I cannot rescind good humor! LancerLou is the best female poster (well she is tied with Sharon Henes) on the high school forum so I know she can take a little ribbing! I promise the wrestling tournament would be cheaper!

I am still trying to figure out what Jimmie is talking about??

I may be wrong, but I have been on this forum for awhile and I believe LancerLou is male. What is the truth?

Ms. Jenni

Nope Ms. Jenni, LancerLou is LouAnn, who is in the Lancer Wrestling Hall of Fame. (or at least would be, if there was one).

Dang...you mean I was wrong? I cannot comprehend this.

Ms.Jenni

oh well, what do I know...i am just a mom.

Every couple years, you are wrong about something. I won't tell Ed about that!

We are up to 268 wrestlers for FS State! 300 or bust!

Does anyone know the final numbers for State? It is too bad that the brackets I checked had so few participants. I don't know how you increase participation, but I know this is a very busy time for the high school guys, with prom (yes, I am a MOM) finals and for some, graduation right around the corner. Did someone say state used to be in June and it was moved up this year? What was the reasoning?

The numbers were better than last year, but still quite a ways behind Missouri. Missouri State was May 3rd. We were always cramped by not having enough time to assemble the National Dual teams with the tournament in June. The kids series including High School wrestlers keeps us away from Freestyle for an entire month. The other issue is that Missouri and many other states have their State tournament as pre-requisite for their Dual teams. Until Kansas bases our dual teams solely on the FS/GR State finish, we won't see the numbers increase too much.

Would have liked to see the Baker/Long rematch though!


Final numbers:

305 total

Bantam - 18
Midget - 32
Novice - 54
Schoolboy - 46
Cadet - 87
Junior - 68

That would have been fun! I suspect we will have to wait for college to see that rematch.

We have never been to the state freestyle meet before this year but why do they have freestyle and greco run on the same day? Why can't the freestyle only wrestlers weigh in later on Saturday in the current format of freestyle and greco on the same day? My son only wrestled freestyle and he had to weigh-in between 7 and 8, but he did not wrestle his first match until 4:15 PM. My son told me there were some freestyle wrestlers who did not wrestle their first match until even later than that. We stayed in a hotel Friday night, but we could have easily have driven up on Saturday morning with a weigh-in time that was a little closer to the actual wrestling time as most tournaments are. I think this could give a little more incentive for some people to participate in the tournament. With food and gasoline prices getting so high, I think it would be a good thing to give more people the option to drive there Saturday morning and avoid that hotel expense.

Vince,

There was some talk this hear in trying to fix that problem but it was talked about to close to the state tournament to make any changes for this year. I think you will see effort made next year to make weigh-ins more customer friendly!!

I beleive the rising prices will make us all look in to changes for all styles in the coming years.

Ned

Not soley on the state tournament, but each champion in each weight class at the Cadet level gets an automatic berth to the cadet team duals. I have done it that way for the past 4 years and I think that is how Fergola did it before then since it started in 2000.

Coach Peterman
Cadet Director

That sounds great. Thanks, for the reply, Ned.

The state tournament used to be 2 days, then the attendance got so low they moved to one to save cost. The year the attendance was high enough for a 2 day tournament perhaps. Other changes are being discussed as well like remote weigh ins, etc.

24/7

Let's be honest here and really take a look at what we can do to increase freestyle/greco participation:

I know that as a hard core wrestling guy, I'll still go to these tourneys that last from the early morning until late at night, but most people will NOT. It is tough on the kids sitting around all day also. With Trackwrestling, there is no way that these tourneys should take so long to run. The old paper and pencil way used to run these tourneys and have us out by 4 or 5 in the evening at Junction City. I pulled out at around 8:30 Saturday night, and there was lots of wrestling left to do, so I don't know what the official finish time was.

Most weekly FS Greco tourneys, which of course only had 200 kids or so, would be over by mid afternoon. Now we have the Manhattan tourney not even starting Greco til 6 at night.

Is it the people in the bracketing/pairing room that are too slow or need more help? Do they turn down offers of more help? I have heard that is the case. Should we do a few satellite weigh in sites? I don't know what we need to do, but I know that the way it is going now is not the right way. Why not get a couple of rounds of greco out of the way Friday nite if we are going to require friday nite weighins? There was also another gym sitting empty on Saturday as well that could have been utilized, but I don't think that would have helped, because there was times when only ONE mat had a match going on. If we can't keep up with 6 mats, what makes you think we can keep up with even more?

If numbers were up this year, we better darn sure change something and let everyone know what we are going to change, or they are going to go WAY DOWN next year.

Doug

I TOTALLY agree with Doug. Weve been coming to freestyle/greco tournaments for 3 years now. We won't be back unless I hear and believe that something is going to change next year. You can not expect people/kids to spend money on gas,hotel and food only to find out there is only 1 other kid in your kids bracket. We were told that things were slow due to a slow printer. They didn't know that printer was slow prior to the tournament? Was that REALLY the problem? Both my son and his only opponent wrestled four times all day. We finished about 6:30pm. We waited for 1 hour to get the medals. Finally we all just left without brackets or medals. The medal was not that important but they just kept saying "just give us 1 more minute" and we should have them. We love wrestling and would never leave right in the middle of the tournament but the day was ridiculously long and I really don't understand why??? There need to be some serious changes made. It is my understanding that these tournaments have this reputation for being VERY LONG. Maybe this is a reason for low attendance. I know of one family tha opted not to attend because of this. That's sad. Please for the sake of this sport, make changes!!!

I agree with Chief, What is better than basing the national dual teams on the state tournament. This would increase participation and add excitement to the event. The best way to pick a dual team is to have the kids step on the mat and wrestle their way on it. This eliminates someones opinion from the selection process. Come to state the weight you want to wrestle at duals and wrestle your way on the team. In all reality this is the only fair way of picking the team.

Amen, Amen, and again, I say, Amen!

the one thing that I know Oklahoma does and maybe MIssouri, is allow their HS coaches to coach Freestlye and Greco, We brought 5 kids, 4 of whom I could not coach and have not been able to work with at all. If I were able to run some workouts and coach them matside, I really think we could have doubled the number of our contigency. and that being from a tiny town so far west we are closer to Colorado than KS. I saw several High School coaches at Junction this weekend that were relegated (like myself) to sitting in the stands and watching...there is no telling how much we would increase numbers of athletes and opportunities to freestyle/greco if KSHSAA would lighten up.
I think you would see an incredible increase from the smaller more remote areas for sure. Depending on whether or not the HS coach wanted to run spring and summer workouts...but then of course it would be up those individuals to determine how much time they wanted to put in to improve their program...where as now KSHSAA decides how hard I am allowed to work...not very American...and do not get me started on how that particular rule benefits athletes from larger population areas with access to various clubs etc...sorry did not mean to get off on a rant (what can you expect from a junior member to the forum)...seriously if we get into discussions on comparing ourselves to Missouri and Oklahoma...we have got to address letting our state's coaches coach.

Bingo!!!!!!!!