Sportsfan,

The article about the basketball team seems to present facts counter to your point.....

"But I reiterate, at what expense do these programs exist? Would they serve to kill competing nearby programs? The other winter sport does not have to worry about someone killing it due to lack of competitiveness. Fans of our sport have to be on a constant vigil against those who would like to see it abolished. Currently it would appear we are in a period of growth here in this state as it seems every year we hear of a new high school program being added. I can't remember the last time I heard of a program being killed, but it can happen. Just this past weekend I heard of one of the most historic programs in this state and people within that school who are chomping at the bit to get rid of it. If these super programs succeed which they likely would, and it causes other nearby programs to fail, who would they wrestle locally? Do we really want a couple dozen programs in the entire state? I want every high school large enough to have a wrestling program to have one and that is what I constantly work towards. Every time we take a wrestler or team out of our state to compete it is likely at the expense of some other Kansas team or tournament. Does that mean we shouldn't travel at all? No. But as I said, let them come to us if possible, and it seems many already want to do. If you want to really want to judge the impact of opening up this KSHSAA rule, just think about the expense of sending your marching bands all over the country year after year."

The main reasons that sports programs are dropped is because of funding restraints and lack of participation. Now if you have a team that brings in enough money to fund the entire athletic department (meaning all of the other sports)it seems to me that you decrease the number of reasons for dropping a sport.

I think we are straying a little because the real issue isn't about "super teams". The real issue is about school districts making the decision at a local level on where to send their teams and how far. It should not be a blanket policy.

As far as your speed limit rule......I don't think it is a valid comparison.....

1. I'm from Montana so my initial gut reaction is that we shouldn't have speed limits...however, the logical side of me says I understand the law and the need for it.

2. You can't use it as a comparison because you are talking about saving and losing lives with established speed limits (lots of research to validate that). We are not talking about people living or dying when we want to have more freedom to choose where we compete.

I understand and agree with you wholeheartedly on the need to grow the sport. We absolutely must do that. I don't think your assumption that if we travel where we want to compete or create super teams will kill other programs is totally valid. There are a lot of other factors to consider. I know one way to defintely cause a slow death to programs is to not offer kids an opportunity to set goals for their future after high school. The kids that want to compete at the college level should have the opportunity to compete in the best tournaments in the nation as high schoolers. You can achieve both of these efforts without killing any programs and hurting kids by allowing school districts at the lower level to choose how far to let their teams travel.

I also agree that we should try and host tournaments with teams from outside the state. That is a good thing. With the rules as they are now, we could have a hard time reciprocating. How can we expect to draw top teams from around the country if we can't go to their big tournaments?

Shawn Budke