crosstownrivals

 Vargo 2-0 has the 15 seed in the quarters. 

Angelo Vargo Penn seeded 10th at 62kg wins his first match by fall. Has the 7th seed in the round of 16. 

Frank good luck in your future endeavors! You will be missed. 

Give me 30 seconds to turn then back on feet. You still get riding time! 

Washington is not much better. I would venture to say that Washington will be the next SB school to close. This is sad to see in Northern Indiana.

This will interesting to see what the NIC does going forward. Down to 8 Teams ( Penn, Elkhart, New Prairie, Mish Marian, St. Joseph, Adams, Washington, and Riley). The NIC use to be a very good conference in many sports but it has been trending downhill for the last 5+ years. Will Penn, New Prairie, and Elkhart look to join the DAC? Will they invite FT. Wayne Carroll and Homestead to the NIC? Or will they go the Independent route. I would like to hear some others thoughts, not just on wrestling but other sports as well. 

Im going to guess that those three schools will be joining forces with Bremen, Jimtown and Johhn Glenn. Also heard some rumblings that Triton, Wawasee, and Rochester may be joong those 6 also (Just rumors) at this point. 

Jimtown, Bremen, and John Glenn have asked for their release from the NIC starting in the 24-25 school year. The NIC is really going downhill now. 

Congrats to Brady Harper 106 Jr High national champ and Angelo Vargo placing 4th after losing in round 1. Future looks good for

the Kingsmen. 

Wes Harper Penn and Dylan Bennett both 1-0

What sizes does he have. 

What does Team Indiana's lineup look like for HS Boys, Girls and Middle School. Not much has been discussed about this. 

I have two junior high kids competing 113 Brady Harper and 132 Angelo Vargo. 

Story found on ESPN this morning

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/35820049/college-wrestlers-grizzly-bear-attack

If you have a weak stomach don't read or look at pictures. 

Im going to try and help Joe out with this topic this year. Take a little bit off his plate. If anyone has insights on changes please PM me and I will get them posted. 

How do you want to class the sport? 
By size of school? Number of kids on a team? Private and Parochial own state series? Once you start classing the sport it opens up another can of worms.
Do schools get to pick what class they are in? ( ie Mater Dei 2A but wants to wrestle 4a) what about a school like East Chicago central 4A but only has 15 kids on the team do they get to wrestle down. Where do you draw the lines? Can we run it like professional soccer leagues? Top 20 schools each year stay in that class bottom 4 get regulated down a class? Lots of scenarios!!!!  
If the IHSAA makes wrestling into classes, do we have to class all sports (Title IX).

The following sports would have to be classed:

Tennis

Track and Field

Cross Country 

Swimming and Diving

Gymnastics

Girls Wrestling (soon to be)

All of these sports have the same arguments as well. 

I would love to talk about this. I did coach at CMA for two years out of college and yes it was difficult to develop talent. But those individuals we had found ways to get better. Off season wrestling, going to other clubs, private coaches. 
I can see both sides of the argument but there are ways we just need to find them. In 2007 we had to rebuild Penn and it was a tough few years, did we have more numbers? Yes. But it took an army of coaches, pulling kids out of the hallways, having fun, going on trips. It takes hard word. Honestly I’m going to use a guy like @QuinnHarrishe took a small cascade team in a couple of years and was making noise, they don’t have the numbers like Penn does either. Look at Wawasee they are a tiny rural school as well and they are producing state guys each year. I could name more schools if I wanted to. 
 All classing is going to do is water down Indiana wrestling. 

I’m trying to rebuild the feeder schools. Trying to get kids excited about the sport. I had my 8th graders last year help design our new mat and this years 8th graders help design the singlets. But it is hard to compete with kids having all these other commitments. We can’t offer days out of school to travel the country for baseball and hockey tournaments. Can’t force kids to wrestle and learn how to take some tough losses when they can hit the reset button in esports club. 
this sports about hard work it doesn’t matter what size of school you go to, you go out and find opportunities to make yourself better. You can ask @UncleJimmypersonally how many days a week I met with a group of 6-8 7th-8th graders and the work they put in to be very successful team they grew into. State champions 2015! 
it’s about how much work you want to put into into. Sorry @Galagore classes is only going to water down Indiana wrestling! 

Im going to throw some thoughts out and you can all take it with a grain of salt. I recently stepped away from the high school after 15 years of coaching at a high level. I was roped into coming and helping at the Junior High I teach at. I was willing to give it a shot since it was only a nine week commitment and only one Saturday ( which made my wife happy, and my pickleball game improve tremendously)!!!!!! 

My first season, was last year and we were pretty lucky to get our numbers at the Junior High back up to around 45-50 kids a year after COVID (COVID year we only had 25 kids). We were really looking to build and develop some of our 6-7th graders that had success at the conference last year. When we had our call out meeting we had close to 90 6-8th grade boys and girls show up and we were very excited about the numbers. The closer we got to the start of the season kids decided that they couldn't commit for the following reasons:

1: Swimming- 3-5 days a week from 5-730pm

2. Indoor Travel Baseball 3 days a week from 6-9pm

3.  Travel Hockey 2-3 nights a week

4. E-sports club after school 3 days a week

5. Ski Club 2 nights a week

6. AAU Basketball

 We lost 15-20 right off the bat and six of our kids were very talented but had other commitments. We ended up with around 55 kids the first couple of weeks, but as we continued we started to lose 2-3 a week because practice was "too hard" or " didn't like losing" "couldn't hit the reset button and start over". We just finished our season yesterday with  JV Conference tournament were kids got to see some success with peers at their own level. 

We are in a tough sport, with a society of kids that would rather commit to one sport instead of playing multiple sports like most of us in our 40s-and up did. Football/Soccer/ cross Country in the fall, wrestling in the winter, baseball/ track in the spring. We are now seeing so many kids not wanting to work hard, focusing on one sport, or paying thousands of dollars to say they are on a travel whatever sport. 

What happened with being a kid and playing sports with their friends and building teams based on that. 

Now that the season is over, what movement do we have in Indiana Wrestling. 

School-                                        Old Coach                                New Coach

Cascade                               Quinn Harris                          Gabe Dunham

Plainfield                               Ryan Cobb.                           Jake Jones

Sullivan                                 Roy Monroe

North Central                       Lou Silverman                       Elijah Bailey

Blackford                                                                             Richard Uggen

Indy Crispus Attucks           Robert Hawthorne

Fishers                                 Frank Ingalls                           Cam Diep                           

Madison Grant                     Scott Richie                           Jake Wilson

New Palestine                      Scot Dawson                        Andrew Frey

Heritage Hills                       Adam Zollman                       Noah Peek

Manchester                          Byron Sweet                         Rex Moore

North Posey                        Cody Moll

Batesville                             Curtis Miller                            Matt Linkle

Westfield                              Phil Smith                               Tom Griffin

South Adams                      Jesse Gaskill

Frontier                                Scott Sproles                          JT Veach

Evansville Memorial            Larry Mattingly                         Matt Happe

Gipson Southern                 Donald Asay                             Josh Elpers

Wawasee                             Frank Bumgardner.                  Jaime Salazar

Northwood                         Nate Andrews                          Danny Lewis (boys) Rod Lone (girls)

FW Southside                     Dustin Gregory

Ft Wayne Snider                 Sam O’Campo

Hobart.                                Jason Cook

Wheeler.                              Jose Diaz                                  Jason Cook

"Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!!!!!!"

I’d give Vinny Freeman from Penn a little love also. Finishing 6th as a 9th grader in a man’s weight. 

Brady Harper also middle school state champ at 113. He will make an impact as well next season for the Kingsmen. 

Flo is awful!!!!! Why do we pay so much for the feed to be so bad! 

23 minutes ago, UncleJimmy said:

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the many Penn coaches/mentors that made the 2016 State Championship possible, long before it came to fruition. These dudes at the middle school level along with all the PWC coaches were, and are, terrific.

 

Dave Manspeaker...Grissom Middle School

Raoul Donati............Discovery Middle School assisted by a @crosstownrivalsand Dave Metcalf

Tom Dolly.................Schmucker Middle School

 

It takes a village and alot of behind the scenes non glamorous work....it seems as tho wrestling has more of these types than most, but I'm biased. Great coaches, but better mentors. And of course behind the direction of the Xtreme HarpDog!!! 

 

 

Uncle Jimmy, 

Thanks for the shout out but I wouldn't be where I am today with the hard work and determination from the wrestlers, before school, after school, in the off season and all the way through the year. But what we should do is congratulate all these parents for everything they do for the wrestlers. They put in as much time and effort as their wrestlers do. I know for sure I truly appreciate everything the parents have done for me over the years. I think we should congratulate them as well. 

East Chicago is a go!!!!