Galagore

In particular I would like to thank the students/athletes who helped ref and run tables.  They did an outstanding job.  Always impresses me when these Sunday meets find young people to give up a Sunday to donate back to the cause. 

In particular I would like to thank the students/athletes who helped ref and run tables.  They did an outstanding job.  Always impresses me when these Sunday meets find young people to give up a Sunday to donate back to the cause. 

In particular I would like to thank the students/athletes who helped ref and run tables.  They did an outstanding job.  Always impresses me when these Sunday meets find young people to give up a Sunday to donate back to the cause. 

Four things
 
1. Keep this topic clean
 
2. I have read conflicting reports that he has wrestled in girls events throughout the country. Also it has been stated the parents/coach/wrestler never filed anything to ask to wrestle against the boys.
 
3. If #2 is correct I wouldn't be shocked as it seems parents in many sports will always try to get an edge no matter what.
 
4. I wish there would be more positive wrestling stories than ones like that that like to bring drama to sports. We do a great thing by having a girl's state championship...then this.

How do academies in large cities help increase participation in small schools?  Imagine you're a parent in a small town.  Would you want to drive over an hour each direction to take your kid to an academy or would you rather have a local youth coach who wrestled in college?  Which do you think would increase youth participation and eventually better high school quality?  Academies have been great for our elite wrestlers, but they do not help our rural kids first trying the sport.

Exposure is the only argument I need for class wrestling - much better than current stats or future estimated stats.  Class wrestling will benefit multiple things...
 
#1 College Recruitment.  Benefits start Year 1.  College coaches (DI, DII, DIII, & JuCo) first look at achievements of sophomores and juniors.  Unless you're already an all-american, that is only going to include state achievements.  Small school wrestlers from other states tend to get those achievements earlier in high school, which gets them looked at earlier by college coaches.  Most college coaches consider your senior year too late to start recruiting.  More exposure earlier in high school will mean more college offers for our small school wrestlers, some of whom might not have considered wrestling in college as an option.
 
#2 Youth Participation.  Benefits won't show for a few years.  When a program has state champs, state placewinners, and state qualifiers year after year, it is much easier to grow your youth program.  Kids like to see the success and continue the tradition.  That's been a huge factor for Mater Dei, Bellmont, Yorktown, etc.  With class wrestling you will see more small schools start to build their own legacy.
 
#3 Future Coaches.  Benefits won't show for several years.  One thing that is holding us back as a state from getting to the next level is a lack of high school coaches with college wrestling experience.  I'd be surprised if more than half of our head coaches wrestled in college.  If we can get more of our wrestlers competing in college, then some of them will come back and coach high school, junior high, or youth clubs.  That will improve our overall quality of wrestling.

Meh, my efforts failed. Wrong sequence and accidentally lost poll. I am so lame.

Choose

Schools
1A-193 under 904 students
2A-73 905-1805 Students
3A-39 above 1806 students
 
Average Placers since 2011
1A-33.6 Per School 0.17
2A-38.0 Per School 0.52
3A-40.4 Per School 1.04
 
Average Qualifiers since 2008
1A-78.2 Per School 0.41
2A-74.2 Per School 1.02
3A-71.6 Per School 1.84
 
And for fun

If we take out Mater Dei from all calculations
Qualifiers at 1A drops to an average of 72.9(-5.3) or 0.38 per school
Placers at 1A drops to an average of 30(-3.6) or 0.16 per school

Here is one of the things that made me change my mind to support class wrestling a few years ago.  Yes, initially it will be much easier for a small school wrestler that is overall an average wrestler to qualify, place or even win state in a classed system.  As those things become a more real possibility for these wrestlers, don't you think that competition for that state championship would increase? As it becomes more possible for kids to chase that championship, more kids start working harder for it, increasing the level of wrestling at small schools.

None of this is new this year.  USAW has required a background check for a Coaches Membership Card for several years.  And the ISWA has required the Coaches Card along with at least copper certification for many years to get the wristband at state.

Those 3A schools just work harder, when will the others realize that?

The ISWA is not the one to blame for this.  USAWrestling requires a background check in order to get a membership card, and has for several years now.  As worthmatt stated, it is purely a safety issue for the kids.  The background check should be good for 2 years.  The ISWA does not receive any money from the background checks.

As a coach, I get where many of you are coming from who feel the DQ was unjustified.  As a dad, I would rather an official err on the side of athlete safety than on the side of calling matches like they do in college.   Furthermore, if you are dinged for a judgement call violation twice, it is generally advisable not to force an official to make the judgement again. 

Agree or disagree. The more we learn about concussions you can't take any chances. I do not think Bautista did it on purpose. But at the point of DQ he should have played it safe. Tanner didn't wrestle the rest of day. Hopefully he will be able to go Friday night

This sounds like commie talk....

This sounds like commie talk....

I would highly disagree that all of the states that have class wrestling have a greater wrestling tradition than Indiana.  I don't need statistical data to support every situation/decision that presents itself to me.  I highly doubt that the people, and societies, in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, etc. are too much different than the people in Indiana.  Class football works in Ohio AND it works in Indiana.  The same would absolutely apply and work with Indiana wrestling.

I remember when I was a freshman at Delta HS.  We had a full freshman team and we only wrestled against other freshman teams.  That was in the early 80's and as we all know, times have changed with respect to students participating in high school athletics (especially wrestling).
 
1.  JV, Varsity 2, Varsity B, Split Squad --   call them what you would like.  If a program/coach feels that his 2nd string needs to 
                   compete at a higher level then so be it.  People (i.e. - fans, some school administrators) get too hung up on what
                   we call our 2nd string teams.  Yes, one school's 2nd string may be better than another school's 1st string.  Get
                    past the labels and let them compete.
 
2.  Common JV tournaments --  It is becoming very, very difficult to find JV tournaments that offer quality and quantity.  Some
                   schools don't have a large coaching staff, so they cannot afford to schedule a bunch of JV/2nd string events
                   throughout the season.  It is also becoming difficult to even find good JV events throughout the entire season
                   (within a reasonable driving distance).  Too much emphasis has been put on varsity in recent years; and not 
                   enough on JV wrestling.  If kids have an opportunity to compete at the JV level, they will see value in their efforts
                   and your numbers will grow.
 
What if....
         This is completely hypothetical and would likely never go in our current school environments... but... what if we went back
         to "all freshmen teams?"  Freshmen wrestling teams that practiced together, competed together, and only competed                  against other all-freshmen teams?  I am not insinuating that this would fix all of our sport's ailments, but I do think it would          help in building numbers in programs.  I do think we lose many average/new freshmen because they and/or their parents          don't like the thought of them practicing with upperclassmen.
 
Class Wrestling...
         Class wrestling would most definitely help build and grow wrestling in Indiana.  It works in Ohio, Oklahoma, Illinois, and
         and just about every other state across the country.  It would work in Indiana AND the 'middle class' would start to
         thrive again.
 
Coach McCormick
 
 
 

Here is my experiment.  Let's try this.  In the same spirit that we treat the "team aspect" of wrestling in IN, let's take IHSAA football back to single class.  Yes, that means small and mid-size public schools across the state will have to go through Carmel, Center Grove, Warren Central, (fill in the rest of the big schools here) to win a state football title.  Heck, those smaller schools won't even win sectionals or regionals anymore if this is implemented!  So how long do you think it would take for reality to set in for these small to mid-size football teams/schools?  When the realistic hope of ever getting to shine in the limelight gets squelched, participation will dwindle.
 
Here's something else I will remind you of (that has certainly been shared before).
 
Ohio Wrestling (Classed) --  they have pretty darn good wrestling and participation there
Illinois Wrestling (Classed) -- they have pretty darn good wrestling and participation there
Pennsylvania Wrestling (Classed) -- they have pretty darn good wrestling and participation there
Iowa Wrestling (Classed) -- they have pretty darn good wrestling and participation there
Keep filling in the list from here.

Mid-Week duals get kids wrestling in front of their peers and community.  People are much more likely to turn out to watch one round of matches on a Tuesday evening than they are to watch multiple rounds of wrestling (much of which will be kids they don't know) on a Saturday.  This is especially true when that means driving more than 45 minutes.  When young athletes get recognized and their hard work is observed by people they care about, they are more likely to begin and continue participating in an activity.  Additionally, the coaches can take some responsibility over weight-management through the week.  If people are adhering to the spirit of the weight-management rules as they are supposed to, making weight for the next class up to a degree that weight could still be made on Saturday should not be a consistent issue.  People have a had the same complaints about teenagers since the beginning of civilization.  Complaining that kids aren't tough enough doesn't really solve the problem.  Some are tough enough, some are not.  We need to make sure we have a system in place that makes the ones that are feel like their efforts are worth it.  We can't expect them to appreciate the lessons of a sport that can't be truly understood until it is performed.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
 
- Socrates
 
Kids haven't changed.  We just became grown ups. 

We can officially announce IndianaMat has been awarded the National Wrestling Website of the Year award from the National Wrestling Media Association. I want to thank Chad Hollenbaugh and Eric McGill for talking me into starting this monster. Also thanks too many others that have contributed hours upon hours of time into this website.

Oh?  How did you come to this knowledge?
 
 
Just kidding.