Unfortunately you will never get people on the same page on this debate. The biggest reason is not enough people have experienced the realities of small towns and small schools. Without giving my opinion on if Id like to see a classed state I will give you some of my personal truths of coaching at a large school vs a small school (which I have done both)
Lets start with obvious ones we call can agree with:
1. Less partners in the room make it harder to get better
2. Less quality partners in the room make it hard to get really good
3. More kids in the school directly equates to more athletes, which equates to more athletes from the pool to draw from.
4. Many School facilities are better in larger schools
5. Many of the top notch coaches and families arent moving to a school of 300 kids.
6. High Quality Off Season wrestling clubs are more than an hour away.
7. If you travel to another school to workout with them, there is a chance your kid will transfer to the better school.
8. With so few kids in a small school, making Varsity 4 years in 3 sports is a real opportunity. How many 3a and 4a school have those types of kids an opportunities?
9. Community support is usually bonded to just a few sports in small schools...most of the time wrestling aint one of them.
10. Families dont stick around small towns on a regular enough basis to start a tradition in large quantities.
11. High quality assistance, middle school and elementary coaching is impossible to find because of limited number of people. Which weakens a program from bottom up.
12. It seems at smaller schools, coaches are less likely to accommodate other sports and are constantly competing for time causing athletes to make choices between sports.
These are facts, are their outliers, sure. Are there teams breaking the mold, sure. Are there athletes rising above the norm, sure. But as a whole, this is the reality for most small schools. Do large schools have their own hurdles and struggles absolutely, but I see these debates so many times and very few have lived both sides. I would like to hear from a coach who went from a successful large school to an less successful small school and made the small school program better than their previous school. Any examples like that out there? If not, why? If so, lets hear what they did different to make a small school better.