An interesting story from the Associated Press will be hitting the papers today or tomorrow concerning the Kansas Senate's 87-32 vote today to provide incentives to small, struggling school districts to consolidate with neighboring districts. I was wondering what people thought this might mean to wrestling in the state.

Iowa made a similar move in the mid-1980s and at first it appeared to be a death-knell for many smaller programs that were gobbled up by bigger programs. But by the mid-1990s, you saw wrestling reach communities it had never reached before.

Communities that had been "basketball-only" in the past now had wrestling (due to the consolidation with schools that already had it). it took a few years, but while it dropped the number of seperate district that had wrestling, it actually expanded the number of communities in which the sport got a foothold.

Agree. Will be interesting to see how this effects established teams/leagues if they have to consolidate. Could even create some serious discussions on class/A level restructuring. For example, Rossville and St Mary's combine to become 4A, which school (if any) moves up/down to 5A/3A? Does KSHSAA still maintain the standard 32, 32, 64, et al for A level structuring?

The standard arguments about post regular season tournament scheduling for wrestling may be moot as any combination of schools will restructure every sport. Ought to be fun to watch.

Tim

You're right Tim, this will make for some interesting scenerios. Without speculating on specific districts and combinations, my guess is that there could be a lot of situations in which two traditionally strong programs (as in St. Marys and Rossville) could be combined and become a bigger, larger program.
As for the classifications, who knows? If total program numbers drops, you might see a situation in which we could go to three classes (which -- as you know -- would be fine with me). It will be interesting, but in the long run, I think it could make wrestling in the state better as a whole.