TAKEDOWNWINS

Two kids from the same household, going after a repeat performance as defending nationals champs came up just short with Gable Steveson int. 103 winning again and Bobby Steveson coming up with a heck of a finals match losing in o.t. also note indiana had runners up at school boy 136 clayton fiddler 144 steveson and 152 michael bates congradulations to these wrestlers.

The Murder of Amateur Wrestling In light of Portland State?s news that they would be dropping their college wrestling program, I think this article is long overdue for our sport. For decades now, we have witnessed every year, the murdering of a college wrestling program, whether it be a junior college program or a Division 1 program. Over 400 programs have been dropped at the college level and very few have ever been started up. These programs have been annihilated by athletic directors around the nation, usually under the Title 9 excuse or the new excuse being, budget concerns. We wrestling people know these excuses all to well, since it?s been repeated over and over again. It?s almost as though these athletic directors have a handbook on how to drop wrestling at the college level and a list of excuses why. We wrestling fans listen to these excuses, make a big stink for a couple of weeks and then it?s back to normal. Athletic directors know this, thus the reason why they simply don?t give a crap about what we say or think. However, we can blame these loser athletic directors all we want, but the bottom line is, we only have ourselves to blame when our programs get dropped. For years, wrestling as a whole has done such a piss-poor job of promoting our sport, not only amongst our current fans but to the public in general. Our own laziness as coaches, athletes and fans that have caused this epidemic for our sport. As a coach, when was the last time you put in a real effort to host a good dual? I?m talking one where you promote it to the public with signs around town, got the student body involved, had a pep assembly to promote the dual and made it a great show for the public. As an athlete, when was the last time you encouraged your parents and family to attend this dual, along with getting your friends and their friends excited to attend? As a fan, when was the last time you just sat down and talked wrestling with your buddies during lunch or talked about watching the local team?s next match? When was the last time any of us have done any of what I?ve mentioned on a regular basis? When was the last time we?ve taken our local club, jr high or high school team to a college meet or even talked about a college program to our kids? Heck, when was the last time you?ve even attended a match? These are all things we should be doing on a regular basis that I can guarantee most of you who read this simply aren?t doing and don?t care to do or you know someone who is involved with the sport in some capacity who isn?t doing any of these things. Too many of our newer coaches, athletes or fans simply don?t give a crap about our sport like the old timers do. They put in a half-ass effort into really building a program and it shows at all levels. Especially, when it comes to college wrestling. Some of these coaches feel they shouldn?t have to do this stuff and that the fans should do it automatically. WRONG! Our sport isn?t like football, basketball or even baseball in the sense that we can expect people to just show up because. People are so out of the loop with our sport, we have to constantly be selling our program to our own fan base and the outside public. We can never let our guard down. If you don?t think this is an accurate assessment, just look at our sport now and that should be enough to tell you, the way we?ve been doing things for years have done absolutely nothing to build our sport over the long term. In all reality, it?s done nothing but make it worse. Some other things I think that have hurt our sport over the long term that need to seriously change are as follows: 1. We need to be more proactive than reactive. Wrestling people are far too reactive than proactive. We need to be working to fund our current programs now, not later. Once a program is gone, the chances of it returning are slim to none. Coaches should have been building their endowments up the second the first programs were being cut. Instead, they?ve waited until were down to our last 80 or so programs to finally wake up. If you?re a college coach at any capacity and you aren?t currently building up some sort of endowment right now, then maybe you shouldn?t be coaching. 2. Our leadership at all levels need to be doing more to be more vocal in the public?s eye. I?ve been holding back a bit on this one because I believe some of our leaders are doing a good job in a sense, but maybe not enough. Maybe it?s time to start being more vocal and pushing our sport on the mass media and not just our local wrestling media. When was the last time, outside of Iowa, that you?ve had a media person write an article about our sport just for the heck of it? We should be force feeding our sport to every media outlet. In recent years, ESPN has done an outstanding job of covering the NCAA tournament, but this should?ve been happening 20yrs ago and not 4yrs ago. Yes, I understand that in some cases we need to tip toe around things in order to eventually get what we want, but we need more people getting involved, rather than a select few. Who is our leadership at the NCAA level and what are they doing to promote our sport outside of just the NCAA tournament? Who is our leadership at the conference level and what are they doing for us? Maybe its time for some new leadership at the NCAA level, if they aren?t getting the job done. We also need new leaders at the coaching ranks. Guess what, Gable can?t do everything and neither can Tom Brands. Somebody, anybody step up and say something. We need guys who are going to be more vocal outside of their respective programs as well. Every coach should not only give a crap about the success of their own programs, but every other program as well. Success breeds success and if you have a ton of success, rather than just a select few, that?s good for the sport. 3. The one state tournament/state champion mentality has to go. As much as I?d like to see this true state tournament at every state, this mentality has done nothing to promote our sport. Why have all the other sports had some much more significant growth at the HS and college ranks? Its simple, they don?t have this stone age mentality that there should only be one state champion in their sports. They are all about the growth of their sport and we?re all about just finding 14 top guys and not giving a crap about anyone else in the state. While its all fine and dandy to the old timers, that?s not reality anymore. Times are different and we?ve done nothing to change our mindset and as long as we continue to refuse to change our way of thinking, we?ll continue to struggle with growth. Sure people from states like CA and NJ will tell me to piss off, the one state champ mentality is going to slowly kill us off. CA has something like 34 million people in its state, yet only around 20,000 of those are kids are wrestling. That?s a pathetic percentage, IMO. Split their state into a large school and small school tournament and there is no reason why their numbers don?t double. That?s 20,000 more kids involved with our sport that may very well want to continue in our sport, in some capacity. Whether it be as a college wrestler, a fan, a coach or a parent of a wrestler, that?s good for our sport. This is what we are missing, that the mainstream sports have already had for decades. 4. GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND ATTEND A COLLEGE DUAL! Not only that, but take people with you. Tailgate, dress-up, get rowdy in the stands, do something other than make excuses as to why you can?t attend a dual. There is no reason why we can?t have 3000 or more people at our duals, but we need to take it upon ourselves to make our sport a priority. There are enough people in our states that can make this happen, just a matter of doing it. 5. Iowa fans will want to lynch me on this one, but Iowa people need to come to reality that maybe the ?Iowa is the only wrestling game in town? mentality really has done nothing to promote our growth. While it?s great that Iowa has won all these titles, but what has it really done for the growth of our sport at the college ranks? Nothing. And along those lines, this mentality, if you aren?t wrestling in the Big 10, you aren?t any good, it needs to go as well. The stranglehold the Big 10 has had on our sport has single handedly destroyed our sport at the college level. There is a huge problem in our sport if only a small handful of programs around the entire nation have even won an NCAA title. Sooner or later, schools just give up on trying to build a program when its utterly pointless. And along those lines, the mainstream media loses interest because it?s the same team every year winning. Sorry, but that makes for boring news. What?s going to eventually happen is that the Big 10 tournament is pretty much going to be the NCAA championship because we?ll only have 10 teams left competing. Then what has been accomplished? 6. We need to figure out how to retain more of our youth, so they come out for high school and maybe eventually go on to compete at the college ranks. At the youth level, we?ve done a piss-poor job of retaining our athletes because there is such a huge emphasis on only being the best that we simply run kids off. Sure a lot of you are perfectly fine with that because that?s how our sport has always been, but I see this as a huge problem. If a kid would rather ride the pine of a basketball team and not wrestle, then that?s an issue. We?ve taken all the fun out of our sport by putting some much emphasis on weight cutting, running them like crazy and always expecting them to win, by jr high, the kids lose interest and just quit. While I hate quitters as much as the next guy, this poses a big problem because we lose those guys forever, where if a guy quits basketball, they will usually find a way back to the sport. We need to figure out what we?re doing wrong and get these kids back into our rooms. We need to make our sport fun again. Sure winning is fun, but with today?s athletes, that?s not enough. 7. Get on the message boards and talk about wrestling. Quit sitting back and just watching life go by on the boards. Be vocal, express your opinions, SAY SOMETHING! These old farts who think they need to keep their kids off the message boards because of whatever reason they have, need to wake up and realize times have changed. All the other sports have zero problems with their fans or coaches being vocal, but for some reason wrestling people seem to think we need to keep quiet. In my state of Oregon alone, nobody wants to talk about the positives in our sport. We?ve been quiet for too long. And yes there is negativity on the boards and trash talk, but you know what? That?s great for the sport. Douchebags like Jim Rome make a living off of trashing people on sports television. As much as people hate the guy, he makes things interesting. And every message board seems to have their own version of Jim Rome. I?m sure I?ve left some points out, but you get the just of what I?m trying to say and that is, we need to totally re-think what we?ve been doing for years and fix it now. Not years from now, but right now. Our sport can?t afford to continue to lose programs. If we?d don?t change our way of thinking now, I say in 10 yrs, Division 1 programs will be down to roughly 20 programs as the rate we are going. Who here thinks that?s a good thing? If so, then maybe you?re part of the problem and not the solution. The bottom line is what are you doing to better our sport? If it?s nothing, maybe its time to look into doing something else in a different sport. 3. STATEMENT IS WHY CLASS WRESTLING NEEDS TO BE BROUGHT TO THIS STATE!!!

IS THE WEIGHIN SIGHT FOR HOBART THE OLD H.S. OR THE NEW H.S. ?????????

MCKAJC WE SPOKE YESTERDAY AT CHESTERTON ABOUT THIS.... YOU ARE OUR REPRESENTATIVE!!!!!

PREEEECH MCKAJC PREEEECH, MY SONS DO NOT BENEFIT AT ALL WRESTLING THEIR OWN AGE GROUP AT LOCAL TOURNAMENTS, WE TRAIN FOR ONLY STATE AND NATIONAL EVENTS EVERYYEAR, TOURNAMENTS ARE FOR PRACTICE TO GET YOUR WORK IN. PEOPLE THINK OF BIG PICTURE FOR YOUR WRESTLER BIG PICTURE, HIGH SCHOOL, GETTING THEM READY FOR WHEN THEIR TIME HAS COME THEY CAN STEP UP, AND THE TRANSITION IS NOT SHELL SHOCK. THAT IS THE BIG PICTURE PEOPLE...

REFERRING TO LAST YEARS RANKINGS WITH USA WRESTLING MY KID WINS THE NATIONAL TITLE BUT THE KID THAT LOST HAS MORE POINTS THAN MINE. SO HE IS RANKED HIGHER THAN HIM. RANKINGS ARE A GOOD THING, GIVES PARENTS SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT, COACHES ALREADY KNOW WHOS WHO. BOBBY STEVESON 6TH GRADE GABLE DAN STEVESON 3RD GRADE ADAM GARCIA 8TH GRADE