I would like to thank all of you in Western Kansas that have talked to your administration. It seems as though there is a very real possibility of moving the junior high competitive season from after Christmas to before Christmas beginning with the 2010 season. I will be contacting every coach in Western Kansas that I have an email address for within the next week. If I email you, please respond with a brief response, if nothing else. If you do not receive an email, feel free to email me with your thoughts. Your responses and my documentation of that will be imperative. I will list my email address at the end. Many coaches do not teach at their school, and those people are difficult to contact. Help would be appreciated. It is very important to keep this moving, or we may find ourselves with what we have now. I have received only one negative response and dozens of positives. It is time to take the next step.

Rick Cue
Ulysses
rcue@ulysses.org

High five coach! I like to see some positive changes! Now if you can get them to turn them loose on weekends!

This will help tremendously with the conflict between club and school wrestling. The kids that want to wrestle the tough club tournaments will no longer need to choose between loyalty to their school and team or getting the best competition that they can on a larger stage. It will help the coaches doing both high school and junior wrestling because their competitive seasons won't over lap so much. There are a few negatives. High school football coaches will have difficulty, as will smaller schools where basketball is king. Also, if a few schools choose not to move their season, they will have difficulty scheduling. Oklahoma and Texas schools wrestle before Christmas, but Colorado schools, at least the small towns near the border, wrestle after Christmas. We would lose them. Those are the only negatives that I have heard.

This is a letter that I emailed to around 40 JH coaches in western Kansas a few minutes ago.

Coach,

My name is Rick Cue and I am the junior high wrestling coach in Ulysses. We are entering into a new league agreement beginning with the 2010-2011 school year, and there has been serious discussion about moving the junior high wrestling season to immediately after football, ending before Christmas. I made this proposal to our AD several months ago. He wanted feedback. I believe that we have a window of opportunity that will not come up for many years. If there is going to be a change, it needs to be now. I am well aware that this has been discussed since at least the early 1990’s. There are certainly those few that oppose this change, but there are very few valid reasons for doing so. NONE involve being more beneficial to wrestling. Many girls basketball coaches favor the change because their season would immediately follow volleyball, and their kids would still be in shape. Boys basketball coaches favor the change because they could still have an extended practice season if they choose to do so. Keep in mind that there is no KSHSAA mandated season of sport for junior high schools.

Most of eastern Kansas is on this schedule. If you have been following the discussion on www.usawks.com, you know that there are many advantages to this proposal. Since I came to Kansas in 1992 as head wrestling coach at Ulysses High School, this has been an issue that I found frustrating. I feel very strongly that a wrestler should join his junior high team, yet I understand that in some cases the competition may be better at the club level. A wrestler would no longer feel a need to choose between competing for his school or his club. He would be able to do both. It would definitely increase our numbers at the junior high level.

It would still enable a kid that had interest in basketball and wrestling to play basketball after Christmas, as that is where the boys season would now be. That seems to be the primary administrative concern. Girls basketball season would coincide with wrestling. A coach that is coaching both junior high and high school wrestling would have much less conflict within his competitive seasons, and he could focus more on his high school season when it was most important.

Our Activities Director, Dave Otis, has taken this proposal to our new league. Administration has been supportive, which I believe to be the largest hurdle. There is very little opposition, and the response from wrestling coaches has been nearly 100% supportive. I have received a very positive (100%) response from parents of wrestlers who will enter junior high in the next two years. In other words, those whose kids will be most involved in this change. Naturally, support from club coaches is also 100%.

Please respond to this message. Even if it is very brief, it will enable me to show consensus among us. If you wish to respond negatively, I will certainly forward those thoughts as well.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Rick Cue
Ulysses
rcue@ulysses.org
Shelstin@hotmail.com