Here is what I get .... that it is a bush league practice to have any portion of your state series at any level for any style use satellite or home site or anything other than shoulder to shoulder weigh ins. Period.
For the last time we use satellite weigh-ins to help increase our number of participants. Without the satellite weigh-ins there may not even be a Freestyle and Greco State tournament. You've had a bad experience with them and now you want them to go away, and that is understandable. However there are simple solutions to fix the cheating problem. We discussed one in PM and Doug Eck (smartest man alive if you ask me) came up with one that can work as well.
To find that our state does this in the face of the exclusion of Kansas having a voice in the NFHS is disappointing to say the least. Furthermore, I am of the mind that the fact that Kansas uses satellite weigh ins for the state freestyle/greco CHAMPIONSHIP is directly related to this regional home site folkstyle issue in the sense that there are apparently a whole lot of folks involved in KS wrestling decision making, on many levels, who simply don't get WHY satellite or home site weigh ins ARE A BUSH LEAGUE PRACTICE, or maybe they do get it and that's why KS has them?
THE FACT THAT WE HAVE SATELLITE WEIGH-INS FOR FREESTYLE AND GRECO STATE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHY HIGH SCHOOL REGIONALS USES HOME-SITE WEIGH-INS FOR THE THE FIRST WEIGH-IN. Freestyle and Greco is regulated by USAWKS while the High School Folkstyle season is regulated by KSHSAA. Two totally separate entities. It is not the fault of USAWKS that we don't get a vote at the NFHS, it is KSHSAA's. In fact if it we had the same guy who runs USAWKS, Mike Juby our State Chairmen, running KSHSAA then we would probably be getting to vote at the NFHS. THERE IS NOTHING MIKE JUBY DOES THAT IS BUSH LEAGUE. Every single decision he makes is for the betterment of Kansas Wrestling, and I am not the only one who believes that. Anyone who has worked with Mr.Juby can relate this.
You can't go around tooting the horn of KS wrestling and how we deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with states like Oklahoma, Iowa or Pennsylvania when comparisons with any of the above becomes an apples to oranges proposition because Kansas does any number of things bass ackwards from the comparison state.
Its a numbers game. Go look at the number of participants we have for the USAWKS State Tournament and then go look at the number of participants at our Freestyle and Greco State Tournament. We simply do not have the same numbers for the summer styles that the states like Oklahoma, Iowa, PA, Illinois, or even Missouri has. Why are the numbers so low? Some kids want to focus on other sports during the summer time. Some kids simply want the summer off to relax and have fun. There are other factors as well but I don't need to go over all of them. And if you think we are not doing enough to get those numbers up you are DEAD WRONG. The list of people that dedicate their summers to grow the summer styles is way too long for me to type out. There are opportunities like trips to Okie State to wrestle in their room and learn from the greatest freestyle technician of our time, camps with Greco Olympians, trips to Akron, OH to compete AND watch some of the best college wrestlers wrestlers battle to make a University World Team, trips to California to wrestle foreigners in Greco, and trips to Las Vegas to compete AND watch the US Open. These are just A FEW of the opportunities that we present to the kids that want to get better over the summer. But we still find our selves struggling to get our participation numbers up every summer. We even have FREE practices once a weak around the state for kids to go to.
This will be the last time I respond to you on this matter Mr.Bluel and if you are still struggling to understand why we do things in the summer the way we do them then I suggest you talk to your son's future high school Coach. Hopefully he can talk some sense into you.
