Who do we watch for in 5A next year?

Bishop Carroll, Kapaun-Mt. Carmel, Valley Center topped the State last year!

A lot will depend on how classifications work out between 4A and 5A next year. From what I hear, I think there are several top programs with a lot of quality wrestlers who could be either 4A or 5A.

Paola and Pittsburg are 4A for football (which can indicate next year's enrollment as they base off of grades 9-11 for a two-year classification).

Also Lansing, Fort Scott and Augusta often bounce back and forth.

Will STA and Emporia stay down in 5A or move back to 6A?

Anyone have any insight?

Emporia will be a big team to get by in 06-07

emporia is returning over 50 points next year.

Aquinas has an excellent senior class returning. Many of these wrestlers were big contributors to the 6A championship team of 2004 as sophomores. Aquinas also has three returning starting juniors who should score a lot of points next year at State. According to a post in April, Aquinas had the most returning points in 5A from last year's tournament with 105.5 (edited total 6/10/06). See the entire list below.

http://www.usawks.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=006864

Here is a copy of the top ten from the above earlier post:

School Total
St Thomas Aquinas - 105.5 (edited total 6/10/06)
Bishop Carroll - 93
Lansing - 61.5
Ark City - 58.5
KC-Turner - 56
Emporia - 56
Valley Center - 55
Kapaun Mt. Carmel - 48.5
Pittsburg - 48.5
Gardner-Edgerton - 48

I do not anticipate Aquinas going up to 6A next year from 5A. I think a more likely jump to 6A might be Blue Valley West.

Ark City gets an instant boost with Elliot transfering there next season.

I know it goes by enrollment but was wondering when the decision is made as far as a school moving up to 6a. By the way you should make your list a top 5 list and include valley center, they're not loaded but they always send a lot of kids to state.

Are you talking about the kid from augusta? If so that would be a big boost.

My son is a junior varsity wrestler at Aquinas. I showed him this post and listing earlier this week and he asked me how many total points that Aquinas scored at this year's tournament. I looked it up and saw that Aquinas only had 130.50 total points. This made me question the 125 returning points because Andy Hurla the only Aquinas senior that wrestled at 5A state this year took first place at 145 at state. I felt that he had to take more than 5.5 points. So unless the list was compiled in a different way, I would say that the differential between Aquinas and Bishop Carroll is not nearly as large as 32 points indicated above. It will be a real battle for the 5A team title next year. There will be a lot of teams that could come out on top.

Richard Salyer just sent me an updated Aquinas scoring sheet from last year's tournament which shows that Andy Hurla scored 25 of Aquinas' 130.5 points. Andy was the only Aquinas senior at state last year so the returning Aquinas state participants scored 105.5 points last year. This is only a 12.5 differential from Bishop Carroll.

It will definitely be a good tight competition with all the teams listed and possibly some others due to possible classification changes like Kit Harris mentioned. I think Emporia was listed as the highest enrollment 5A school when the classifications were done last year at 995 compared to the lowest 6A team at 1,000 even. Blue Valley West had 993 and Aquinas was the only other 5A school over 900 in enrollment at 981.

with beau hentzen attending carroll next year thatshould help them out a little bit

Great Bend should have a decent crop of wrestlers returning next year and for a few years to come. They have seven returning state qualifiers. The down fall is they only have one returning state placer, Joe Schridde state runner up. Of the seven returners they have 2 upcoming seniors(Joe Schridde and Tyler Klein), 3 upcoming juniors(Slade Geisen, Cody Schridde, Edgar Roman) and 2 upcoming sophmores (Aron Elsen and Aron Blew). They also have a few salty freshman additions, including Nick Schwager, multiple time kids state placer. Also 3 of Great Bends returning varsity wrestlers placed at this past years Brute nationals.

Also an upcoming senior that is going to be an addition to this list is Brett Bahe....I don't know how tough 5A is since I'm from a 4A school but I figure Brett will probably be going to State this year

I was going to mention something about Bahe transfering but I was not sure if that was just a rumor running around Great Bend or if it was the truth. But I guess more than just people around Great Bend have heard this. If this all pans out this will be a tremendous addition to Great Bends up and coming team. The only thing is spacing out him and Schridde out.

I think Aquinas enrollemt will continue to drop. Recall St. James opened last year with freshmen only. Since both are catholic schools, I would anticipate Aquinas will show a drop in enrollment for each of the next three years until St. James has all four classes.

I am not sure that this effect is going to be that significant. I believe the immediate effect would have been greater if the new Johnson County Catholic school had been built further east between Metcalf and Mission Road. I definitely do not see the potential drop being great enough to take Aquinas out of 5A. It might just be enough to keep them out of 6A. Last year when the new classifications came out Aquinas was at 981 which I believe was not that far off the enrollment it was at the previous year. The lowest enrollment 6A school last fall was Blue Valley at 1,000 and the lowest 5A was at 522. Aquinas' enrollment would have to severely drop to go to 4A. I think that type of drop is highly unlikely at Aquinas for several years, unless a new Catholic high school is built in Johnson County out South in that area between Metcalf and Mission Road.

Last year's classifications and enrollments:

http://www.kshsaa.org/Classifications.pdf