Will,

I am not against some of the Johnson County teams making some changes in their schedules so that they could get a little more variety in competition. I think this is probably a problem in more areas than Johnson County. I would bet it is a situation that the Wichita and Topeka schools experience too. Some of that may have to do with travel budget issues. I do think though that the Johnson County schools might be able to schedule some more tournaments in the Kansas City area to get some variety in competition and even tournaments in Wichita, Topeka and other cities in Kansas outside of Johnson County. I think there are other tournaments that each team could eliminate from their schedule to meet the goal of seeking new competition outside of Johnson County. I would not want to see the Johnson County Classic as the tournament that the team was going to drop.

I am not as much of a wrestling judge of talent as you, Will. I enjoy watching wrestling competition at all levels anyway so I really enjoy watching the competition at it.

I think the majority of the wrestlers on Johnson County teams find plenty of competition at the Classic. I think the majority of the wrestlers take a great deal of pride in competing to become the County Champion in their weight class. It is a special event to most of us in Johnson County. I think it must be with the majority of the coaches too otherwise they would change it.

I would like to see all the Johnson County wrestlers increase their wrestling skills too. That is why I have been advocating that the KSHSAA change the policy to allow high school wrestling coaches to be able to coach freestyle/greco during the school year after the folkstyle season ends. I believe if they could do that we would see more of the wrestlers participating in freestyle and then more would be seeing better competition at cadet and junior duals, Southern Plains and Fargo. They would then be also more apt to go the good preseason regional and national tournaments that are available. There are a lot of regional and national opportunities available to our local wrestlers outside of the season if they choose to take advantage of them. I do believe though that you are going to increase the level of overall wrestling in Jo County more by getting kids involved in more post season wrestling than by wrestling one weekend in the season at the KC Classic tournament. I would concentrate more on that.