Mr. Disney;
On your first point, yes there is a class for them 215 and 285. That is not much for 70 pounds and a 32.56% jump though, is it? Compare that to the number of classes available to the 119 to 152 athlete where you have 7 classes available instead of two and the weight differential is only 33 pounds and the percentage jump from 119 to 152 is less at 27.73%.
How many football players are there on a typical high school team between 215 and 285? I know there a lot on my son's school team and on most of the schools that I saw them play. Is it really fair that they should only be competing for one or two spots that have a 70 lbs. differential between them?
On your second point yes I would be proposing for it nationally. Why could it not be done? They have adjusted the weights before and have added brackets. We did not always have a 215. Texas has a 180 so you could even just do it in Kansas but I would prefer to see it nationally. One of my goals with this proposal is to see more kids come out for wrestling and grow wrestling in general popularity. If we could do that we might actually start to see some growth in college programs and opportunities for scholarships. As far as comparing if Kansas had to be different without a national change, from my understanding you pretty much need to wrestle freestyle/greco and go to Fargo to be really noticed anyway so the 220 lbs kid would either go down to 215 or up to 285 for Fargo summer wrestling. When you are talking this level though you are in the elite level and I think they will be noticed even if the state weight class is different from the national one. Do you think that say if Romero Cotton was a 180 wrestler in Texas that he would drop off the radar screen for college coaches?
As far as your comments about how a light heavyweight can be competitive with a 285 1bs wrestler. I am willing to concede that to a point, but you do have guys though like Zlatnick out there and a 220 pounder who is of comparable ability is just going to be outmatched in that contest. Who do you like in a match up between a quality 125 wrestler and a quality 152 pound wrestler that would be a comparable difference? I would also probably take an in shape 125 lbs wrestler over an out of shape 152 lbs wrestler but let's not compare an out of shape kid to an in shape kid. Instead let's compare in shape equaling skilled kids against each other but one kid weighs 40 pounds more than the other. Give me a kid of equal abilities and 40 pounds lighter than Zlatnick and I will put my money on Zlatnick all the time.
I understand that we probably do not have enough over 215 quality in shape athletes in wrestling right now. But I also know from watching football teams that they are out there. I want to see us get more of them going from the football field to the wrestling mat at the end of their season.
