I work with "Seasoned" officials all the time guy. I've worked with the likes of a Jim Belch, Mark Anderson (one of the most highly respected officials in the state),Richard Brake, Ruben Montoy, the list goes on and on. And I have NEVER seen them tell someone that had to tape their laces and more than that I have never seen them penalize someone for not taping thier laces, so I guess in your mind these are terrible officials too? These are guys that have been officiating more than two times the number of years that you have been coaching.

My "smugness" as you refered to it is only the logical conclusion to your presumptive nature of telling me how rules work to which I can assure you I am quite well versed in. The very nature of this whole situation regarding inconsistancy has very little to do with me, and much more to do with coaches who for some odd reason have a very different opinion about rules, when in fact your opinion about a rule means absolutly zero because you are not the one out there enforcing them, and because you read something into a written rule that is not there. This whole sequence of posts was the result of you telling me something that I already knew and twisting what I said into something it was not. Simply put I said TAPING the shoe laces is not required. You even quoted it yourself in a later post. When I said TAPING I actually meant wraping tape around the laces, now I don't know where exactly you got a different version of that front but that is your own issue and not mine. This thread was a question posed and I answered it to the letter of the rule. But since you must have misinterpreted what I said let me clarify for the last time.

If the wrestler in question (in reference the the wrestler who apparently did not have his show laces tied) Did not in fact have his laces secured in an acceptable fashion technically he should have noticed it when the kid walked out to the mat, even though the kid did not have a match, that cannot be assumed and therefore he should have been given a technical violation but since he had no match the only logical result would have been to either ignore the violation or score the match as 0-1 and then a score a forfeit for the opposing team and so the wrestler gets his 6 points. At no team point have been taken awarded because the rule change this year switched from charging "not reporting to the mat properly attired" from unsportsmanlike conduct on a coach or contestent to a technical violation. As anyone familar with the rules should know, you cannot have a technical violation AFTER a match has ended, anything that once involved a technical violation before or during the match now becomes an unsportsmanlike conduct after the match, for example a wrestler pulling their singlet down on the mat. So what I am trying to say is that because the referee did not see that the wrestlers shoes were not secured before that match there really isn't anything he could do about it proactively after the match because it was his responsibility to notice it before hand. I can't say that I neccasarily blame the guy because that is something that you really don't see that often. In the end no team points should be assesed in this situation.

Now after saying all of this the fact still remains that all I said was that shoes are not required to be "Taped" I never said they didn't have to be secured. What I did say is that in most situations a very well tied double not with the laces tucked back into each other COULD be seen as acceptably secured. Now I say this to you, if you believe that there is some sort of descrepancy as to the inconsistant nature of this rule then I urge you to contact Mr. Bowden and have him send out a state wide memo saying that all laces must be "taped" or that tieing your shoes in 4 knots is not sufficient enough to keep them from untieing.

As for the other thing like I said before I only gave my name as an example because it was quite frankly the easiest one for me to think of. Obviously there are non state champs from every class that can beat champs from other classes.
But since you asked I'll give you a couple more names. Aaron Meister from Holton, David Karnowski from Wamego (NCWA Natinal Champion I believe, beat several state chamions from 3-2-1A his junior and senior year of high school) Kyle Robinson - Abilene, Travis McBurney - Santa Fe Trail. These are all 4a non state champion kids who routinly beat state champions from all the other classes. The list goes on. But I must point out the same situation applies to non state champion kids from other classes who beat 4A state champions as well.

Thank you and if you have any other concerns please feel free to call me (number is listed in the officials directory) or catch me at a tournament and ask because my finers are getting tired of typing the same thing over and over.