Husker Vince and Travius,

I agree with both of you. You are just spinning it differently.

Sport0, take your dentures out, put your Depends back on and go back to bed

I think there should be MS wrestling for all of the reasons you listed and I do believe if experienced wrestlers participate they should have to prioritize MS wrestling if there was a conflict with outside wrestling. My point about score keeping wasn't about winning it was to highlight the stupidity of the KSHSAA restriction. If there is not a standard season, no scores, records or team competitions what is the point of not allowing OPEN wrestling during the season? Travius, you are wrong about open opportunities. There are tournaments available starting in mid September and every weekend up to this one which has the last of the Folkstyle events kids can participate in.

Some middle school programs have their season in Jan and Feb which is the heart of the KS USA schedule. Most of these programs have nothing scheduled on the weekend so these kids should be permitted to go to the Salina T of C or whatever tournament they want.

The other thing is that I don't think it is good for the experienced wrestlers to be pressured by MS coaches to wrestle when it will not be beneficial. You will develop bad habits wrestling kids who are not competitive. My son was pressured by the MS coaches at his school until I called them and told them NO. These are the same coaches I invited to attend Tony Purler sessions to learn and they told me they didn't have time. There you have it.

Some kids wrestle to have fun but some kids want to use their time to get better. Those kids don't have time to waste wrestling MS, novice, or JV. I understand that you may not have a choice but to wrestle JV and JV is weak because the depth in KS is not there to support a strong JV schedule of events. In fact, JV kids could get better (those that qualify for 15U by wrestling open tournaments than they will ever get by wrestling JV but again this is not allowed by the KSHSAA.) If a kid has aspirations beyond HS then the KSHSAA should not be throwing up hurdles to prevent them from getting better. I am not against MS school wrestling, just the over regulation of it and the lack of understanding that most MS coaches have for being able to coach it for experienced wrestlers.