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THIS^

This is the letter that I just sent to the BOC and TSSAA exec. You are welcome to use it. TSSAA Executives and BOC, We are contacting you concerning the upcoming Wrestling State Tournament 16 man bracket, 3-day format. Lets preface this by saying we are sure that there is never an easy answer to any of the decisions you face, however we feel strongly that we can do better by our children in this area. By stretching the 16 man bracket to three days, the impact it will have on wrestlers' health and education as well as the enormous financial burden the parents and programs will shoulder will be counter productive at the very least. Asking student athletes to miss two or three days of school, dual enrollment college classes and manage weight over the course of three days with very few opportunities to wrestle is not the best choice for them. Spreading out four matches over 3 days when it was all done in one day in the past year is not a positive change. In addition to this the transportation and room and board over that three day period is not something most programs can shoulder. These issues are aside from the time off and financial responsibilities that parents who would like to attend and support their children will have to consider. Please consider changes to the schedule while we still have time.

Beware. Rant ahead. A few things. The board of control. Most of the members have no skin in the game for wrestling. While several of them are from schools that technically have wrestling programs, Bradley and Warren County are really the only schools who are invested in wrestling year in and year out. (no offense to Hamblen or CR or those who are trying) Morristown-Hamblen High School West Memphis Central High School Evangelical Christian School Donelson Christian Academy Webb School of Knoxville Cane Ridge High School Milan High School Bradley Central High School Warren Co. Schools (Director) Loretto High School Trinity Christian Academy Fulton High School Who are the "wrestling schools" in that list? So when Mark Reeves or anyone else makes a suggestion regarding wrestling, they are almost always going to go a long with what his proposals are. They dont know any better. "A sixteen man bracket over three days? Sure, sounds good to us." Obviously, the board of control does not understand the sport of wrestling. The 16 man bracket for AA is a load of crap too. It does not hurt to have a 32 man bracket for the large schools. For you purists out there who cry about only the best making it to state, the best kids are going to be there regardless. Why shut out a bunch of kids who are on the fringe of being the best? It doesnt hurt the tournament for them to be there and get put out on the first day. Now, a lot of schools will no longer have a state qualifier. "Oh tell them to work harder." No. That doesn't cut it. If you really care about wrestling, you would want to give every kid the chance to learn and appreciate what wrestling offers... regardless if they have a mediocre coach, or are in a small town, or have administration that isnt supportive. More kids need to "make it to state". A couple of years ago, at the state tournament, there were a lot of schools who only had one kid, Teams like Kingsbury, South Doyle, Karns, Hillsboro. When is the next time you are gonna see one of those kids at state? Its gonna be a cold day in heck..... I'm sure that will be good for recruiting wrestlers at those schools. "Our last state qualifier was 5 years ago." "Yeah Coach, no thanks." And from another angle, there are a lot more kids in AA schools than A schools, but the same number make it to state? According to the TSSAA website, AA has 126,773 students. Single A has only 60,735. Double the numbers, but the same size bracket for the state tournament? Was someone worried that the A schools were going to be mad? Girls - - I want the girls, but I have been told that the boy's bracket might have been cut to stay in line with what is offered for girls. I would think that if the girls had the numbers that the boys had, it would make sense to have a 32 man bracket for them as well. Sub-State - No reason for it. I have yet to hear what was broken about our old system. Bottom line, as I have said many times, the more kids wrestling in the championship event, the better off wrestling will be in Tennessee. We need to see more schools sending their teams to the state tournament with police escorts. We need to see more billboards congratulating wrestlers making it to state. We need to see more kids going back home and telling their friends about how they finally made it to state. We need more mons and dads posting their kids picture on Facebook. We dont need less of any of those things.

The obvious choice for this job. The train will keep on rolling…

just sent this to every BOC member

Congratulations "Defensive Master Mind" Head Coach Brian Nix! Defensive Coordinator at Alcoa 2004-2021. Strength and Conditioning Coordinator at Alcoa 2004-2021. 23 Shutouts in last 42 Games. 15 State Championships in the Last 18 Seasons. The Alcoa Community and Fans look forward to the Future under your Leadership!

Congrats.. Tyner's win over Red Bank tonight was 50-43. Good non-district win at this time of the year!!

Congrats to Brian Nix. Very well deserved. Coach Rankin has left the program in great shape. It’s time to take it to another level. Very excited about our youth programs and all the talent in the pipeline. Alcoa football is definitely headed in the right direction.

Prior to the 1997-98 Tennessee State Championships (first year for the public/private split) Cleveland won two traditional state championships and Bradley Central failed to win the individual state championship. I stand by the comment that all individual sports should only recognize one true state champion. With Tennessee only having a population base of 7 million people the population base is not large enough to justify crowning three state champions per weight classification. It’s just as ludicrous as football crowning nine state champions.

Still say th at a 3 day tourney for a 16 man bracket is absolutely the dumbest decision I have seen made in the time I have been involved in this sport. It’s either Incompetence or greed. Either way it’s a very dumb decision. oh and good job on the predictions but I am sure a lot of the weights will change.

We are going to give it all we got and we will be rooting for South Side as well. Going to be some wars.

This is a pretty good breakdown. Since DB has so many seniors returning (if I remember correctly), I think your only losses will be Greeneville and Science Hill. Of course as we all know, these are teenage boys and they have to all show up with their heads screwed on right, but sometimes that doesn't happen and we all know the result.

#1 - SH Coach got a Technical walking off the court at halftime.... yelling at the officials. For what? Because DB hit 8-12 3's. #2 - DB had 4 in dbl figures... pretty sure just 1 for SH #3 - DB is 5-0 in the Powder Blue Tigers uniforms #4 - Jack Browder wasn't hard to stop, he was unstoppable...18 points, 19 rebounds. He is playing in Beast Mode now. Tonight at the Dome - 6PM Freshman Big 5 Championship game vs SH 7:30 JV Big 5 Championship game vs SH Tuesday night at the Dome - Senior Night - vs David Crockett.

I thought Coach Blade did a good job building depth.He didnt play a lot of guys both ways and that is why Im excited about Coach Cummings.I just wish it was close to kickoff already.Are teams allowed to have a spring scrimmage vs other teams.I remember Tees last yr we scrimmaged Seymour at UT but I dont remember us doing it since then.

ReedM@hcboe.net,mcculloughgf@scsk12.org,bbrady@ecseagles.com,dgoodwin@dcawildcats.org,david_meske@webbschool.org,michel.sanchez@mnps.org,scottg@milanssd.org,pspangler@bradleyschools.org,btrue12@hotmail.com,swallowsg@warrenschools.com,dexter.williams@mytcalions.com,jody.wright@knoxschools.org

Congrats to Signal Mountain boys! You all achieved what you were striving for all year! Wrestling is the toughest sport in the world and you only truly know that unless you have experienced it and it was great to see them do it with class. I don’t say this because I am a Signal Mountain fan. I actually live in Fairview. I would just like to point out that some of the wrestlers from PF did flip the finger to Foreman and came up to our boys after and shook their hands and said “hey we are not all like that and great match!” Good for you boys and the parents that raised you!!! For those of you that don’t know it was a heated match before it started because of last years infamous slam. Oh and by the way the young man that got slammed last year that became a state place winner can no longer wrestle because he’s had to many concussions after he got slammed by a Greenville kid at individual states when he was winning and Atlas the TN phenom (lol) stood there in his sweatpants while he was getting pulled off on a stretcher and said he was faking it. Hey Atlas how about you gain some weight and I’ll lose some weight and we can wrestle at the Independence tournament on the grid iron. Would love to embarrass you like that freshman did your senior year. Congrats to Greenville on a great season also. You are all great wrestlers and push us to raise the bar. PF still had another kid slam someone this year in the consolation final match at 182. It is apparent that they still haven’t learned their lesson. It is also apparent that TSSAA needs to set some guidelines about warmups. There were no PF kids on the mat before the match so our boys went to warm up and some of the PF boys wandered out there obviously just to be disrespectful and get in their way. The PF boys weren’t even trying to warm up just standing there. It was quite obvious they were doing it to be knucklehead kids ( which happens with all of our kids) This should have been stopped by Coach Foreman and it is a good thing one of the FV coaches stepped in or it was gonna get ugly real quick. One of the PF supposed senior leaders was not very receptive when asked to leave the mat. When he refused I was reminded of his daddy coming to his rescue during the state finals last year. Congratulations to Signal mountain on a heck of a tournament and great coaching strategy!

The folks that have made that decision to turn a 16 man bracket into a 3 day tourney should be fired for incompetence. Have they even considered the repercussions that this is gonna cause the kids, school and the parents? Will cost each family who wants to watch their kid compete about 1k as well. The cost for the school alone is gonna be astronomical, for those who are traveling from a long ways away they will have to spend 3 nights in a hotel at a min and maybe 4. That will cost most schools 5-6k. Add in the cost of a bus driver who gets paid while they sit, the money it takes to feed the kids and this one tourney will exceed most schools entire wrestling budget. let’s not even talk about the kids having to miss 3 days of school. What’s the impact on grades with that much time away? The kids who make it to the finals will wrestle 2 matches Thursday, one on Friday and one on Saturday. So in a 72 hour time kids will weigh in 3 times and wrestle for a maximum of 24 mins. Whoever made this decision obviously hasn’t ever had to mange a tight budget to keep a program alive. This is absolutely a terrible decision.

Oak Ridge has a changing of the guard going on, Joe Gaddis has retired, but he left a really good group of players that are coming back. A lot of the losses last season were one score losses except for Powell and Greeneville, which had loaded teams. The new Coach, Scott Cummings, who came over from Halls, but is better known for his success at Knox West, winning a State Championship in 2015 and making West a relevant program. Should be a pretty good game up at J, Fred next season, looking forward to it,

When I played 85-89 (came out in 8th grade).All our coaches were teachers.If I remember correctly it was that way till about 2013.When Ryan came in 15 only one teacher from the old staff stayed.He used 1 teacher and the others were youth league coaches that Ridge/Hicks wouldnt use because they said "High school ball isnt youth league"....Well those youth league coaches helped Ryan to 4 Title appearances in 5 years.If Ryan's crew would have been coaching in 14 we would have had another Silver ball.Those unpaid old Youth league coaches were all X Cherokees and coached like it!That's why I personally like Old Players as coaches in small town ball.You all us,Cloudland,Hampton,TC all have proven it works

The Gold Ball Variety Show. Not bad for a crap year.

Hiring their current DC according to espn reporter Adam Schefter. They bring back a lot of talent for next year

Cracks me up that he hasn’t been named HC.