I have heard stories from the old timers during intermitions of tournements about how the OLD Northwest Kansas League was the toughest place to wrestle. It consisted of

St. Francis
Norton
Hoxie
Oberlin
Colby
Goodland
Oakley
Scott City
Atwood

It was said that who ever won the league was going to win state. That was back when all classification wrestled one another. Imagine a league tounement that was as tough as state.

I would put the old league and the current league against any in the state and there would be domination by these small schools. The top 5 teams would come out of the NWKL

I graduated from Norton in 1966 and at that point Scott City was not in the NWKL. They must have joined later.

Gary Ulmer

I may have been mistaken about Scott City. But their name was mentioned serveral times that i can remember

Scott City was in the league in the 1990's and I think 1980's. I'm not sure if Scott and Norton were ever in the league together or if Scott came in when Norton left.

Norton left the NWKL after the 1976 School year. I can remeber because I was in Jr High and we competed against them that year. I believe that Scott City joined in 78. At that time thier wrestling program was in it's infancy in 1980 we had a dual with them and only lost one match, but boy have they turned it around since then. I always wonder if Norton and Scott City would be as strong now if they had not been in the NWKL ?

And yes I thinkthere is about a 15 or 20 year period where this League won at least one state title every year.

Scott city began wrestling in 67/8 season, had a coach that taught out of a book because he had never wrestled, the school board gave them money for mats and really goofy looking uniforms (you think the ones they have now are bad?) but not much more, I remember going to an invitational at Pratt and sleeping in the gym on the mats because we had no travel money. Mostly then we wrestled the jv teams from NWKL, and usually were comedy material. by 1970 we were undefeated in dual matches , although we still didn't wrestle the a teams up north yet, and in 1971 Jeff Drake was our first undefeated state champ. I think the program began to turn a bit in 1976 under Charles Lovenstein, and then we had a coach named Dean Biggs from Edmund, Ok. that improved the team a bit more, but John Lippleman was the big deal, an old Oberlin boy and there you have the NWKL connection. If you can.t beat'em, hire 'em for coaches until you can!

No doubt the NWKL is the toughest wrestling league in the state now and may have been even tougher in the past. Last year in 321A 4 of top 5 teams were from this league. Norton and Scott City (former members) won state championships. With former coaches like Rocky Welton, Buzz Matson (who is the only coach to have a winning record against Rocky) Jake Durham and Dale Samuelson it is easy to see why the NWKL has maintained it's dominance. Present coaches such as Larry Gabel, Kirk Baker, Joe Dreher, Pete Koster and Scott Urban almost assure it's future success.

P.S. The info. about Buzz and Rocky was told to me by Rocky himself. I do not have any way to verify it.

Also--Dean Biggs, a former coach at Scott City, is a Garden City High School graduate--class of '65.

I would love to see that League get back together. Talk about a miniature state tournament. That would be awsome. It prolly would of been better a couple years ago. But it would would still a good one to watch.

16 year span from 1965-1980 where there was at least one team state champ from the league. There is currently a 8 year streak going on.