I am trying to stay away from someone having to produce a valid lunch ticket in order to wrestle. It should be an 18U division period just for semantics purposes alone. Personally I would prefer that it be a 17U division, period. I feel like the high schoolers and in particular the seniors have already had their state tournament. To refer to this as anything resembling a Grand State would be fraud regardless, because many of your state champions will be competing in other spring sports for their schools. With that thinking I believe the seniors that are going to most likely use this new division will be the also rans. Nothing wrong with that but I just feel the seniors or those over the age of 17 have had their shot and it's time to give the underclassmen a chance. Has anyone put pencil to paper and figured out the minimum number of full size mats this will add to the tournament?
We already use full size mats for 16U so it will not require any additional mat space or a modification of the mat lay out for state. The subs and districts should anticipate more participants than we have had in the past.
Lets just assume we are looking at HS Juniors and Seniors only. There are a little more than 200 HS programs in the state with an average of 30 wrestlers. To be conservative figure only 1/3 of these programs have Jr and Sr wrestlers. We are looking at an OPPORTUNITY for 2,000 wrestlers to extend their Folkstyle season. Even if we only get 10% that is 200 more wrestlers or 50 per district. We need to give it a try this year and see how it works. We have to stop argueing over the wording of the amendment and splitting hairs. The proposal in its present status offers MORE kids the chance to compete in Kansas USA Wrestling. Isn't that what we are here for, the kids that is!
