#1 Ranked Wrestler in the country wrestling in Vegas

I will be updating registered list tonight but as of today at noon we have several heavy hitters that have registered and paid for the 2010 NUWAY Southwest Kickoff Classic. We have several more national champs registering next week.

Registered and Paid

138 Hunter Stieber (OH) 3x State Champ, Ironman Champ currently ranked #1 in the country
143 Cam Tessari (OH) 3x State Champ, Ironman Champ currently ranked #4 in the country
Heavy Devin Pomerenke (MI) 2x MI State Champ, Flo Nationals Champ ranked #10 in the country

REGISTER NOW @ www.nuwayvegas.com

Why on earth would you schedule this tournament the same weekend as Super 32, PreSeason Nationals, and Monster Match???

Vegas isn't a cheap place to travel to or stay like it once was. We are going to Super 32.

I stand corrected! Ed G is no dummy. He moved the Monster Match to November 5th and 6th. For you die hards, you could go to Denver wrestle the Monster Match and then commute over to Loveland for the Bighorn Nationals on the 7th. Lots of preseason mat time!!

Super 32 awaits all of you Kansans who won state sometime in HS! Lets hit double digits this year and get 10 in there.

I agree with will, Super 32 is definately a tournament worth traveling to. I have been there twice and all the brackets are stacked with 100+ kids.

I checked out their web site. Seems weird that this group's goal is to help college wrestling programs survive because they are obviously heavily subsidizing this tournament. They have 8 elite wrestlers signed up in 24 hours. In 30 minutes the Super 32 had 1250 and shut down the entries.

I talked to college coaches from all over at Super 32. It is a great place to get some exposure.

Nothing like the state that doesn't have college wrestling to help college wrestling. West Coast is the dead coast when it comes to wrestling. Look how big California is...now how many schools in California at the college level do a full season from start of school with preseason all the way til about March? 5 I believe. 4 NCAA and 1 NAIA.

In the next week you will see over 200 nationally ranked kids and high school wrestlers from PA, OH, CA, WA, MI +++ registered at this tournament.

Yeah we would like to save wrestling in the west and maybe even grow it. What are your goals? If your going to degrade a state at least have your facts right 4 D1's, 1D2, 2 NAIA, and 19 JC's.

How many does Kansas have? In my book Kansas has some pretty good wrestling even though there are not any D1 programs in the state. Am I calling Kansas the dead prarie, heck no I am trying to get some Kansas kids to Las Vegas. If Kansas was having an event we would support it not degrade it.

We also Have 841 high school programs that compete for one state title. Its a pretty decent state for wrestling see NHSCA results every year.

In addition go ahead and take our best kids out of those 100 man brackets as they will be in Vegas supporting the survival of the dead coast as you call it.

Your a real classy representation of Kansas. But then again I doubt your from KS as everyone I have met from Kansas has been good hearted and pretty darn humble.

For those of you that would like to support wrestling in the west coast getting some much needed exposure we thank you.

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I am all for supporting wrestling everywhere. I would support your tournament if it were the weekend before. We have gone to the Super 32 for four years. This is my son's last year and we will go again. The changes they have made are great. I certainly wish the west coast kids and any others who will be going to Vegas were going to be in Greensboro. It seems the wrestling community is its own worst enemy. Other than Fargo there is a national tournament left that doesn't have another major event scheduled head to head against it. So are these really national events? Not so much anymore. They are becoming regionals that are by-in-large attended by the states in close proximity with a few stragglers.

Last year we talked with a dozen D1 coaches in Greensboro. I am guessing you won't get many to change their plans this year. I think it would be a big risk to go to Vegas in a tournament's first year especially when it is scheduled up against an event that has been hugely popular.

Nothing bad to say just sad that there isn't a way to wrestle in both events.

For years the super 32 was a regional tournament. When Flow came on the scene it was transformed into a regional event with a large sample of kids from the northeast through a combination of the media exposure they provided and the subsidies that the tournament staff provided. It is a great event and I believe it will continue to be a great event.

I will tell you that I believe most parents are jaded by thinking college coaches are there to look at recruits. In fact they are there to guard there already established recruits. Most kids are recruited from within the state or region over a number of years and at the schools camps. I have spent time with a coach who recruits heavily in Kansas and he was at the NHSCA a few years ago guarding his future NCAA All American not signing anyone. In limited cases you will see a kid like Jake Varner head to Iowa State. Jake never went to the super 32. Jake did however go to a cyclone wrestling camp.

I would say the real reason to head to these pre-season tournaments is to see how you stack up against different kids, get a different look as far as styles and create some memories. I think our kids will provide that and that is why your seeing kids from the midwest and northeast signing up.

As far as college coaches you can bet they will send coaches to both, as I said they are there to guard and monitor. If you look at our list over the next week you will see plenty of kids worth guarding. Now the question is where will the asst go NC or Las Vegas...and where will the head coach be?

Also Flo posts videos and matches will be up at both events.

Just my thoughts

The California Juco system is a joke. You can get those kids coming in straight out of a school that pushes them through and they are eligible for that year's nationals. Njcaa spans a 1st and 2nd semester. California Jucos need to go to late in the year like everyone else...it would only help out the larger schools in my opinion, as there would be more teams competing for the full wrestling season.

Not knocking talent...just angred that a state that big can't supply more scholarship programs that can recruit nationwide. Now the west coast needs help too overall as well.

Reason why it is hard to knock us in the midwest is the fact when you look back to all divisions: NJCAA, NCAA 1-3, and NAIA almost every year it is a clean sweep of Midwest Champions.

Don't know all the stats off the top of my head, but if someone were to look just at the last 10 years, I bet 95% would probably be from WRESTLING COUNTRY!

Kansas by the way will have 8 wrestling programs in the state next year that give scholarships to kids nationwide to your 7. 7 that offer scholarships.

I am mainly trying to state that I think a state like that should try to push for more programs to be added (NAIA maybe the best choice, as Cal Baptist is going D2). Both California and Kansas could do way better in my opinion to get more programs. I think North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Iowa, may be the only states that get a true A for effort in program numbers.

Aren't the Cali jucos out on an island by themselves in most sports?

Our JUCO State champion Fresno City can beat CAL Baptist. Sierra College another JUCO went to the Harold Nichols open a few years back in Iowa and had 2 or 3 placers against d1 wrestlers. Jake Varner 4x NCAA Finalist CA, Eric Guerrero 3x NCAA Champ CA, Chris Pendleton, Stephan Abas, Stephen Neal all from CA.

Were a pretty tough state. Last years Super 32 champ took 5th. We had 3 Fargo Finalists that were all lower then 4th. We had an NHSCA Senior Champ who took 4th and lost to a freshman. Imagine how good all 8 would do in every weight class. The truth is they cant all afford to go back east.

But there parents can afford a tank of Gas. That's what it takes to get to Vegas. I would love for some Kansas boys to come out if for nothing else then to come back on this board and share their experience. I will say it again the wrestlers in KS are tough, and the people thus far I have met are great people.

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California should be tough, it has 38 million inhabitants!! We have a little more than 2.8 million. That is almost 12 times more! There are tough kids in nearly every state. The challenge is getting all of those tough kids to meet up under one roof instead of spreading them out all over the country so that the best never wrestles the best.

I have been involved with the CYC Greco Duals for the past three years taking Kansans to Cali. I took my son to the Folkstyle tournament in Fresno when he was a FR but he only got three matches because there were very few kids in his bracket. He went two years and the tournament was not well attended.

I would try out this tournament if it would not have been scheduled on the same weekend as Super 32. The bottom line is that any HS wrestler will get WAY more exposure to college coaches if they wrestle at Super 32. No contest.

3 more #1's going on teh board early next week and a handful of top 5's

all three are unsigned and are the most sought after recruits in the country

Pretty sure will have a few college coaches in Vegas,,,

stand by

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I sure understand travel cost concerns but I also hate to see watered down competition. We seem to do everything we can to make sure the top guys don't wrestle each other.

Super 32 just became a little less super. ugh...

It's called greed!

Not Greed - greater opportunities! Nothing wrong with people starting new tournaments and marketing them?

More opportunities, not exactly greater. It's just like the Junior Duals vs. Disney. Separating the top wrestlers!

If your only concern is that the top 5% of wrestlers face each other, then yes it would be desirable to have only one big tournament every weekend during the relatively short High School preseason. What about the other 95% of wrestlers? But even if that was the case you would still see very few top kids travel from one coast to the other. Its just to impractical and costly for most families .

Having as large of a tournament as possible available to families that are only a tank full of gas away sounds like the perfect solution to benefit the majority of wrestlers. Large regional tournaments don’t prohibit a kid from traveling across the country to wrestle in a national level tournament, but they provide an alternative if such travel is not practical. Not to mention the opportunities for the hundreds of other kids that will be at the regional events.

Bend,

I am not sure where you get "top 5%" and "every weekend". I think you might be missing the point. Super 32 was one tournament that attracted high school wrestlers from across the country the other being the USA Junior Nationals in Fargo. What made them great is that there were no other options so many of the best kids and lots of the other 95% too gathered in one place creating some super brakets. (I will admit that above 152 many wrestlers play football and were missing from Super 32.) This type of gathering attracts college coaches who have VERY limited budgets to recruit with so they seek tournaments such as NHSCA, Fargo, and Super 32 where they can view many, many college prospects. The Vegas event doesn't really seem to be about just creating another opportunity as it would have been scheduled on a different weekend. It has the appearance of trying to compete against the reputation of Super 32 by advertisiing that they have this or that wrestler who ranked and from OH or some other far away state. In my opinion, if their mission is to save CA College wrestling they would have had this event the weekend before on the campus of one of their remaining programs (perhaps Fullerton since they just received the axe for the second time) to raise money and awareness for those programs. This would have given kids from all over the country the choise to attend both instead of watering down the overall competitiveness of both by scheduling them at the same time. Splitting the numbers up also makes both events less atractive to a fiscally responsible college coach. For us in Kansas, the best places to get noticed are the aforementioned big 3 because our communistic high school organization made up of member schools administrators doesn't have the vision to see that they are hurting our best wrestlers and wrestling teams by not allowing them to compete in the big 3 HS tournaments (RTOC, Beast, and Ironman) or any tournament more than 500 miles from Kansas. However, our bands can travel to the four corners of the US and to Europe if they want to! I digress.

Bottom line Bend, less super events means less exposure to college coaches and that sucks.