MattM

Wow. I really assumed he would have one more final year left in him with having a decent team and bringing in Colman Scott already to help with guiding the program. Heck of a career for him as both a competitor and coach.

I've been out of the International loop for a little bit with the NCAA season going on. When will Iran officially decide their Olympic representatives?

Yes, but time, distance, and judge score based sports can do that more easily with a set cut number. It's not a one on one bracket.

Our current Conference structure is 7 teams. In the last few years, we have seeded the Top 4 wrestlers and then drew in the rest. This helps with distributing the Bye better than if you seeded 5 or 6. After seeding the top 4 we have randomly drawn in the team that gets the Bye before placing the non-seeded wrestlers in the bracket. And then make a note of that. That Bye school is then exempt from receiving an other Bye (when at all possible) until the rest of the school has also received one. We open the Bye possibility to all 4 seeded wrestlers to ensure if a team has a large amount of 1 and 2 seeds they aren’t being negatively affected by drawing a first round Bye too many times. Basically pull their name out of the options before you draw. Obviously due to the nature of hoe some seeded brackets fall you end up having to give a team the second a Bye before another team may get their first one, but it often pans out OK in the end as long as you keep track of who has received a Bye as you progress through the weights. In a perfect world, each of the 7 teams should receive the Bye twice. But due to some seeding circumstances, occasionally a tram may ends up with 3 Bye's and another with only 1 Bye. That is the fairest system we have been able to manage for a 7 team tournament. You can decide if you then want to score placement points for the Top 4, 5, or 6 finishes. We decided giving placements points for 7 was a little much.

Good for him to find an avenue to the next level despite being behind a starter. CG may roll deep but this is a major accomplishment for the program none the less.

Man just read up on this. Crazy. That dude was always a quality guy when I used to run into him. A loss for the Indianapolis area wrestling community for sure Condolences to the family.

Great to see seeing the girls get a chance to face both IL and Iowa.

Two from the finals to win a state title. Paul Petrov - Has the confidence to cut Brenden Campbell with a little under a minute left to give Campbell the lead then finding a way to secure the takedown to win. Not the cleanest takedown but I was very impressed with the confidence to hand Campbell the lead and know you would find a TD to win in. Chad Ruggeri - Double Overs to throw and pin Dexter Larimore one of Indiana’s best HWTs of all time. Pretty much everyone had Larimore winning it but Ruggeri just went right in on him and chose to take the title for his own rather than be hesitant at such a big moment. I may have seen better takedown moves but not too many in such a clutch situation with a state title on the line.

Boyd finishes 3rd. Still a great career for this young lady and great to see her come back from injury to make on more run at a title. Hope we see her at the World/Olympic Trials in the next several years.

125 is just a mess for Big10 and Nationals. I’m voting for a Battle Royal to decide it.

You found Ficker. Though he’s often not hard to spot.

Brands probably has more last minutes changes.

Been saying for a while the top of this sport, and most sports, is becoming a little less accessible to blue-collar wrestlers/families than it used to be. Affordable access to wrestling opportunities and just simply the ability to travel (since many have parents who work a lot) is becoming hard for some families to overcome. Especially when certain events and academies are not within a short drive from the location you live in. It's awesome that some kids have the opportunity to make a major jump in their skill level. But a decent percentage of wrestlers are limited in what their family can do and really have to search for what rare options may present themselves if they want to make decent gains in their ability. Sometimes coaches have to be creative as well in order to help those kids get some type of opportunity. When the demographic of a large percentage of your team is within that socio-economic situation, obviously finding enough avenues to help them becomes a little more daunting. For several coaches, there isn't much of an off season anymore to start with, and then add on to that the legwork you'll also be putting into finding ways to help those types of wrestlers out so they can "shrink the talent gap."

Glad to see you guys were able to get a few of our departed brethren added in. We may not get their post anymore, but those guys are definitely not forgotten.

I wasn't sure which team rankings you are pulling this from. Does that list include only the public and private schools that participate in state competitions or does it include the major prep national teams, as well?