I think a lot of our better athletes in Kansas do not even come out for wrestling. I see it in football and now I am seeing it in rugby. Most of these athletes are heavier athletes but I have also seen some real good ligher athletes in cross country, track and basketball and many of these lighter kids would be very good wrestlers too.

We really do not attract enough of the heavier football athletes. I started the topic about whether we need more weight classes for the heavier wrestlers (those wrestlers over 160)in reaction to comments I saw in the topic about the greatest heavyweight in Kansas history. A couple of posters commented that the quality of our heavyweight class is down this year. I had just noticed at a couple of my son's meets that two senior football players who had signed with Division I schools were attending our meets. These two guys are great athletes and would have been great heavyweight wrestlers. I really feel that they would have had my sophomore son on the JV for another year if they had been out for wrestling. The thing is our football team is loaded with good athletes from 160 up who could be very good wrestlers. I saw a very good sophomore 180 pound linebacker playing rugby last Saturday on the Aquinas team. This guy is a very physical athletic rugby player and would be a great wrestler. I told him so and I encouraged him to go out next year. He said he might since he did not make the sophomore basketball team this year. I guess he had a decent 3 point shot but it is just a shame he did not start wrestling in grade school because he would have been a terror on the mat.

I believe we can start getting more of these heavier athletes by adding weight classes for the heavier wrestlers. I believe this would help getting football coaches more supportive of having their players wrestle in the winter months. I have advocated in the other topic changing weight classes to have the middle weight class change from 140 to 150 and for the weight classes change at that point to 158, 167, 178, 190, 210, 230 and 285 from our current system of 160, 171, 189, 215 and 285. I am going to petition the national governing body for this. I think Kansas could take a lead though by adding one weight class right now for heavier wrestlers. Texas has done that by adding a 180 pound division. If Kansas were to add one division, I would suggest it drop 189 to 185 and add a 200 pound division. If that was done I think 215 could be bumped up to 225 or 230. Kids are getting taller and heavier. Strength training is being done earlier and methods have improved. I am convinced the 50% median weight is significantly higher today than it was when high school's current wrestling weight classes were established. Eventually high school wrestling needs to recognize this increased size in high school students. Wrestling will be losing more good athletes over 160, if it does not make some changes in these high school weight classes. Kansas should take the lead in making this happen by adding one class for heavier wrestlers now.

I think in our Wyandotte and Johnson County area more kids lighter and heavier would give wrestling a try if we had more middle school wrestling. CYO wrestling would probably be a difficult thing to start in Wyandotte and Johnson County but that would be helpful too in getting more kids introduced to the sport in Kansas.