When you are in a smaller classification, or you have a smaller school in a classification where the big teams in the classification are 2.5 times your size this proposal doesn't work for us. Sure, we have a few weight classes with multiple varsity caliber and State caliber wrestlers, but allowing multiples really changes the possibility of team placings at regionals and at State. It is hard to describe the discrepancy of smaller schools to bigger schools, but it is a clear difference.
I get it that someone may be really talented and have to go JV. No one says that they have to cut weight to find a spot on the team. They can move up, too, so it is not a safety issue in my opinion. And, if the wrestler quits based on not being varsity then we have some work to do on mental toughness. We have had several years where we had very few kids on the team, or in the school that could fill out the heaviest 4 weight classes--even with 30 kids on the team, so we bumped up kids to fill those spots and took our chances. When you have school populations of the 200-300something range, there is no comparison with available athletes in the 600 and above schools.
I also believe the perspective can be skewed as each Regional has different numbers. Some Regionals can't fill brackets, others have no problem. Some Regionals may not have many kids with winning records, others are loaded with those kids and you will seldom see someone sneak through sub .500. It most definitely would skew the results in our post season tournaments. Schools that have been in our Regional in the past with double the school population of most of our schools in attendance would be at a clear advantage. A lot of the smaller schools struggle to get one varsity level kid in each weight class, the bigger schools may have 3-4.
Not allowing 2 kids in a weight class from one school levels the playing field. Sure, some of our smaller schools could put in two kids in a variety of classes and do well, but the majority of the smaller schools cannot. When thinking of change, I think of our program, for sure, but we have to think of the larger group of schools and what that would mean for them. Our school can compete well with a lot of different sizes of schools and I like the competitive nature of our classification and I am glad that we pull up strong 3A schools to make a stronger 4A group unlike other sports, but it is hard to sell stacking the deck even further by allowing multiple participants in weight classes when small schools are struggling to fill out the large group of 14 weights. Hard sell.
I consider our team to be a pretty competitive school, but we have only won one Regional in the history of the school, one, and that was last year. There are a lot of runner-up finishes, but it is always hard to place above the large schools in the regional. If the big schools were allowed double entries, we would fall down the placing considerably, even with our weights where we could enter a couple of quality kids. We have been selling the team aspect of our sport for a decade and this would keep us out long term.
I feel I have to talk for the smaller schools, especially those in rural areas who are competitive with the deck already somewhat stacked against them. All of these types of ideas are good for discussion and may even open up other ideas to grow the sport and people's perceptions of it. I love that we are applying NFHS weigh-in rules this year and I think that it will be an adjustment with the late notice of the change, but it should be positive for our sport overall, especially with 2-day tournaments on the 2nd day.
Coach Harris, thank you for bringing up this topic! Discussion always leads to positive change. The season is almost upon us. Good luck to all of you and I hope that we continue to have discussions of how to improve our sport in various ways.
