Dan:

I am sure you are right that the continued folkstyle wrestling was helpful to the Kansas wrestlers at the Brute nationals. It was probably also helpful in the sense that it kept our wrestlers involved and more likely to participate in the tournament whereas maybe in a few of the other States their high school wrestlers either moved on to other Spring sports like Ned suggested or maybe to full time preparation for Freestyle/greco like the KWCA was suggesting a couple of years ago to Mike. That does not seem like a productive rule about not letting high school wrestling coaches involved to Flag Day and it really does not seem to serve any purpose to me. What is the reason for the restriction?

I don't know what would be better for the high schoolers after their season completes. Is it better for them to go into full time freestyle/greco practice and preparation or to extend their current folkstyle season like most do now. Maybe a combination would be best. I think Kevin Klemm use to have them practice both until Kids State was done. I wish Kevin could see this discussion and weigh in with his thoughts on it. My guess is that some could use more folkstyle especially the freshman and JV wrestlers and possibly varsity wrestlers who are not going to wrestle in college. For those with college potential it might be better to go either full time into freestyle/greco or at least a combination. We do need more participating in the freestyle season. My son tried freestyle at one meet last year and he was outmatched in size and age due to the lack of competitors.

Ned I agree that this is a great conversation about the direction of Kansas wrestling. I think we are very lucky that you are our State competition director and I am excited about our future direction. I think it is tremendous that you are encouraging outside the box thinking on making wrestling thrive in Kansas. I think our State tournament has made some great strides in the last couple of years, but there is always the potential to improve things and we should be open to change that could possibly contribute to the growth of our sport in Kansas. Keep up the good work.

Ned do you see any possibility of a 3 day State tournament Friday thru Sunday to help us include another age group 6&U and maybe have bigger mats for most if not all of the age groups? Are would the cost/benefit of an extra day at the Expocentre be prohibitive?

Edited: With a 3 day tournament, I am not thinking you would have all age groups wrestling all three days but that maybe you could have one age group like 16&U wrestle out fully on one day like Smokeycabin suggested. If you did something like this I think 16&U would be a natural for Friday. It might cause some of them to miss the parade on Saturday but I think for most of them by that age it would not be that big of a deal to miss the parade and they could still participate in it if they wanted to.