Wow. That is a lot of matches! Thanks Chief!

No competition restriction I'm taking it, then again Dustin Dooley would have been right at the 50 win plateau had a tournament not been snowed out that Concordia went to, but still...62 is a lot.

Hello Kansas! I feel a little sullen right now. Our seniors gave a good, solid, accounting of themselves. Unfortunately in this tournament an outstanding effort is required! We only have 1 wrestler still alive and he has not yet reached All-American status. That is Kyle Allen who has to win in the morning to insure his goal.

We had a few that were close but as the adage goes ... close doesn't count for much. Paulie Hansen, Bryant Perry, Matt Migchelbrink; all made it along way into this championship. As did Brett Bahe, Dustin Dooley, Jamie Hosfelt, and Brady Esterl. Also going deep in the tourney was Jordan Gienger, Jason Pyle, Jared Brown, Jud Schroeder, Ben Evans, Michael Malay, and Jed Mamie.

I'm sure the individual results will be posted later.

I know that I am a die-hard. I have often opined that the level of Kansas wrestling falls a bit beneath several of the elite states. The rules within KSHSAA hamstring us a bit but so do our expectations. I find it a bit cavalier though to expect a different outcome when we do the same things.

With that said, nothing should take away from the efforts of these fine young men. They are a pleasure to be around and for the most part, make Kansas proud!

... we did the math a couple of months ago. A wrestler can have a maximum of 72 matches and be within the KSHSAA rules.

I did some fun math in terms of mileage and we can send teams to Minneapolis,MN and Indianapolis, IN for tournaments and such to see more various competition, however it is odd that we can't to Chicago or Fargo during the season because of the awkward mileage.

Well ... it's over! In spite of a grand effort, Kyle Allen, fell short in his bid to gain All-American status.

With 0.20 seconds left in the match, the score was tied. A double-stall warning had been given. Kyle was in deep on his patented shot but his New Jersey opponent countered and scrambled to score the winning takedown.

Kansas finishes this NHSCA wrestling tourney without an All-American. Clearly we did not live up to our primary goal but these young men are far from being failures! They battled hard and represented Kansas in an outstanding fashion.

As a team, Kansas will fare no better that 22nd out of the 47 states competing. We will trail Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Colorado.

Here is a breakdown of the top 5 states. These totals were compiled by another and were taken from themat.com


State: Freshman, Soph, Junior, Senior, Totals.

1. NY:..203.5....259.5..195.5...128.5....787

2. PA:...171.....185.5...218.....115....689.5

3. OH:...179.....154.5..188.5...149.5...671.5

4. NJ:...149.....176.5...156.....160....641.5

5. CA:....91.....123.5..133.5...197.5...545.5

I would like to believe the term "failures" would not be in the vocabulary of a Kansas team representative.


If Kansas finishes in 22nd place I think it is great for team Kansas to finish higher than 25 other teams!

Generally, I believe it is best to report the results without the commentary and allow the reader to draw their own conclusion(s) based on the facts reported.

Congratulations to Team Kansas on a GREAT showing!

Are the requirements for the frosh, soph, and jr division the same as the sr division? (Place top 2 in your state)

Perhaps, I have a misconception. Many people have contacted me and they appreciate my reports and the candor of them. Many, look forward to the "commentary" in my reports.

The facts are:

we finished 22nd out of 47 teams
we brought 31 wrestlers
we have no All-Americans

My opinion is that if you were to ask those 31 young men, none would say we had a great performance. However, once again, I say that these are great young men and their performance on the mat has no bearing at all on that opinion.

Richard,

I think most all of us know the love that Randy has for Kansas wrestling. The commentary that he gives is encouraging as well as candid. If you were to interview each of the Kansas wrestlers that were there, you would also get a real glimpse of their true feelings. A biased, neutered story would be disingenuous.

Thanks for the great updates Randy! Kansas wrestling appreciates the truth.

- Eric Johnson

Well said Chief. Randy i enjoy and appreciate your updates AND commentary. And, remember, you can't please all the people all the time and some people just can never be pleased by anyone at any time. How sad. . .

Randy you just can't win! I thought you were just being the true satirist that you really are! You mean to tell me that you would stoop so low to actually ridicule the performance of these young men? My only compliant is the fact you have never spoken of your adventures while away! I want details of you and Tony frolicking on the beach! I've got a picture in my mind!

You know the class of 2007 was kind of a bit of the unknown. I think realistically we were hoping for at least 2-3 All Americans but it just didn't pan out.

I will say to this class though that you have made your mark! I have received calls from 3 different coaches in the last 18 hours about "them dam tough kids" Believe me even the guys that went 0-2 had some very interested coaches (NO FOOLING!!!) I know a lot of guys are still hoping to wrestle in college, and some may be hanging it up for good, but if any of the seniors (not just ones that were at nationals) wish to wrestle in college, all they have to do is contact me and I'll help them free of charge.

Congrats on great careers, and hope to see you all hitting the mats at the next level.

I know that on issues like this I really need to keep my mouth shut but I wonder if I have some kind of disorder that prevents me, I think some often call it foot in mouth disease, but here goes.

Randy, I for one appreciated the commentary and I always appreciate your continued efforts at supporting our Kansas kids by the things you do. Frankly I would love to have you along at Brute bringing those same reports back home for the folks that can’t be there.

Now on the next point I can really get myself into trouble. I used to present all over the country on several concepts, one being the perspective of failure. There is an old adage, which I agree with, effort does not equate failure. On the other hand though, we sometimes approach life as if there is no such thing as failure, or that failure is always a bad thing. On this point, I think I have changed my own position from the past. I firmly believe that when seeing failure as something that is a fact of life, we can motivate, challenge, and inspire ourselves to be better. Maybe I am wrong, but that is how I saw you using the term.

I would ask, what is our goal for Kansas Wrestlers? Is it merely to compete, or merely to make effort, or is it to excel. If our goal is to excel, to appropriately offer the best for our children, I for one would have to say, that to come home with ZERO All-Americans on a senior level is certainly not success. It would be in my opinion, in fact, failure.

Now don’t get me wrong here, failure or lack of success is something we should never strive for, instead we should strive to be the best. Understanding what obstacles make it difficult to succeed may not be the fault of the kids, (then again it may) but it may depend upon other factors out of our kids control. To settle for Zero All-Americans from our seniors at this level is something we should not be content with. When we become content with losing then we are not more than, well losers.

To the wrestlers who want to strive to be the best, it requires a great deal of work to get to that point, work that may require more than what has been given in the past. Those wrestlers need to realize there is some kid in Pennsylvania, New York, Oklahoma, Missouri or any other number of states that is working hard to be the best. We have to work just as hard, if not in fact harder than some of those wrestlers. It isn’t just the wrestlers though; it is the systems in place that may prevent our wrestlers from excelling at the highest level, it could even be one that settles for, and accepts the fact that we have no Senior All-Americans.

Yes failure is not the best of things, it is a term we may not like, but I would be willing to bet that if using failure to motivate, to get better, failure may not be such a bad thing. There is an old adage that says, only from losing do we truly learn to appreciate winning. I see this in some ways as the same thing. Bottom line, Kansas needs state pride, we need to be motivated in order to be better, to excel, to be the best. Until we have that, until we get somewhat embarrassed by the fact that we may not have had a good showing, we will likely never get better. Now understand I’m not pointing fingers at the kids, I realize that we may need to do better as a state in order to provide the best to our wrestlers, not just USA wrestling but our state High School organizations.

Just my two cents, we have to do better, better in a lot of ways, not just the kids, but those providing the programs for the kids. I also think the majority of those going will tell you they had higher expectations, they know we are proud of them, but it is time we truly offer the best opportunities possible from all around. We need to let them know, we will do what we need to do to insure they are not only great students, but great wrestlers that can compete with, and beat, anyone.

Tough tournament, many of the wrestlers from NY, Penn, NJ, Ohio, and California travel to 2-3 national caliber tournaments per year and are used to big events like this one. This was the first year many of the studs from PA participated because in years past the Dapper Dan classic was also on the same date. IMO team Kansas did a good job against the comp, hopefully some of the better teams in Kansas will start traveling more to find tougher competition. You don't have to go far, the Missouri side of KC has some tough teams and tournys that would challenge our wrestlers.

Thanks guys! Yes, I do love Kansas wrestling! If I am ever give anything short of an honest and mostly positive accounting of our teams actions, I do want to be told about it.

I vow to stay positive (as my moniker suggests) but I will not be dishonest with any of you. I guess it's kind of a tough love thing! Anyway, enough of that!

This afternoon the members of Team Kansas had a unique opportunity. They got to attend a recruitment fair put on by Collegiate wrestling programs. It was great to see the guys having conversation with not only Colby, Neosho, Pratt, and Labette but also Oklahoma University, Hofstra, The Citadel, VMI, Ohio, Missouri Valley, Northern Iowa Area CC, and perhaps 40 other schools!

The placement matches start in about 1/2 an hour ... so I need to scoot!

TTFN

p.s. Dear Red, I have not forgotten you and will respond to your concerns ... as soon as the court system releases their gag order!

Has it ever happened before that KS had no HS senior all-americans?

I just got back to the hotel from the finals of the tourney! WOW ... I saw some great matches! A couple of number 1 ranked in the Nation against the number 2. All but a few were ranked in the top 10 by W.I.N. magazine.

I witnessed a couple of tech falls, one pin, two overtime matches and the rest some real close barn-burners! I saw Deron Winn from Missouri win the National Championship!

Overall, a great experience! The venue was tough to see the matches in, given their bleacher setup. But no one runs a tournament as well as USAW-Kansas.

We have a team meeting in an hour and then we will probably debrief for a while! We will be taking three separate flights home tomorrow and will be good to get back to Kansas!

More later ...