First of all, as you can see this is my first and only post on this board. I am the head coach of Mount Vernon. I don't run my program for my myself, my wrestlers parents, my wrestlers friends, my opponents fans, or for anyone other than my wrestlers. How I run my program will always be questioned as well as how anyone coaches their program. For some reason everyone thinks it is their concern. I also do not run my program for message boards or a rankings GURU. My kids do not wrestle for rankings or for recognition or at least I hope they do not. They wrestle for the love of the sport and competition. As for Saturday, we match up well with Reitz when we are healthy, on weight, and eligible. We have not been all three one time this year. Reitz knew Konrath(125) may or may not wrestle since we were both at the same event last weekend and he did not wrestle there. They also knew Ruggeri(215) may not wrestle since we injury defaulted to them at the same event. With conference and sectionals being much more important than any dual victory they did not wrestle at all this weekend nor did they accept a forfeit.
We do not dodge for seeds as one alluded to in an earlier post. Dodging for seeds is laughable to me because it means you are conceding the fact you can't be a champion. Can you dodge your way to state? Heck you can't even dodge your way to regionals in our sectional. We wrestled our best line-up all day against sectional opponents. The only thing seeding can do is keep you from getting second if you are second best and on the same side of the bracket with the best. But I have been in a enough seed meetings to know that the best kid isn't always seeded 1st due to a variety of reasons including some coaches dodging. So how you can figure seeds today without knowing the outcomes at SIAC is beyond me. My take dodging is only good in dodge ball.
As this is our last event of the regular season and we are at home I promised all of my kids I would do my best to get them all a match as long as it would not affect the out come of the dual. I also had 11 seniors that I want to make sure all saw the mat. There were only 2 opportunities Castle and Tell City. After we came up short(well short but did make it interesting) against Reitz it was clear that we matched up even worse with Castle. I also had to keep in mind that I still wanted my seniors to end with a win against Tell City. Therefore Castle got to see quite a few back-ups. We had 6 of our13 varsity guys in the line-up. With 2 out hurt and 1 that went home early the most varsity kids I could have put out on the mat with Castle was 10.we started the day with 2 19 pounders and no 125. After round one we were down to just one 19 pounder that moved back and forth from 119 and 125 depending on match-ups. So I gave four JV kids a match. I managed to get all wrestlers a match except twoon the day. I felt worse about not getting thema match then any of the losses on the day.
As for our pogram and what I think of it, I would not trade my guys for anyone else's. I go to work each day looking forward to the time I get to spend with these fine young men. I have great parents, great coaches at all levels, great administrative support, and mostly great fans(flighdecker excluded as he apparently isn't a fan of mine:P). Running a program is always easier from the stands too bad that isn't where it is ran from.