As a father of two boys who have participated in the freestyle/greco club that gibby has coached I can attest to the fact that I strongly believe that this season is very vital to being successful. I watched and yes even argued with gibby as my two boys I strongly believe improved their skill in the sport of wrestling. It would be great to see a little longer freestyle/greco season. But I disagree a little with gibby's comment on the college coaches take more stock in the Fargo Nationals when recruiting. I stongly believe now having one of my sons in a college wrestling program that Fargo is nothing more than the icing on the cake. Meaning the individual's, ability, character, willingness to get better, and most importantly their dedication to the sport is the; flour, egg, milk, baking and all the other neccessary steps in building the cake first; is far more important to the college coaches. I think the college coaches are the ones who put the icing on itself. As my son who is in college has stated many times that if he had known the move the his college coach has shown him this past year, he would have won state instead of taking third.

Now, to Mr. Shoffner's comment on more people volunteering at the state meet I strongly agree but I do have a comment on this. I believe getting volunteers will always be hard for two reasons:
1. Which is the basic excuse that all event planners and managers and workers use. This being people just don't want to help. Or 100% of the work gets completed by only 20% of the people. Well this maybe correct but look at reason #2.

2. This reason will undoubtly create a stir amongest the higher position people of the wrestling community. This is there seems to be a clique among these higher position people. The Saturday and Sunday of the Kids state tournament I was sitting at home doing not a thing. Why did I not volunteer? Well, after many times of informing individuals just to give me a call when they need help, and then not getting a call it makes you wonder they must have it under control, or they just don't want your help. Or maybe it's they don't want your help because their not sure that you will do it their way or if you might want to make a change to it. Well if you ask me if it's because of change which it probably is here is your answer to why the sport of Wrestling is as Mr. Shoffner stated in a dieing state. Take a hard look at the other sports. Have they made changes to how they do things over the past 10 years? I believe so.
Now to the clique issue, lets look at it from our everyday life. Have you held a good conversation, or even socialized with a co-worker that might be in a different department, that you normal have not associated with?
If your in school now you should know about this, and if not take yourself back to that time. Remember, how it was back then? You had your popular group of individuals, then you had the average group, and finally you have the lower classed, or should we say the "nerds". Depending on which group you were in did you even associate with someone from the other group? Bet not, because you didn't want to be banned from the group you belonged to. So maybe the higher position individuals in the wrestling community need to start involving themselves with other individuals at wrestling tournaments other than the ones they alway socialize with. Maybe, just maybe you might find that there are alot of volunteers out there just waiting to help.
Well sorry for taking so long on this but remember,
Change is difficult but highly successful.
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For every one person you do not meet today will be one less individual you will know tommorrow.
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That one less person you know tommorrow might be the individual that goes right on by you in your time of need.