Ninjagnat, Wauer defeated Stokes last summer the Sunflower State
Games 15-3 no lucky pin there! To be fair Stokes did win at the
Gardner Tournament against Wauer last year in a high scoring
match by one or two points and was winning the finials match at
Kids subdistrict before Stokes was disqualified for yet another
ugly incident. Wauer did defeat Stokes at the Fall Brall last
year. So even if you give Stokes the subdistrict victory Wauer
still has the advantage 3-2 Head to Head. To my knowledge those
are all of their meetings sorry if I missed any. My point being,
James earned that victory and in no way should it be characterized as lucky.

I do not want to argue, but as you can see from my previous posts I am IN NO WAY discounting, or "characterizing as lucky," the victory that Wauer earned last Saturday. As stated, Wauer is a tough wrestler, and a class act. To catch a kid like Stokes does not happen by luck, I don't care who you are. Please do not take my points out of context, or extrapolate meanings/inferences that are not present. I take great care in making sure I do not discount any wrestler's hard earned accomplishments.

I'm not disagreeing that 5A was/is the best, but I'd like to see the evidence that 6A was the weakest. Please don't include the old "look at all of the losing records at state" comments. None of those kids win it. I do agree that Grand State would be awesome though.

Good topic, I often have this discussion with "cross" state colleagues. The original post indicated a dual - which could be determined by commons throughout the season. However, to say one class is tougher/better than the other is debateable. You have to consider the depth of each individual weight class... Then you have a discussion!!

I've always felt that what 4A has over 6A and 5A is depth. I think the top four in each class are good and it may vary from year to year and weight to weight which are the best. I think the difference is beyond the top four or maybe beyond the placers.

I think the fact that less than half (when you consider some opens) of the wrestlers in each weight class qualify in 5A and 6A hurts the depth of those classes at the state tourney.

Of course, I coach at a 4A school and that probably effects my objectivity.

Jilka and Ol' AC Dog.

Take a look at the post titled: Class Power - on paper. It seems to refute the notion that "6A was the weakest" - certainly not this year!

In an effort to get dialogue going, I put 6A as the weakest division in another thread. As Chief has shown, there is nothing weak about the number 1 ranked wrestlers in 6A. I think that goes for all of the divisions. When you look at the elite wrestlers from any division, they are tough tough kids. 6A has always had very good wrestlers at the top.

I think a lot of people have historically felt the the depth in 6A was less than some of the other classifications. I think in at least some cases that was a valid point. There were not very many 6A schools, resulting in kids qualifying in 6A that probably would not have qualified in say 4A. That is still somewhat true today. Ignoring disparity in toughness of regionals, with 32 6A schools, the top 50% qualify. In the 64 4A schools the top 25% qualify. I don't mean to discount anyone who qualifies for state. It is a tremendous accomplishment no matter what classification.

I don't have the actual history of 6A schools, but I'm pretty sure it used to be somewhat less than 32. Now there are as many 6A schools as 5A schools and it is full of truly tough wrestlers. Many of the states toughest ever have come from 6A, but I don't think you can accurately evaluate any of the classifications based entirely upon the top tier wrestlers. I think #25 in 4A beats #25 in 5A and 6A most times.

Again, as coach Williams stated take the starters out - then compile the same numbers - I bet 6A drops to the bottom... even more so the further down the depth chart!

instead of a grand state tourney, you could just make it a round-robin with the champs from each class.

Would that make 4A, JV Champs?

My comment had nothing to do with the backups. I was referring to the varsity depth of 4A being much better than 5A and 6A. In my opinion, the top 4 to 6 vary from weight to weight, class to class, year to year. I feel it is the depth of 4A that makes it tough.

to me, the backups - simply refers to the depth - which means, in many occasions the backup (JV) person could be very successful against 6a varsity (team duals)... in 321a, 4a and in most years 5a. What I meant in my ealier post was - you take the varsity people out of all classes then let the dual roll, I believe you'll see 6a fall to the bottom (JUST MY OPINION)

AC Dog-

I see what you are saying. I think the overall depth of 4A is unmatched by any class.

Hence the 896 varsity wrestlers vs. 448 for 5A or 6A.

OK, now I get it. We sort of have a "wrestle-off" and after class 5A and/or class 6A runs out of wrestlers, their remaining opponents in the smaller classes win by default.

5A and 6A are open in the last 32 brackets in each weight.

I don't really care about your mythical wrestle-off at the dreamland arena. I was just stating my opinion on which class is "tougher" and why I believe so. I will stick to my opinion that the top 4 are tough in each class and which is the toughest varies from year to year and weight to weight. However, in my opinion the depth of 4A is a consistent factor that set this classification apart from the others. I also qualified my opinion by stating that I am a coach at a 4A school and that influences my perspective.

Coach Williams: You probably forgot more about wrestling than I'll ever know. I was just having a little fun with my flippant remark. For all I know you may be right. One thing that I do know that 4A is loaded with tough wrestlers and alot of their teams are stacked up and down their rosters.

What Coach Williams is saying (from what I infer from the posts) is that if you were to have, lets say - A hypothetical Grand State that consisted of the 5th and 6th place winners ONLY from each classifications state results, that 4A would dominate the tournament. Therefore explaning the "depth" that he is referring to. Is that safe to say Rick?

I would say that is right, Tim. I think you could say the same for the qualifiers who do not place in 4A. Who would win between champs or finalists from class to class I think varies from year to year and weight to weight, but the depth of 4A is consistently better than the other classes every year.IMO