I can name a few. Arveson and Irvine come to mind right now on the team as both finished top 4 at Basehor Linwood. I am willing to bet the guys that finish 5th or 6th at 140 Chapman regional would beat most of the competition at the Ark City regional at that same weight.

I don't know where to even begin. How many of those NW teams have you actually seen wrestle this year?

i am going to throw the Mid-Continent league into the mix. I know they aren't the best but they are pretty good. if i remember correctly the MCL put more kids in the finals at hays than the NWKL. Yea i know the NWKL was missing all those "pushovers" from colby and goodland.(the "pushovers" that will rip your head from your neck and gladly hand it back to you after the match.)

What is the middle? Physical or a landmark?

That technically puts Western Kansas at a disadvantage. There are far more schools in the eastern division as you stated. Just my observation.

The least you could do is spell the poor kids names right.

acbulldog,
Before you start saying those great ppl. out west are hicks you need to go back and pass an english class. Very typical. You run out of substance so you throw out stereotypes. If you ever went to college you would know this is the sign of the truly ignorant.
About Colby and Norton being good and the rest just avg. I am LOL. St. Francis, Goodland, Oberlin, Garden City, Scott City, Hoxie and Oakley to name a few. Maybe not all great teams but I do not think I am stretching it to call them all "good".

Back to the original reason of this post about the toughest league. I just did a little research and the NWKL has 6 of 8 teams ranked in the top 10. That is the only league I looked up but I would be interested in knowiing of any other leagues that have this high of a percentage of ranked teams.

As the original post states, if you looked at number of ranked teams, AV/CTL would be tops.
Ranked teams that I know of off the top of my head would be; Goddard, Derby, Hutch, Maize, VC, AC, Augusta and Andale. What would be impressive would be if they were all in the same division or if the had a "super" league tournament.

NCKL only has 6 teams in an all 4a league. 3 of them are ranked in the Top 10. I also know since 1995 NCKL has won 6 state championships in the 4a team race. I don't know how other "mixed division leagues" stack up with NWKL, but NCKL is probably one of the premiere one division leagues in wrestling.

As was posted before, the AV/CTL league will always have the most ranked wrestlers and the most ranked teams due mainly to the size of the league. There are 24 schools in the league so there are bound to be some that are ranked in the state of Kansas. The NCKL has 3 of the 6 giving it a 50% rate of ranked schools. The NWKL has 8 teams with 6 being in the top 10 so it has a 60% rate. I am interested in knowing what the AV/CTL rate would be. HOWEVER.....
We could argue all day whether one league is tougher than another based on all different criteria. The bottom line is that there are tough wrestlers everywhere. I was just amazed at acbulldog statement that there was no competition in western Kansas.
One last note, I lived in Western Kansas for over 25 years and I have never met a goat farmer. I have met some very nice people with high educational backgrounds but never a goat farmer.

Very well said mom4. However 6 out of 8 teams would be 75%. As I said on my very first post on this thread this is a question that could be debated forever and never decided. It has been fun learning about some leagues that I must admit I do not follow real closely. Thanks to all for the info. It has also been fun to see acbulldog show us his brainpower (or lack of).

I still like big verse small school.

....i take offense to being called a "billy"; you pudding pop!...thats easy to say when you only have 8 man brackets at regionals, and the top 4 qualify for state! no wonder you have so many state placers! try having 16 and 32 man brackets at regionals then speak. there are 235 321-a schools in the state, vs. 32 6a, 32 5a, and 64 4a. St. Francis has only 89 students and Oakley, Oberlin and Hoxie dont have much more than that, i would stack them against your 1000+ enrollment schools in a duel any day of the week. be awfuly embarassing to get beat by small school. St. Francis won the senior prarie classic last year, and there were 5a and 6a a schools at that tourney, and a 2a school won it. you would be hard pressed to hang with us on the mat and you sure couldnt survive a week out on the family farm building fixing fence, working cattle, and throwing hay bails! you pudding pop!

What does the "billy" mean? As in a prairiebilly?

Sorry acbulldog but you are showing your lack of knowledge once again. Most of the schools in Western Kansas have a heritage with wrestling. They have more than enough kids to go out for wrestling in their schools. I see more Eastern Kansas schools who can't fill their rosters than back west.

Not sure which is the best league/conference, but it appears that acbulldog has been tech falled on this thread.

yeah only he's too stupid to realize it. He really is giving the people of Ark City a bad name. All of this name-calling sounds like a something you would hear on a grade school playground.

Where I come from six divided by eight is 75 percent.

Be careful when calling someone else stupid.

Keep posting acbulldog. Your grammar is improving. A.C. no doubt has a great program, however they have you as a fan. This is giving the whole team and town a bad name. Just keep posting as myself and many others on here are enjoying you show off your "brains".