Coaches,

I would like to hear your thoughts about seniors being on J.V. Do you let them, not let them, what is your rationale, etc... I am kinda torn on this subject. My first thought is J.V. is J.V. If they can't make varsity, it's for a reason. My other thought is J.V. is for the future and so we should reserve it for underclassmen. What do you think. E-mail me if you would rather.

Brent Lane
brent.lane@usd305.com

I think that it should depend on the situation. If the senoir is not expierenced then wrestle jv. If they are probally not. Really though jv is jv. So let them wrestle.

I guess I've always treated it case-by-case. If a kid is your only JV kid at that weight, sure, let him wrestle. But if you have more than one JV kid at the weight and one is senior, one an underclassman, the underclassman always gets the spot. The senior can still compete for the varsity spot, but only that one.

Junior Varsity is for the sole purpose of making KIDS better. There should be no discrimination of age. I know Freshman that beat Seniors daily. Wrestling is about ability not age.

Right on, K dub.

To quote the fans in the Astrodome from the Bad News Bears, "Let them play! Let them play!" If you have a senior on your team that is wrestling JV, obviously he loves the sport and wants to keep competing to help the team in any way he can, keep him wrestling. Let him go to JV meets. Some JV tournaments specify freshman only or freshman/sophomore to keep the amount of experience limited to underclassman only. There are many schools that host JV tourneys. Some schools have such depth of uperclassmen that they are able to enter their JV team into varsity tournaments! That is a credit to you and your program. In our sport, we should be glad that we have kids wanting to wrestle regardless of being varsity or JV, so reward them with mat time. Just don't be wishy-washy - you know what I mean.

I'm not a coach but a parent and a fan and I have strong feelings on this issue. One of the main advantages that wrestling has to offer is that everybody gets to participate. At our HS our coach finds competition for every kid. Even the seniors who will never be Varsity material, get to go to some tournaments somewhere and wrestle. It is very different from our Basketball program where once you are a junior or a senior if you have no value to the varsity you will be cut. I say, if the kid wants to work hard and practice, find him someone to compete against, even if it is just an exhibition match.

I agree that a senior who shows up and works hard every day should get the opportunity to wrestle. Many kids participate in high school athletics because they love to compete, especially in wrestling. I see no problem with letting them wrestle JV.

Brent; I have gone both ways on this issue and I think you can do both. I just told the other coach up front what I had in regards to seniors and if he could match them up after I honestly told them how good they were or bad as the case may have been, so much the better. I figure the real and best reason each and every kid comes out is to compete and get to go out there and try his nerve. Nothing wrong with seniors being out there but I think I sort of leaned to giving the matches to my underclassmen if I had no choice but most times we could match up pretty good and give them all a go. I don't think there is any bad thing about letting a senior wrestle there, if not there, where?

I like fan54's response. Much merit to that line of thinking. There is so much more to this than just the program and I think he or she said it very well.

Let them wrestle. We need to promote the sport as much as we can. Allowing a senior to wrestle JV might be one of the best things you can do for the future of your program. Hopefully, that senior will enjoy wrestling so much that he persuades underclassmen to take up the sport. That JV senior might just prove to be the best ambassador your program has ever had. By all means don't look at as wasting your time with someone who will never fit into your lineup. Instead, look at it as something we all love to do, and that is to teach the sport of wrestling.

Definitely, let your seniors wrestle JV. Just because they aren't varsity doesn't mean they should be given an unfair shake. Most of those kids have been with the program throughout high school and deserve to get a lot of matches in.

Last year in Manhattan there was a wrestler who was stuck behind state placers in all the weight classes around him. He was still a good wrestler, (in fact, he was a previous state qualifier), but he just got an unfair shake. At the end of the year, his presence in the mat room made everyone better, he mentored a lot of the other JV kids, and we voted him a team captain. If he wasn't allowed to wrestle JV matches, he might have quit, seeing as how he had no incentive to wrestle.

I think that if there is an open spot on the team and the senior can make weight then let him wrestle varsit, but if he is in another weight with a kid that can beat him in a ranking match then let him wrestle jv. There is no harm in that. The best kids should wrestle varsity, and the ones who can't beat them off of varsity should wrestle jv.

I have an alternative idea. When I was a sr. I wrestled jv behind Richard Frakes, a 3 time state champion. I only wrestled in one varsity tournament my sr. year, and was named the tournaments outstanding wrestler. It was entirely possible that the top two wrestlers in the state at 126# were on the same team that year. Looking back, I wish some effort had been made to get me into some more varsity tournaments.

If there are jv wrestlers of that ability, why not let them wrestle in varsity tournaments unattached, or let an assistant coach take them to an alternative tournament. I know that the same situation exists in Abilene this year with a jv wrestler behind Kreigbaum at 119.

I also have the opinion that the regional tournament should be open to all wrestlers, but if the school places more than one wrestler at each weight, they would have to announce in advance which wrestler would earn team points. We would have to hope that coaches only entered competitors who had a realistic chance of placing.

Coaches,

Tell me this, my senior was a state qualifier last year and can not make the team this year. He has wrestled some j.v. and I have never had a problem with this. I agree that the kids should be able to wrestle. Some tournaments don't allow this. There are some clearly stated freshman/sophomore tournaments and that is fine, but he was not allowed to wrestle last weekend at a J.V. tourney because he was a senior. What schools do not allow other teams to enter seniors on J.V. Again, what is their rationale?

I agree with Marty. I wrestled behind a state champion and placer for three seasons. When he was injured of if coach got me in varsity tourneys I beat some state placers. I always have thought that JV kids should get a chance to qualify for state.

I think that it's a good thing to have Sr. on J.V. sometimes. I know, as a freshman being on J.V. was a whole new world to me. Without the help of some of the Sr. on the team I don't think that our J.V. team would have been as good as we were. I know many kids that are 15 that can beat an 18 year old. So I say let at it.

must schools that i know of allow their seniors wrestle J.V.

on the other hand- i know of some schools that don't allow underclassmen to take senior's spots on varsity even if they are better.

There should be no restrictions on JV. If the wrestler is not varsity, and if the match is not specifically designated Frosh/Soph, then there is nothing to be gained by excluding Seniors.

My son is Frosh at Manhattan and he's wrestled a senior at least twice. Got beat both times, but it MADE HIM A BETTER WRESTLER.

Back in the "dark ages" when I coached wrestling, if we had a Sr. on JV they wrestled. I tried to find varsity tourneys that would let our JV team compete. Several times we had really good wrestlers that had to wrestle JV as there was not a place in the lineup where they could break in.

It is sad when you know that your JV kid can beat state qualifiers and some cases state placers and can't win a spot on your team's varsity.

It happens a lot on strong wrestling teams and that is what makes the team strong. Not many teams are strong without a strong JV lineup.

Mike Streit