregon Colorado Tennessee Minnesota Missouri Utah South Dakota Arizona Wisconsin Nebraska North Dakota Delaware West Virginia Wyoming Idaho Connecticut Massachusets South Carolina Rhode Island 209 124 106 69 63 61 60 58 57 41 31 25 23 23 19 17 16 15 15 13 11 11 9 9 8 8 8 7 4 4 4 1 Out-of-State New Jersey Pennsylvania New York Ohio Illinois California Florida Washington Georgia Virginia Maryland Minnesota Michigan Missouri Texas Colorado Kansas Iowa North Carolina Wisconsin INDIANA Alaska Utah Arizona Delaware Idaho Massachusets Montana Connecticut Oregon New Hampshire Oklahoma Louisiana Nevada West Virginia Tennessee Hawaii Maine New Mexico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Alabama Kentucky Nebraska North Dakota Wyoming Germany Japan Mexico Mississippi Mongolia Morocco South Africa Uzbekistan Vermont 164 134 95 84 69 65 59 44 43 38 34 33 31 28 28 27 27 23 21 21 19 18 18 16 14 14 14 14 11 11 10 10 9 9 9 8 5 5 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 [/table]

Yah...that wouldn't be a good idea during a live broadcast. Although it says live, I think it's still ran on a 5 second delay or whatever just in case something does happen (example: that Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake Super Bowl incident). Also, you don't have to catch a coach in a 2-3 minute rant like with Barry Davis. It could be like how the NBA does it and just show a 5-10 second skit with the coach.

I would've loved it a tad more if there wasn't a microphone jammed in his face. I would've liked to have seen all the coaches in the finals mic'd (the miniaturized ones that you can hide in your shirt or something). That would've been cool to listen in on.

Hodge goes to Herbert in my opinion. But if there's a tournament outstanding wrestler, I'd give it to Caldwell. It's not like Caldwell just squeaked by his opponents on his way to Metcalf. He dominated his opponents... Fall, 10-2, 10-1, and 13-2, then smashed Metcalf in the finals. Quite impressive.

I never understood this. That's the reason why you're given a stall warning. You get hit, you've now been warned. You do it again, you give up a point. The ref really shouldn't be talking to the wrestlers like this. I don't mind the ref saying "short time, short time" when the clock is low. But don't tell the wrestlers, "we need more action" or "pick up the pace." Let the wrestlers wrestle the matches. I also loved hearing the coach too. I even made a suggestion on mic'ing the coaches. I'd much rather hear the coaches than listen to the ref trying to tell the wrestlers how they should be wrestling.

The thing is with Howe, and this is just by watching the limited matches that I've seen from him (high school and college). He's a very bruising, brawler type of wrestler. It looks as if he'd much rather just pound and wear on you than put points up. Not trying to be negative, just making an observation. He doesn't have a wide range of attacks from what I've seen. But what he does have, he does very very well and rarely is ever out of position. These could be reasons why he appears limited offensively.

This is the single reason why I would like to see an inner circle (safe zone) and an outer circle (warning zone). Considr the outer circle like the warning track in baseball. Anytime a wrestler backs up into this "warning" zone. The wrestler has 5 seconds or so to circle back into the "safe" zone. It would make stalling alot easier to call and takes the subjectivity out of it.

Just went back and watched it again. You're right, the shove happened a good second or so after the whisle. However I don't think the shove was THAT bad. But since Caldwell was in the process of a backflip and the way he landed. Metcalf's shove made it appear worse than what it was. I'm in no way trying to defend Metcalf because that was still a pretty classless move though.

Well it's working very very very slowly. But from what I've seen is like 25 threads of Metcalf.

I think it's funny that virtually all the 1st page threads on themat.com are dedicated to Metcalf. Got to be some kind of record.

After Caldwell hit that headlock at the beginning of the match. Metcalf just had that "deer in the headlights" look on him for the rest of the match.

I didn't see Metcalf do anything wrong. Metcalf was attacking. and Caldwell decided to do a backflip with time remaning. If Caldwell hadn't done that premature celebration, Metcalf wouldn't of ran into him like he did.

It's not so much that the small schools aren't doing a good job. It's just that the big schools are generally going to be better, on average, because they've got a bigger student pool and community to work with. Y2 has put some #'s up here showing how big schools outnumber small schools for state qualifiers by like 3 to 1. I'm willing to bet that in the top tier states that are classed, you'd see a similar ratio with regards to their best wrestlers.

3 Indiana boys into the QF's, well done. After Dolly beats up on this Jake Herbert guy (yeah I've never heard of him either), we'll have 4. ;D

This is what I've got from intermat. Indiana has 10 wrestlers in the tournament. So this where they are after the 1st session. Championships - 2nd Round 125 - Angel Escobedo (v. Jarrod Garnett) 133 - Reece Humphrey (v. Christian Smith) 165 - Andrew Howe (v. Rick Schmelyun) *#1 seed Mack Lewnes was upsetted in 1st Round 184 - Alex Dolly (v. Jake Herbert) *Herbert's undefeated returning national champion Consolations - 1st Round/Pigtail 141 - Alex Tsirtsis (v. Victor Ramirez) 157 - Bryan Deutsch (v. Anthony Jones) 157 - Kurt Kinser (v. Jesse Dong) 165 - Paul Young (v. Keegan Davis) 174 - Ian Hinton (v. Justin Herbert) 184 - Kenneth Caldwell (v. Mickey Moran)

You could argue that there's alot of individualistic mindsets in football and basketball as well. Examples, Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens.

Just something to consider. Indiana (with 2 D1 programs) and it's bordering states make up 13 D1 programs combined. North Carolina and it's neighboring state, Virginia, have around the same number of D1 programs at 14. But North Carolina itself does have 8 D1 programs (4x that of Indiana). Virginia and it's neighboring states of North Carolina, West Virginia, and Maryland combines for 17 programs. But again, Virginia itself, has 6 D1 programs (3x that of Indiana).