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.