WaltHarris

Is wrestling only taking place in the evening? Or are athletes wrestling during the day, but the 7pm show on NBSN will be a highlight show?

Saw the Big 10 conference wrestling championship is supposed to be at IU next year. Anyone know the dates for it in 2017 at Bloomington?

I like most of what you said. Some very good ideas. The majority of your ideas would really be great! The one item that would likely be a notable issue is pushing back fs/greco state, even by a week. As noted on the other thread, moving further into May causes a lot of conflicts with hs exams, hs graduations, college graduations, central regionals, indy 500 filling hotels. To be fair to iswa, fs/gr state likely needs to be first week in May or pushed all the way out into mid-June (which would never happen). Are these numbers an increase or decrease over last year? I am just wondering if the rule drove up or down registration numbers.

The issues I've always been told about the mid to end of May are a) high school final exams b ) college and hs graduations c) Indianapolis 500 guests filling up indy hotels for a week. At least to me, those seem like legitimate issues.

^^^ this. It's a national standard. Taken my grandson to many tournaments in many other states. Most states run on the 15 standard.

Completely and totally agree. Couldn't have said it better myself. ISWA and 90% of people are very nice. But as a wrestling community, we have to be much more politely aggressive about smoking and tobacco spit. No way anyone should have to be picking up used coke bottles of tobacco spit. I felt terrible for the people who had to deal with that.

That's fair enough. I was just making an overall philosophical point that as a society we have classifications for many sports. And it does not necessarily have do with giving everyone a ribbon.

I don't think that allowing St. Joseph College of Calumet to wrestle in an NAIA division with schools like Campbellsville and Cumberland is giving everyone a participation ribbon. Rather, such an equitable leveling of the playing field just is reasonable and makes commonsense.

MLB has four classes. NBA has two classes (plus an assortment of minor leagues). Pro tennis and golf have multiple tours that serve as classes Hockey has too many classifications to count College has D1, D2, D3 and NAIA classes Now most of these sports are not classed for the Olympics, but outside of the Olympic games they have various levels. I am sorry, but no matter how hard the wrestlers work at St. Joseph College of Calumet they will never be able to compete with University of Iowa.

This was posted to the ISWA web site a couple days ago: " Freestyle State Qualification By adminiswa | Published February 22, 2016 Don’t forget that in order to compete at the ISWA Freestyle State tournament this May you must wrestle in a minimum of 2 local freestyle events. There will be no exceptions to this qualification process." So... no waivers, then? Or could it be no waivers to participate in FS state, but one could still request a waiver for Fargo? I would like to take the statement at it's face where it reads: "No exceptions." But it is challenging do so after last year. Not a complaint, but rather a trepidation after being burnt last year.

About a year ago, several folks mentioned it would benefit Indiana wrestling if more kids participated in freeestyle/Greco. A one person countered he didn’t have his kid do FS because there wasn’t much point with so few Olympic spots. Grecoref astutely pointed out most wrestlers are never even state champions in folkstyle, yet we still see great value in folkstyle. Just because one particular guy makes the Olympic team or two great wrestlers meet in a state champion match does not mean it is emblematic of what is best for the entire sport. Watch the passion of the kids in 1A and 2A at team state. It is heartwarming to see those kids finally get a shot on a level playing field. I loved the Red vs. Lee match. It was great. But that is one match out of something like 12,000 total matches that took place in Indiana this year. We should do what is best for the other 11,999 matches.

East Chicago was great. I loved it. It was a vastly improved experience. The East Chicago AD deserves a ton of credit. His staff was all smiles and super nice to people. Most of us are so used to constantly having that one woman's shrill voice yelling at us year after year at semi state that we would take anything. But East Chicago exceed my expectations by a long way. I for one loved wrestling the semis on all four mats. East Chicago really had respect for people's time. What time did we get out of there, like 6:30 or so? If was very efficient.

Could someone possible post the survey questions? I would be interested in seeing them even though I don't coach anymore.

Old. Stodgy. Out of touch. Clueless. Oblivious. Don’t get it. Outdated. This is how my grandchildren and children describe me. Honestly, I dislike most people under 35. I do not get social media. The whole of idea of ‘being famous’ on Twitter or Facebook is a farce. The narcissism of so many young people is completely foreign. And social media is just a stupidity amplifier for the selfish foolishness of millennials. There is one group of people under 35 I still can relate to and that’s wrestlers. I can talk to a kid who wrestles for hours. There isn’t much selfishness in these kids. These are really damn good kids. That got me thinking. Wrestling is really the most humbling thing a person can do. At least in my opinion. Even our greatest wrestlers ever, guys like Ellis and Tsirtis and Palmer, have been beat and pinned at some point. If you’ve ever wrestled, you been humbled. Probably multiple times. So many kids today really have no idea what failure is. I watched the video of that girl at Yale screaming and I could not believe it. Halloween costumes are now offensive and cause a person to emotional convulse? Really? Too many soft people. Too many people who have never failed. Too many people who have never been challenged. I see so many wrestlers perform so admirably in adulthood. And I honestly think it is because so many of these kids failed. They failed plenty of times in wrestling matches. And they were taught to get back up and do it all over again. Don’t quit. Don’t stop fighting. Wrestling provides these kids armor for life. If they lose a job or something does not go their way, they don’t immediately crumble. They move on. And they certainly don’t fall to pieces over made up transgression like Halloween costumes or micro aggressions. These kids who wrestle are probably the one thing that give me some glimmer of hope for the future. End of old man's rant.

Personally, I really do not care for the two qualifier rule. But I understand it. And I am willing to have my grandson and other club wrestlers abide by it. However, just like last year the Indiana wrestling community is sitting here with notable ambiguity. During the six available freestyle weekends, we also have Easter, USAW folkstyle nationals, viper pit, flonationals, etc. Not to mentioned wrestlers participating in track and baseball. I guess I did kind of rehash it there, sorry. So it would just be good to get this waiver information out right now.

I do wonder if class sports will eventually become a Title IX issue in Indiana. Boys and girls from Indiana in track, wrestling, swimming and tennis are denied opportunities that athletes in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and many other states have with class competition. One of the prongs of Title IX is opportunity and publicity. If you are in the small school class in Ohio for wrestling or swimming, you are getting opportunities for publicity. One could claim Indiana boys and girls do not receive the same level of publicity or accommodation. It would be interesting if Indiana coaches associations from multiple sports pushed jointly for a classed system. It would be curious to see the ihsaa's response to a Title IX position taken by a collective of coaches associations.

It appears the 2 tournament qualifier for Freestyle State is back: "All participants must compete in a minimum of 2 Local level Freestyle tournaments in order to compete at the State event." Not looking to rehash the past debate. Just would like to know the criteria for a waiver and who to contact about obtaining a waiver. To say the debate on this topic last year was vigorous would be an understatement. Lots of folks moved previously established plans in order to abide by the two tournament rule, only to have many wrestlers waive in at the last second. The iswa flier does not provide any direction on criteria nor contact person for a waiver. In order to avoid confusion, I would suggest criteria and contact for waivers be added to the flier now so that the transparent policy is well known and the playing field is level for all.

What is the craziest thing you've ever witnessed at a weigh-in? Back in the late 1970's we had the 98 lbs weight class. The rules said you had to weigh something like at least 85 lbs to participate in the 98 lbs class. So we are at a dual having weigh-ins and the opposing team had one really small kid. This kid was tiny. His natural weight was a little below the minimum but the coach tells me they stuff him with cheeseburgers to make the 85 lbs minimum. The official asked the kid to get on the scale. The kid was wearing only a jock. As the official is sliding the scale bar to check the weight, I notice a bunch of sand on the scale floor. Then I see sand on top of his feet. The kid loaded his jock strap with a small bag of sand to try to be heavy enough to make the 85 lbs minimum. The official noticed the same time did and figured it out. The kid's eyes welded up with tears. I don't think his coach knew. We all just said go ahead and wrestle. If the kid was willing to go through all that to wrestle, he must really have liked the sport. It was the only time I ever saw a kid cheat to gain weight at a weigh-in.

10 Reasons Why Increasing to 24 Wrestlers At State Helps Everyone 1) Increase IHSAA revenues (tickets and concessions) 2) More opportunity for small school participants 3) We compromise on the class wrestling idea to create a win-win 4) The team race would be more of a team competition 5) Brings Indiana into line with other midwestern states number of state qualifiers 6) Wrestling would still have less state final participants than track or swimming 7) Makes the state tournament more like our regular season tournament format 8) Eliminates the annual Jankowski/Rosbottom SS ticket round of death match the entire wrestling community sees as completely unfair and unreasonable 9) Gets us the SS 5th-6th wrestleback we want 10) Why would any practical person be against expanding opportunity? This will grow our sport. Related to the thread last year: http://indianamat.com/index.php/topic/47693-expand-number-of-wrestlers-at-state/

I understand what you are saying. It's not hard to imagine parents or kids asking a lot of questions about the different styles of wrestling at first. I would like to try to persuade you with another perspective, though. Please consider that: In singles tennis, the inside vertical line is out-of-bounds, while in doubles the outside vertical line is out-of-bounds. In track, during the 100m dash the fastest time wins, while in pole vault the highest height wins. In swimming, during the 200m butterfly the fastest time wins, while in the 3m springboard dive the highest score from a panel of judges wins. In gymnastics, if your feet touch the ground because you fall of the balance beam then you incur a large penalty, but during the floor exercise your feet need to remain within the designate mat space on the ground. Within many sports, we have different events. And often events have very different rules and scoring practices. Most people accept such differences because that's the way it's always been. Imop, the actual reason some people prefer folkstyle is solely because that's always been 'american' wrestling. But I feel people will become acclimated very quickly if like other sports, wrestling became more multi-event related with fk, fs and greco all occurring within the existing american high school and college season.

^^^^^Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could not agree more. Back when I was coaching hs, I coached over 1,000 kids. Not one of those boys ever ended up being an NCAA folkstyle champ. Not one of those boys ever even was a DI all-american. However, the vast majority of the kids I coached walked away from wrestling loving the sport. You do not have to be an elite wrestler to get something pretty valuable from wrestling all the styles of wrestling.

Track and field has multiple events like 100m dash, 400m hurdles, high jump and shot put. Swimming has multiple events like the 3m spring board, 100m butterfly and 100m backstroke. Tennis has multiple events like singles #1, singles #2 and doubles. Gymnastics has multiple events like the rings, high bar and floor. The rules for each of the aforementioned individual events are quite strikingly different. I see no reason why wrestling cannot have multiple events in folkstyle, freestyle and greco. Not saying it will be easy. But it is possible. The central reason we don't think of fk, fs and gr as separate events of the singular sport of wrestling is imop solely due to tradition. In swimming, it has always been tradition to do multiple events at the same meet. In wrestling, it has been tradition to not have multiple events at the same meet. I think we need to change this tradition in wrestling and go to multiple events for NFHS and NCAA like other sports.

Best. Line. Ever.