It's beating a dead horse at this point about the whys of filling these teams is difficult. Overall you are right Freestyle is growing and hopefully we make the changes necessary to boost it even more and find ways to increase the overall ability of our freestyle wrestlers. I see a lot of our top guys struggle with some freestyle concepts that they just don't know. Its not an issue of ability or lack of coaching just a lack of having that kind of mat awareness. I know that next year I expect to have a large youth push of freestyle at the burg. I had a good little group this year but the one issue they had was that the amount of practice we got in the short time was not conducive to helping them grow as freestyle wrestlers. My thought is to rid ourselves of the club/academy qualifiers and have those be 2hr clinics where we go over high level and beginner freestyle Technique. I would be more than willing to host and take responsibility for the newbies and have someone who is much greater than I show some higher level strategy and technique to our studs (guys like Angel, or Coach Ersland, Brandon Wright, Deondre, guys who competed at that intense level) We will get there I have no doubt we are on an upswing and for that I am happy but we will have some growing pains.
Im sure someone will eat me up on something I said but ehh its my 2 cents which are worth way less than even that.