YOUTHCOACH16

Some more updates. Soloman 2-0 , Sutherland 3-0 , Renieche 1-0, Tj Hicks 3-0, Knox Fuller 2-0, Austin Stevison 0-1 had a 3 xer his first match. The big guys , Sammy Evans, Mackenzie Martin , Billy Raulston coming up

Awesome job by all these young men ! Cleveland's Higher Calling was also the middle school team Champion

exactly!

Mason will wrestle as he is only a 7th grader and doesnt have to go on the class trip.

Appreciate the vote of confidence Goat but Baylor will be non existent on the leader board in the middle school division. We will only have 1-2 wrestlers compete. The school requires all ms students to play a school sport and the spring season has already started so they have moved on to baseball, track, and lacrosse. We would have 3-4 state champs but the 8th grade class trip is always the same weekend so they are out. From what I have seen it should be Cleveland ( hcwc), Nashville Catholic ( Father Ryan) and the Wave( C Bros) battling for the team title. It will depend on how many each bring. I'm going to predict Cleveland wins. My little guys should make a strong showing and battle for another title though in the other age groups although I'm missing about 3 guaranteed placers/ finalist due to injury or vacations. Should be interesting!

Big man you nailed it on the head!! This was the most physical wrestling I've ever seen. Blake was litterally pile drived in the first match and at home he would have been dq 'd. They didn't even stop it. Blake didn't know where he was for a whole period and gave up 5 Pts. He tried a desperation throw at the end was how it ended up 11-5. Adam nearly had his shoulder ripped out of socket on the reversal that cost him his match. Full 32 man brackets in every weight and I didn't see one controversial call other than them letting potentially dangerous situations go too far. Very physical, very intense wrestling. The refs let the kids decide it . I only saw one coach argue anything and that was Olympic champ Kendall Cross. This tournament is really good and I hope they can work it out so more people can attend.

Well it ended in heartbreak for both Adam and Blake. Both were one match away and wrestling really well. I didn't get to see all of Adams match as he and Blake were up at the same time but I think it was 5-2, he got reversed and caught for 3 back points . Blake was up 5-1 with 30 seconds against a thrower. The kid double under hooked him and Blake threw him but somehow they got in a weird scramble and he came up with a deep half and pinned him. Very heartbreaking. The tournament is phenomenol !! I hope all the d2 kids get to go next year. Every aspect of the tournament is top notch! We were wild cards and just went into whatever slot was available if any. Adam didn't even have a spot until late last night when someone didn't show up.

This is all fun speculation but I say let's put a d1 and a d2 team together and wrestle in the Dixie Duals. It would be close with a lot of great match ups. If someone can get the atleast 10 of the d1s to comit I'll get the d2s

Love both of those kids but I can promise you it would be close . Parker wrestled Raulston in his first match of the year after 3 days of practice due to football.

Popp lost to two top kids in the country. Nobody in the south I can assure you

Ok, I normally wouldn't talk about my own kid but I'm going to have to since you are so misinformed. Sutherland gave Luke Hamilton his only loss of the season and it wasn't even close. He beat him 13-7 in the McCallie semis and by the way he was wrestling with a severely injured shoulder and hadn't even practiced in about a month. He also beat both Kliingsmith and Hamilton 13-0 and 13-1 in the pre-season tournament in 1 minute periods. He wrestled up and pinned Cotton in 30 seconds as well. Popp would not only win , he would pin everyone as fast as he wanted to. Murphy destroys Navarro, Connell pinned Rusdo twice and beat Ezra twice. If I wasn't driving I would look up some more facts for you. At 145 Davis and Hamilton wrestled twice and it was. 8-7 and 14-12. Anybody that was at the Brentwood tournament will say Davis should have had the pin. Every kid in d 2 113 would place in d1.

Lol

Yes, that is something we are going to look into. I'll talk to you about it after the state. I couldn't believe how big River has gotten!!

Yes, that is something we are going to look into. I'll talk to you about it after the state. I couldn't believe how big River has gotten!!

Shoot me an email at msutherland16@aol. There are a lot of clubs in the area that could use some help

This coming from the man who has changed teams more times than I have changed socks. Lol

Maybe we can guilt trip them into an exhibition at the Cow Palace this weekend. Lol

When was this? I love both these kids and have been fortunate enough to have them on several state teams over the years but I think you are discrediting Parker a tad bit here. They are both studs in their own right. The only official match I remember them wrestling was when Chad was in 8th grade and Ryan was in the 7th at the McCallie Tornado duals and Ryan won. About a month later we were at the Dixie Duals and Chad hadn't had very many tough matches so I had them wrestle an exhibition and Chad won that one. I don't remember all the details but I do remember Parker had been wrestling all day and I made him wrestle an exhibition because they both needed it. I also had them in the practice room together before we went to Iowa for the national duals and it was a war when they wrestled. Neither one dominated the other from what I remember. This was obviously several years ago and Chad has continued to get better and has wrestled and done well in some big tournaments . Parker also has wrestled tremendous practice partners every day and was a match away of placing in the powerade last year as a freshman. He has also wrestled 2 top 5 teams and several more top 20 teams this year. It would be a great match I would love to see but I think it would be 2 pt match either way.

The team scores were correct. I have noticed a couple of individual scores that were not correct but it is what it shows on trackwrestling. I noticed the wrong winner in a 5th - 6th place match as well. I will correct them. If anybody see's anything incorrect let me know in case the results are used for any kind of state seeding.

Ive always been told the Hcac restrictions are due to Tmssaa restrictions but Im not sure if thats entirley accurate. I know a lot of schools pulled out of the Tmssaa for this reason. Our kids couldnt even go to the Dixie nationals at one time and several Baylor and Cleveland kids had to sit out of some league matches and even the end of season tournament because of it. A kid wants to challenge himself and face some tough competetion and hes banned from wrestling in his league? I agree completley about kids not missing their school matches to compete in outside events but seeing how the Hcac only wrestles two tournaments I dont think that would be an issue and should be handled by each coach. Its really none of my business what they do but when people say Chattanooga wrestling is getting weaker because of the youth league I feel compelled to point out the facts. The facts are Chattanooga has one the youth state championship every year since they started keeping team points. The youth age Chattanooga teams have won every single dual meet ever wrested since we started having a youth state duals tournament. The middle school age has progressivley gone in the opposite direction so in my opionion based on facts it would appear thats where other areas are surpassing us simply due to more quality matches.

I am all for middle school wrestling. I think its vital and brings in many new kids to the sport each year that wouldnt ever be exposed to wrestling otherwise. The point of this topic is that some feel Chattanooga is slipping and losing its stronghold. It is slipping compared to its past history. My son played every sport known to man growing up and stil plays multiple sports. The majority of my kids on my youth teams play 2-3 sports as well. I encourage my kids to take a break from wrestling and play something else. I dont even let them wrestle freestyle unless they are adamant about it. They all got a lot more mat time than the Tmssaa kids while still enjoying other sports BUT... it should not be dictated down to the parents and kids that they can only compete in their middle school league. If that is what a parent choses to do then by all means thats what they should do but if they want to wrestle more than 12-15 matches a year then they should be able to. Your son wrestled more than just the Hcac as I clearly remember you entering him into other tournaments and you stated he wrestled freestyle and greco as well. You are obviously very inviolved in our sport so your son had other opportunities outside the hcac a lot of other kids dont get. Most of the teams across the state have pulled out of the Tmssaa for this very reason and they are enjoying huge growth and success our Chattanooga area kids arent getting at the middle school level and it is paying off huge divedends at their high schools now.

Well you have a couple of mine already and I know of about 4-5 more that are 50-50 on moving up there pretty soon as well. The good kids are going to go where they have the best chance to be succesful. Look at McCellhaney at Bradley for example. The kid grew up wrestling at East Ridge, his brother was the coach but he went to Bradley because they felt it was the best opportunity for him to be succesful. You spend all those years working and sacrificing you arent going to throw it all away once you get to high school. Everyone cries about Bradley, Cleveland , Soddy and the privates recruiting some of the transfers they have all had over the years but the fact of the matter is good programs recruit themselves and parents are always going to put their kids in the best positions to succeed.

Scott is correct to a certain extent. There are already several stud wrestlers starting for some powerhouse teams that moved out of Hamilton county for that very reason. I also agree Nashville is going to continue to get stronger as witnessed by the rise of teams like Ravenswood, Wilson Central, Beech, Centineal and several others. Nashville has had strong feeder systems in place for a while now with quality coaches and they have way more kids to chose from with their large population base. The Chattanooga area has had this problem with the middle schools for years. Several teams such as Soddy and a couple of others have worked around as best they could. We (Aau) has been fortunate that we have always been able to move our region tournament so that the public school (hcac) middle schools kids could compete on the Sunday following their conference tournament . This enables them to participate in the state and state duals and national teams if they qualify but it was almost voted down this year. We ( Aaau have to schedule our regionals tournaments all on the same weekend across the state and have to work with all the other middle school organizations schedules. In addition we have to have the regionals the week before the Aau state tournament since its a big undertaking to rent a place big enough for 18 mats we are at the mercy of the facilty. We also have to have the state done in time for the spring nationals and national duals so we dont have much flexibilty, there will come a time when we are no longer able to accomodate the public school middle school league (hcac) due to timing and all the other requirments we have to meet. It will be interesting to see if they move their date to accomodate their own kids or not. They only have two tournaments a year so it would be much easier for them to move their date but Im not sure it will happen. When that happens the parents all of the kids that have grown up wrestling in the Aau will pitch an immortal fit when little Johnny doesnt have the same opportunity the rest of the kids in the state has. Now that middle Tennessee and other areas are getting better it will definitley speed up the process of those areas by passing a lot of the Chattanooga teams as its already happened. Its only going to get worse and quickly. The teams in the Chattanooga area that dont have to follow those rules will be fine but the others will be left behind. Its pretty simple, if a 6-8th grader in Chattanooga gets 12-15 matches against sup par competetion and a kid in Nashville or another area gets 40-60 matches against much tougher competetion for three years who do you think will be better as a 9th grader? It doesnt matter how good you were until the 5th grade, you will regress and others will improve and pass you. Nashville Catholic ( Father Ryans Feeder) is a prime example of this.. They have had a solid youth program but for the last handful of years their middle school age has dominated Tennessee other than maybe Cleveland a few years.