Mike:

At the sake of bringing the fury of Towanda down about my ears, let me relate a couple of things to you.

First, let me tell you the procedure we go through up here:
--On the last Friday before practice started a physician's assistant from our local clinic came to school. He weighed all of the wrestlers, did the body fat testing (with calipers, by the way), filled out the paperwork, sent a copy to us and copy to the IHSAA. This paperwork had each kid’s alpha weight, body fat content and lowest certifiable weight at 7 percent body fat (minus three pounds).
-- Since we do shoulder-to-shoulder weigh-ins (one hour before duals and dual tourneys, two hours before regular tournaments) we have the opportunity to challenge anything we don’t think is kosher on the spot.
-- Documentation-wise, we have to carry our body-fat paperwork, copies of all of our weigh-in sheets, plus any waivers we have at all times. Plus, for Sectionals, we have a sheet to fill out that documents our each starting line-up’s weigh-ins, their opponent that weigh-in and their exact weight.
-- And next year, I’m sure, we’ll have to carry sheets that document each kid’s 1.5 percent weight loss at all times.
(My managers have a notebook with all of this stuff in it -- looks like a presidential briefing book!)

Second, keep this in mind: So long as you guys stick to home weigh-ins, the opportunity for abuse and cheating will always be there. There is no way to avoid it. You could put in a rule that says everyone has to wear pink lace underwear when they weigh-in, but if everyone is weighing in at home at 7 a.m. (or whatever), there is no possible way to prove it. How often does cheating happen? Who knows? When I was at Immaculata there was always someone saying Lansing cheated on weigh-ins. First, knowing Ron Averill, that’s laughable and insulting, but even it was true, how would you ever prove it? Unless you want to be the ballsie one who’s going to pull the challenge, it’s impossible to prove. The only way to eliminate the doubt is to do shoulder-to-shoulder.

Finally, how it was done 30 years ago is irrelevant. Legal drinking age used to be 18, now it’s 21. Were there less problems with drinking 30 years ago than now? That’s debatable, but what’s not is that for one reason or another, the rules changed. The NFHS made the rule change and whether we like or not, that’s what it is. If Kansas doesn’t want to go along with it, that’s up to you guys. But the thing is that this isn’t a bad rule, it’s not hard to administer or maintain and it’s the legal expression of evil incarnate. And it won’t bring the end of society (or wrestling) as we now know it. It’s simply a new idea.

Holmes