Randy you can spank me any where!

The bottom line is if you want to wrestle you'll find a way D1, D2,D3 NAIA or JUCO. I could have taken all the money that I spent over the years on wrestling and sent all three of my kids to 5 star colleges!

JUCO isn't such a bad route, it's cheaper than starting at Division I and you can start right away in the lineup then get all divisions to look at you. Then the door is wide open. Ask Eric Luedke....

I was looking at this some and thinking of my son's Aquinas team. In looking at the median breakdown by class I saw that in 6A it was about 1270 pupils per school, 5A it was about 777, 4A about 365, 3-2-1A about 153. My proposal to approach this problem of sub .500 records qualifying for state (if that is indeed determined a problem needing to be fixed) would be to allow all the 5A and 6A teams to bring two wrestlers per weight to regionals. That would make for the possibility of 16 person brackets instead of 8 at Regionals in 5A and 6A. It would be fair to allow schools with 2 or more times the pupils than schools in 4A or 3-2-1A to send twice as many wrestlers per weight to regionals.

I started thinking of this because I believe that the Aquinas team this year which qualified in all 14 classes could have probably qualified at least 20 wrestlers at regionals in this scenario. Thirteen of the 14 that Aquinas did qualify had over .500 records. I believe at least 5 more of the additional 6 that I think Aquinas could have qualified would have had over .500 records if they were given enough varsity opportunities to wrestle. Three of these six additional projected qualifiers from this Aquinas squad have in fact qualified in previous years and I believe all three of them had over .500 records in past years and no doubt would have been over .500 this year as varsity wrestlers. I believe some of these additional wrestlers could have possibly placed at State this year.

I decided to look into the top 10 finishing teams in 5A (Aquinas, Carroll, Hutchinson, Ark City, Emporia, Gardner Edgerton, Valley Center, Lansing, Shawnee Heights, and Liberal). Including Aquinas which had 13 of its 14 with over .500 records, the top ten teams had 90 wrestlers with over .500 records. I believe that at these quality wrestling schools you could get at least a third or 30 more wrestlers to have qualified with winning records under the scenario that each school in 5A and 6A could bring two per weight to Regionals to bring the brackets at regionals to 16 like 4A and 3-2-1A. That is not even taking into consideration the additional over .500 qualifiers that the next ten teams: Great Bend, Salina South, Kapaun, Mill Valley, Topeka-Seaman, Hays, Winfield, Turner, McPherson and Schlagle might potentially add to the mix with over .500 record wrestlers if they were allowed to bring an extra wrestler per weight to Regionals. These additional wrestlers from these schools would probably replace a lot of the qualifiers with under .500 records.

I believe this scenario where you let all the 5A and 6A schools take two per weight group instead of one would mean that you would have 5A and 6A look a lot more like 4A and 3-2-1A in terms of qualifiers with over .500 records. Of course other tournaments during the season would have to either allow these schools to bring more than one wrestler per weight to their tournaments or more tournaments would have to allow these schools to bring their varsity B teams to their tournaments to let these wrestlers develop their varsity experience and records.

I think there are quite of few quality wrestlers at these top 5A and 6A bigger schools who are not even getting an opportunity to wrestle at Regionals.

We could have one state tournament. California does it and they have over 800 wrestling programs. Just a few years ago they crowned their first 4x State Champion, Darrell Vasquez. Now that is prestigious! How many 4 timers does Kansas have now. When you go to High School Nationals and you step on the mat with someone from California you better be ready to get after it.

I totally agree with the idea of a single state tournament. I don’t like having four individual state champions for a weight class. The state tournament should determine THE STATE CHAMPION. Maybe then more people would put more stock in the 5th and 6th place finishers also. Now, will we ever have one state tournament? Probably not. As long as KHSHAA is calling the shots we can probably forget this pipe dream. I’m not sure how much KHSHAA profits off the state tournament series, but I’m sure there is some profit. More state tournaments means more competitors, and more competitors means more parents, siblings, grandparents, etc. Add it all up and it results in more money for KHSHAA. Don’t get me wrong here I’m not KHSHAA bashing. They have to make money and they do a lot of good things with that money. KHSHAA’s first concern is the student and then the athlete, as well it should be.

I also think too much is being made about wrestling D1. First off the opportunities are limited at this level and wrestling D1 isn’t the end of all ends. Why do so many people glamorize wrestling at this level? Lets face it it’s a job that most kids are not up to in the first place. All I see on this forum is D1, D1, D1. We are so hung up on D1 that we forget what kids are really going to college for, and that is an education that will provide for them through the rest of their lives. Take a look at the average D1 wrestler after they finish college and I bet you’ll find that many are not even involved in wrestling any longer. Why is wrestling D1 so important? Why, well probably for parents who tend to live vicariously through their kids. Frankly, there are parents out there that believe that if their kid wrestles D1 it will improve their own status quo. I don’t think most kids really aspire to wrestle at the D1 level, however, I do believe that these ideas are being drilled into their heads. This trend of D1 grandeur has lead to a false feeling of entitlement by athletes and college coaches are a little fed up with it.

I don’t get caught up in the statistics of how many Kansas wrestlers are wrestling at the D1 level. To me this isn’t a fair measuring stick. Instead I think we need to look at how many kids have gone on to wrestle at college because of their love for the sport. If they get a scholarship at any level, GREAT. Be happy for what they received and not bitter about what they didn’t receive. We need to look at wrestling realistically as a way to subsidize our kids higher education. I say subsidize because most full-ride scholarships don’t entirely pay for an education. And, depending on what degree you are seeking in college a D1 school doesn’t necessarily provide the best education for the field of study that one is interested in. Some of the best learning institutions in the nation are the smaller ones. They can provide a smaller instructor/student ratio, which means students can get more one-on-one assistance from the instructor. Too often students become just numbers at the larger universities and their educational experience suffers because of it.

Sorry to be such a windbag.

Also Will and Randy, I think what you might ultimately be looking for is a grand state scenario. I would like to see a grand state tournament. I think it would be an exciting and interesting to take the top four from 6A, 5A, 4A and 3-2-1A and see who would be the all class winners and placers. I think they used to do it that way many years ago but they still had the individual class state tournaments too. I would not mind seeing that return. I think a Dual State Tournament would be interesting too. I doubt any of it will happen anytime soon though.

Vince,
That is so crazy I give up 5a & 6a used to only have 8 man brackets at state. This would eliminate nearly ALL of the under .500 records. The problem with your suggestion is that many teams CANNOT even fill an entire 14 weight class roster. JV wrestling is the equivalent of Kids novice or Kansas Middle School wrestling so I don't think your solution will raise the standard of quality wrestling at the state tournament. I am sticking with my suggestion to combine 5A and 6A and call it good. There are 154 schools in 3A (the largest class) in Wisconsin and only 32 kids qualify for state. Seven of the 20 wrestlers who wrestled in the last Olympics were from Wisconsin High Schools.

Coach Neil, I agree with your points on D1 wrestling. I merely used it as a barometer for the lack of exposure because winning 4x's in Kansas doesn't mean as much as winning 4x in most other states. Therefore all levels of college coaches are not interested in seriously looking at Kansas wrestlers unless they perform well in the summer. I guarantee you that ALL D1 programs were interested in Vasquez just as they were in Jesse Jantzen a few years back.

Will,

I am enjoying this conversation with you. It is just a big difference in opinion that I am okay with. I know you just want to see the quality of wrestling improve in Kansas and the only point you have made so far that I believe could justify your position of joining 5A and 6A is that Wisconsin had 7 of the last 20 in the Olympics. I don't know if having fewer state championships per pupil necessarily caused that to happen but who knows. I look at it though from the perspectitive that we need to make wrestling and wrestling general interest grow and that it is important especially in these high school years to be growing a fan base in the wrestlers themselves, their families and friends. Growth in interest in the long run is the only way that college wrestling programs are going to grow. You mentioned Title IX in a previous post but I think many AD's actually secretly like Title IX because they can use it as an excuse to limit men's non-revenue sports. I don't think you would see a sudden flood of new wrestling programs and scholarships if Title IX were suddenly repealed. The AD's want to focus on their bread and butter sports today.

I know that most teams could not field two full teams with 14 wrestlers. I don't think that Aquinas even could due to the lower weights especially 103 and 112. But take those two weights out of it and I believe Aquinas could put a very credible wrestler in very other weight. I bet most of the top teams in 5A and 6A could do the same. It was very disappointing to see the lack of opportunity in high school wrestling this year for so many quality wrestlers on the Aquinas team. It was very frustrating to see the disappointment and frustration that so many of the senior wrestlers and their parents had this year because they had to wrestle JV when they knew that they could have been wrestling varsity at probably 90% of the schools in Johnson County.

I know Aquinas is probably an extreme example of this but I bet there are several other teams in 5A and 6A that have some very good wrestlers on their JVs or worse yet just did not bother to come out for the team this year. There have to be wrestlers like that at other schools to like Carroll, Hutchinson, Goddard, Manhattan, etc. I see the problem more that there are also quality athletes at these bigger schools that are not coming out for wrestling. I know we have some great athletes at Aquinas who would no doubt be incredible wrestlers if we did a better job of getting them to give wrestling a try. I see that more of a problem at these bigger schools that I know have the athletes. Why are we not getting them out? Sure it is a tough sport but it is also the greatest sport in the world. We need to sell this sport better to them and offer them more opportunities not less.

I am definitely not in favor of even further limiting the wrestling opportunities for high school kids at larger schools to qualify for state by joining the two larger classes. They already have an unfair limitation at most weights to smaller schools by only allowing them one per school per weight. Per pupil that is a limitation for the larger school wrestler. Create more opportunities for quality high school athletes to wrestle. Do not further limit them.

We can do this and still achieve what you really want too. All you have to do is have this Grand State at the end of the year. You could also further add to the fun and school spirit by having a Dual State sometime during the year. Imagine the excitement if Aquinas, Goddard, Carroll, Manhattan, Hutchinson, and other schools were battling it out in a Dual State tournament. I tell you what I bet you would put more of the student body in the seats for that kind of a tournament too!

I think the thing that would help at 5 or 6a regionals is to wrestle the 5th/6th place match (if you have enough) and then the winner of that has an opportunity to challege for True 4th as long as the guy that took 4th didn't defeat him in the tournament at any point heads up.

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