Ed Pendoski

I typed up a proposal last year to combine the weekends of Sectional/Regional to take a week out of our series.  We would love this idea of combining both weekends. 

Would it create some credibility with the IHSAA if we talked about less wrestling?  Can you imagine how many sports (and their crazy coaching associations) want more 'things' for their respective sport?

We would think that having the Super Regionals would be money makers for the IHSAA and make it easier to have enough officials. 

We do believe that if we are taking an entire week out of our individual tourney, we'd need to look at having wrestle backs from the quarter finals at semi state in return.  (that is the one we are passionate about).  Our association would be taking an entire week out of the state tourney series and it could be feasible to add a round of wrestle backs at semi state from the quarters in return. 

We already have a classed team state.  Why change that? 

There are stumbling blocks in every situation. 

Let's define the question on the table.

Varsity is the school's #1 team

Everything else is JV.

If the top schools that have numbers and a culture and they send their JV teams to varsity tournaments, does it make it more difficult for the teams that are trying to build a culture and numbers in their room.   And if the top schools all stopped sending JV teams to varsity tournaments, would there be more JV tournaments that would better fit their JV teams?

Now, I'll be first to admit that I've never coached at a small school or a rural area so I have never 'walked a mile in their shoes', but my first thought is that if a guy is on the fence about joining our sport and he went to a tourney and lost to a school's JV guy, he wouldn't feel great about it.  Sending JV to varsity tourneys helps the established programs and the expense of the non-established programs.  If we stopped sending JV to varsity tourneys it would help the non-established teams, but at the expense of the established programs.

Is there a chance that we are 'over-fishing the lake'?  The established programs keep getting more established and it is at the expense of the non-established teams. 

Meaning that if the best programs keep firing out more good kids, and they are getting the experience at the expense of the programs that are farther behind them?  If we continue this pace, will the programs that are behind the 'experienced programs' never catch up and eventually just stop having programs all together.

Does anyone think that the disparity level amongst Indiana wrestling has increased over the years. If we stopped sending JV to varsity tournaments would that help close the gap between the 20th best program to the 150th best program. 

My first thought is that it would be a good investment in the future of Indiana wrestling.  It wouldn't make a difference tomorrow, but could be a path to help Indiana wrestling's future.

Rookie78,

What you said in your post is what makes me think if we stopped wrestling JV in varsity would help...

In 3 of our 4 weeknight duals matches this year, we wrestled 0 jv matches, due to lack of wrestlers on the opposing schools. In our other dual (Homestead), we wrestled 13 jv matches, plus the Varsity dual which made for a great night of wrestling. 

If the opposing schools had success in local tourneys, wouldn't it be easier for them to promote our sport in their school....and hence help them fill their JV team?

...and if all of the top 10% schools (In my opinion, Prairie Heights is in that group) didn't go to varsity tourneys, then they would have JV tourneys worth taking their teams too.

This year was the first year that we sent our JV to a varsity event.

Maybe the next question is: does Indiana have too many tournaments scheduled?  If there are 300ish schools that have a team, do we need 320 potential tournaments openings per weekend?

 

Some top programs have a varsity 1 and varsity 2, right?  They usually wrestle their varsity 2's against like varsity teams, don't they?

 

That's correct.  But if a top 10th percentile school sends their JV (you can call it whatever you want) to a tourney that have the 50th percentile level teams (middle class of our state), we're taking away a chance for the opportunity for success at a local tourney.

If we said that we should have 18 varsity appearances (or weigh in points) for each school, it would take our JVs out of varsity tournament (more chance of success for the mid level guy/school) and it would make JV tourneys more competitive for the top 10% cause you would include those 30 JV teams back into the population of JV tournaments.

Joe, you're using an extreme  to help decide what is best for the middle.  Sure, there are a handful of kids that are not varsity and if they were put in the right situation and semi state draw, they could compete at the state tourney.....but that's not typical.

Wouldn't there be better quality at JV tourneys if no one was sending JV to varsity tourneys?

Good point...I agree

Are you agreeing that Nosko crushed us in matches that mattered?  I'm still not over it, and I think the Portage kid's arm is still stuck in his ear from Nosko's spiral.

But isn't that the argument of why we shouldn't send JV to varsity tourney?

If the 1a, 2a, 3a schools don't have a full lineup, I'm sure losing to MD's JV isn't something attractive to the athletic football kid who is on the fence about wrestling or not.  

The only team that benefits from sending JV to varsity would be the programs in the top 10% and it comes at the cost of the middle/lower class of our state's programs.

.....and please don't mention the name Nosko.  That guy crushed us in matches that mattered at team state two years in a row!  ha!

I wanted to throw an idea out and see what others thought.......

I have read most of the 'class wrestling' vs 'one class' discussions here over the years and I can see the pros and cons of both sides of the argument.  (I also understand that we coach in the largest school in the state)

Right after I started CIA, I remember going to see a big 32 team tourney over winter break to see the finals of kids that trained with us.  I remember looking over to mat 4 and seeing the wrestling for 7th and 8th and then my opinion on class wrestling changed.  Seeing the level of wrestling for 8th place of a 32 team tourney means that there were hypothetically 24 guys worse than the guy getting 8th.  At that moment, my opinion of adding class wrestling moved in favor of starting class wrestling (as long as it keeps our state tourney in Bankers Life...but that's a different story).

If smaller schools had a chance for success against other smaller schools, I can only image that they'd go back to school, pronounce themselves as Sectional champions and get some notoriety in the school and making it more attractive for others to participate and hopefully that would help 'snowball' into a more solid program over time.

I believe that the top 10 percent of Indiana wrestling is as good as it's ever been in our state's history, and the bottom 10% is still the bottom 10%.  What can we do to make sure the 'middle class' of Indiana wrestling is also getting better?  Class wrestling could be something that could help.

Then my thought went to JV teams wrestling in varsity tournaments.  This year Carmel sent their JV to a varsity tourney for the first time.  They finished 7th in a 16 team tourney and had 1 champ.  We were happy for them to have some quality matches.  But if the top 10% of Indiana's teams (I'm definitely saying we're top 10%) didn't send their JV teams to varsity tourneys, wouldn't that leave a place for other teams to have success?

....and if nobody sent their JV to varsity tourneys, wouldn't that mean that we could get better JV tourneys because they would be looking for tough JVs to compete against? 

I guess my question is that if we all stopped sending JVs to varsity tourneys, wouldn't it open up places for Indiana's 'middle class' programs to have more success?  I'm thinking if we all stopped sending JV's to varsity tourneys it would be a baby step towards class wrestling and it would make opportunities to have better true JV matches.

Portage vs LN in Team State semi finals  in 04 was:

LN 23

Portage 21

Another great Dan Nelson Folkstyle tourney this weekend.  We had 400+ and were out of the fieldhouse by 2:30!

The numbers are picking up nicely for our folkstyle tourney on Sunday.  

Reminder that we are using Madison Block weights.  Wrestlers will step on the scale at registration in the wrestling room.  We will enter their weights into trackwrestling and they will be placed into 4 man round robin by closest in weight.

Let us know if you have any questions before then!

CUSAWC will be hosting our Dan Neson Folkstyle Tournament this Sunday.  Reminder that we will be using madison block weights.  We will weigh the kids in between 7:30-8:30 and put them in blocks of 4, so doesn't matter if Billy weighs 79.8 or 80.2, because wrestlers will be put in 4 man round robins with guys closest to their weights.

Registration is on Trackwrestling here:  http://s200.trackwrestling.com/tw/opentournaments/MainFrame.jsp?newSession=false&sport=wrestling&TIM=1483449961065&pageName=&ie=false&frameSize=963

This tournrament is a part of the Gladiator Series and there is some good wrestling going on in the fieldhouse!

Contact us if you have any questions!

Ed Pendoski

317.701.1512

ependosk@ccs.k12.in.us

No, No, No.  

I'm going to stop this train right now.  It's not awesome and he's not Y2 in training.  He doesn't even have an instagram account.  

His best claim to fame is that he is in direct family linage of the founder of sparkly shorts for the state finals.  

Carmel vs Warren Central on Jan 4th at 6:30 @ CHS

Carmel Duals on Jan. 7th has Carmel, Merrillville, North Montgomery and Lawrenceburg

So nice to see Clownbaby is back from his Aboriginese training.....I think

Carmel USA Wrestling Club is hosting a small 2 day camp over break on Dec. 20-21 at Carmel HS Blue Room.

We will have elementary age group from 9:00-10:30am and middle school from 10:30-12:00am

Enter door 21 and fee is $30.

We're exciting about opening this to the public.  Come spend a couple hours with Coach Welch and Coach Pendoski.  It's 80 and humid where we work!

Here's a link to the camp:

http://carmelusawrestling.org/winterclinic.aspx

Contact us if you have any questions:

Coach Pendoski

ed.pendoski@carmelusawrestling.org

Coach Welch

doug.welch@carmelusawrestling.org

Carmel USA Wrestling Club is hosting a small 2 day camp over break on Dec. 20-21 at Carmel HS Blue Room.

We will have elementary age group from 9:00-10:30am and middle school from 10:30-12:00am

Enter door 21 and fee is $30.

We're exciting about opening this to the public.  Come spend a couple hours with Coach Welch and Coach Pendoski.  It's 80 and humid where we work!

Here's a link to the camp:

http://carmelusawrestling.org/winterclinic.aspx

Contact us if you have any questions:

Coach Pendoski

ed.pendoski@carmelusawrestling.org

Coach Welch

doug.welch@carmelusawrestling.org

Hobart brought a full lineup but did not bring all their varsity starters. We entered the tourney this weekend KNOWING that we were going to have tough matches, That is why we traveled so far. We don't see any of the teams at the castle super dual up north, except BHSS (AL SMITH). We wanted to get out of the area and see different kids. It was a great experience! Mr. Welch ran a great tourney! Hopefully, it was a big wake-up call to our kids to be better prepared. Nice Job to all the teams that competed!

Mr. Welch....not to be confused with Coach Welch or The Chad. 

OK, where is Mundell with the exact details when we need him.....

That was a pretty special season for Indiana wrestling and here's the way I recall that season.

Portage and Hobart was in the Harvest Classic that year and I believe Portage came out on top, but it was crazy close..and there was a fight in the bleacher between the parents of each school.  The die hard region guys can tell you that family names of both teams knew each other for years (some good relationships and some bad....but still with region tension between them!)

The dual that season was at Portage.  We split matches 7-7 and Hobart ended on top by 1 and six of the 14 matches were decided in the last minute of the match.  It took me a couple days to get over losing and I though to myself, "that was the best dual meet I've ever seen".

Then we wrestled Hobart in the Team Regional at CP.  Again the dual came down to the last match, teams split matches 7-7 and I think 10 of the matches were decided in the last minute.  It took me a couple days to get over losing and I thought o myself, "ok, THAT was the best duall meet I've ever seen".

I watched the team state dual between EMD and Hobart.  Couldn't believe that Hobart was for sure going to knock out invincible EMD and then watched the crazy ending of that dual...in that environment.  It only took me 10 seconds to say, "OK, I'll never see a better dual meet than that one"

...not sure if I have.

#19 LN is at Carmel Tuesday

Peoria Duals just changed.....

We will wrestle:

Washington (ranked 23rd by intermat)

OPRF (ranked 18th by intermat)

Dakalb

Carmel travels to Peoria Duals and will wrestle

Washington (ranked 23rd by intermat)

Deerfield (ranked #7 in last 3a rankings)

Minooka

...and we get our footballers back today after they turn in their helmets!

Rumor mill is swirling!  Will we get a JT Young sighting?

I'm thinking we have a future triple team match up.  JT, Paul, Daniel vs The Chad, Coach Welch and Luke

SHHHHHHHH!  Coach Welch and The Chad both think that CHS is Castle High School.  

We told them that CHS was renovated since they left and when they drove here from Lafayette, we had them blindfolded and drove them around for 4 hours so they thought they were back in Paradise.