I honestly think that it depends on the kid. Wrestle off's is the easiest and most effective way to decide who the top guy is for High School, but for college sometimes the best way is to base it off of Tournament performances. Honestly all kids should wrestle the weight that they will best perform at. That is the way that you are going to score the most points for your team. You get the most out of an individual for his/her team. I do applaud guys that make sacrifices for their team though.

It is of little surprise that most on this forum would select Individual over Team! But I suggest that a bunch of team coaches would feel that team is more important!

Taking the Devil's Advocate perspective ... let's say a team member is an absolute drut; he slacks in practice, is a negative influence, and barely is meeting the academic standard. Another is a great team member, works hard in practice, and is a stellar student. In the wrestle-off the drut barely beats the great kid and is pompous in his celebration. Who would you rather have represent your team?

Intangibles factor in! I always remember the Scott City Team title without a single finalist!

More later ... I'm on my way to Iola for a MS meet!

One of the reason's I love wrestling is that the best man at each weight is your starter! No polotics No favorites! I saw to much of that in football and hated it. The best man at each weight is good for the team as well. IMO.

I have had kids do the sacrifice for the team thing each year i coached and have found success and failure in it. As a coach i am all about the team thing, but as an athlete i can see the individual aspect.

I don't think that it is as simple as "individual over team". However, if you don't look out for you kid, who will? I also know that cutting down to weight doesn't always work out. My senior year, I cut down and won a closely contested wrestle-off which led to a mediocre season for me and a standout season for my teammate who bumped up a weight class. Go figure? I know it couldn't have been because I was mediocre and he went on to wrestle at Fort Hays! Sometimes matchups benefit you and sometimes they bite you in the butt, and still other times they do both! Confused yet?

Did Drut violate any team rules? Did he meet all of the requirements to be a participant? Then I want him to be on my team and we will address the rest. If he is so bad that he violates the level of decorum that you seek then make the rules and policies strict enough to deal with drut by removing him from the room. That would put the onus on Drut to decide his future not Coach Randy. Use a code of conduct to eliminate the druts and let super good kid know that he needs to work harder or that he might have to go up or down a weight class.

I really don't find anything fascinating about a team that wins without a title winner. So they had a deep line up of average Joes? So what. I would rather see three D1 wrestlers than 14 4,5,6 placers.

Honestly, the methodology we use to call a team the best is super flawed. We should not keep team scores at our state tournaments (Wisconsin and others do not) and best team should be determined by a dual event. Take the regional champs and runner ups and have a dual tournament to see who the best team is. You have a full line up at regionals but at individual state you do not. Coaching strategy and the entire line up come into play then. Individual State is about INDIVIDUAL champions. If you don't crown one then you have failed create a champion and it is laughable that you call yourself the best team.

That's one solid post!

Disclaimer:

I am personal friends with Cokeley.

Will,

I absolutely agree with you on the comment you made (pasted below)....

Honestly, the methodology we use to call a team the best is super flawed. We should not keep team scores at our state tournaments (Wisconsin and others do not) and best team should be determined by a dual event. Take the regional champs and runner ups and have a dual tournament to see who the best team is. You have a full line up at regionals but at individual state you do not. Coaching strategy and the entire line up come into play then. Individual State is about INDIVIDUAL champions. If you don't crown one then you have failed create a champion and it is laughable that you call yourself the best team.

Now to answer your question from an earlier post....

Yes, I would trade my individual state championship for a team state championship and I am not lying. Maybe it is because I am getting old and sentimental but the friendships our team created still last to this day. It is the one thing that we all regret from our high school days. I would personally have enjoyed sharing a state championship and all that goes with it with my buddies than the individual one.

The other point is that I did choke in the championship twice. Finished second my junior and senior years. I regret that but not near as much as not winning the state championship as a team.

As a side note for those that think this wrestling sport is an individual sport.....I challenge anyone to provide an example of a champion from any tournament (kids novice, open, high school, etc) that won it all by themselves. You can't do it. In order to win an individual state championship you have to have a good team and good practice partners. Without that you can't win a championship. Heck, how many kids do we see club hop so they can get better partners, not to mention change high schools?

Therefore, I have a hard time supporting the idea that wrestling is a pure individual sport. I do agree it would be great to have a dual team state championship. By the way, this individual sport idea is what is killing wrestling. It is much easier to generate excitement for the sport if we do more duals. However, this is for another topic.

Shawn Budke

So what team was Muhamad Ali on? John McEnroe? If you are on a "team" you don't club hop. Those were individuals motivated by their individual desire to have their individual hand held high in the air. Your arguement is flawed. You step out on the mat alone even if you don't prepare alone. It is MUCH different than a team sport where individuals are an integral part of the goals that have to be met to obtain victory. No matter how great Walter Payton was he could not win a football game alone. Every wrestler that wins or loses does so ALONE.

You are wrong about what is killing the sport. You are talking about making something spectator friendly. MMA and UFC are NOT team sports but they are spectator friendly. What is killing our sport? The lack of the ability to generate television revenue at the NCAA and Olympic level. Our sport is healthy as ever at the HS level and below.

If you are willing to trade your individual state championship medal for a silver so your high school could have state championship trophy then the US Army did a really good job of brain washing you. I still don't believe you. ;-)

Will,

We will always disagree on this subject but that doesn't make my argument flawed. You may not agree with my perspective and that is ok. The difference we are talking about is how to define teams. Yes the team aspect of wrestling is a lot different than the team aspect of a traditional team sport such as football, baseball, etc. However, it does take a team to create an individual champion. Ali and McEnroe are not good examples for your argument because those sports do not have a team aspect to it like wrestling does.

Now for the revenue piece....why can't we generate revenue??? One of the reasons is because the common person has a very hard time understanding the scoring of an individual match. It is much easier to understand the scoring of a dual match. By promoting this concept then the common person (not an experienced wrestling fan) can learn to enjoy the sport and cheer for their team. As they are doing this they then will learn the intricacies of an individual match. The key is getting the emotional excitement generated from the beginning. This is much easier to do in a dual concept than an individual tournament concept.

By the way UFC is just a brand of MMA so it is one in the same. It is fan friendly because the general population gets excitment from watching 2 guys try to beat each other. There is an aspect of violence to it.

The Army has nothing to do with my brainwashing. I would submit that I loved the Army because of the team aspect that I learned from wrestling along with the physical toughness, mental toughness, discipline, etc. That is why you see a lot of wrestlers join the different services.

Of course the coaches would choose Team success over an individual success for the simple reason that is what is in THEIR best interest! What looks better on the resume? I certainly don’t fault them for this selfish approach because that is exactly what their job is, and how their success is judged. The fact is that Team success is much more important to coaches then it is to the vast majority of wrestlers because their primary goal is different.

Their is REALLY not team aspect to an individual tournament. The clear motivation is for an individual to win all of their matches. You pointed out that a wrestler could not prepare without a team. Neither could Ali or Johhny Mc. They had to prepare with others just like all wrestlers do. How are these NOT good examples based on your statement? It is a valid comparison from the angle you approached.

Clubs are not teams either. They prepare together and then they are motivated to win individually. Successful wrestlers are self motivated and not team motivated. The Olympic "Team" is just a collection of the most motivated and prepared individuals assembled to travel together and compete as individuals. This sport is built on a foundation of individual motivation. Shawn, you cannot argue that just because you are an outlier and would give up your Gold Medal for a team championship. (I still don't believe you! )

Wrestling tried to promote the team concept commercially a few years ago with the Real Pro series. It didn't catch on.

Chief,

I suppose I muddied the waters a little bit with these two statements. We all know that wrestlers still adjust their weight to get to where they want to be, or assume they need to be. The point I was trying to make is that if the wrestler chooses to go down in weight, and they have the extra room to do it in a healthy manner, then I don't have an issue with it. If they don't have the extra girth to shed and still try to drop, they should reconsider. From my personal experience, they have a good chance to do just as well if not better if they stay at the weight their body is built for.

What is killing our sport is parents that want their kids to go to a week or two of practice, and if they don't win their first tourney, or their kid comes home and says it is "too hard", then they let them quit..........

At the end of the day, after a tourney, it’s you and your kid. You are either there to enjoy his/her success or to help console them. You do what is right for your kid. Your kid being at the weight that is right for him will do all you can be expected to do from a team standpoint. Any coach that asks more, is looking at it from an individual standpoint - HIS as Steve just stated. Remember the coach always has next year, the individual wrestler may not.

In practice this may be a team sport in terms of helping to prepare practice partners and so on. But once on the mat it is truly individual - one on one - with the help of 2 coaches.

Will has been right on this for years.

BLUF: We will have to agree to disagree. Personally I don't think it is as black and white as a right or wrong answer. The fact is that high school and college wrestling in its current format is a mixture of an individual participant sport with a team aspect.

I don't think you can use the Olympics as a comparison. Better comparison's are looking at swim teams, golf teams, track teams, etc. Do coaches move kids around in those different events in order to help the team.....absolutely. No different than wrestling.

I think we have to be really careful promoting this as an individual sport. With the cutbacks we are getting ready to see (or already seeing) in the budgets for schools, we are setting ourselves up for failure. It is very easy to cut sports that are individual sports and do not promote a team aspect or the school. Just my observation.

As far as the Real Pro Wrestling.....you prove my point exactly! Real Pro Wrestling failed because it didn't promote the team aspect. It focused on individuals wrestling at their weights and the programming had the weights wrestling at one showing. I think if they would have used a dual format they would have been more successful. Why??? Because learning about wrestling and all of its intricacies takes time and quite frankly given the level of competition RPW had, it can be boring. Having said that, if it was a dual format then the new fan can understand the scoring easier and they can get excited about their team. Trust me, we still have the poster of the team that Erik Akin was on. We really wanted to see this succeed.

Shawn Budke

Shawn, I think that you are the most logical person here. I appreciate your input and thoughts on this topic. In my opinion, it is rock solid.

Now, to answer the first question. You should wrestle at the weight that your coach tells you to wrestle. It's really not our call. It's his.

When you are in the minority and you feel that you are logical, you are really illogical. The day I see 28 guys on the mat going at it I will buy into this team stuff. I would hate to be the coach that told this dad that his wrestler had to wrestle a weight he didn't want to wrestle, if he had established he could make that weight conforming to the rules and beaten all of the competitors at that weight. This is the beauty of the sport. Leave the politics out of this sport. PLEASE! Any coach who puts his own personal goals ahead of any of his wrestlers is NOT a good coach.

William G. McAdoo said "It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." I have been trying to find out but I haven't found proof that he said this while discussing the prepostorous pronouncement that two men competing for one prize were actually motivated more by their team than their own personal cause... Draw your own conclusions...

What weight to wrestle?

Not 132 at Gardner Invitational