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Absolutely, wouldn’t it be great if we just separated it out and gave everyone a state championship medal that paid their entry fee. Lol

My guess is that TNUSA Wrestling will be forced to make it a 2-day tournament if it remains at Summit High School. The real issue is that there are really very few venues that are large enough to host a tournament that has 750+ entries which is the direction they are headed. They could run the juniors & cadets on Saturday and the little kids and girls on Sunday and that would aid the overcrowding issues. For TNUSA Wrestling this is a GREAT problem to be having! As for the entry fee being $30.00, that really is on the low end of what most states are charging. Someone told me that the admission fee for the patrons was on $5.00 which is crazy low. When the AAU Kids State Tournament is charging $25.00 for admission, I would certainly look at charging no less than $15.00 next year.

A friend just informed me that the numbers for this years tournament was over 550 entries which is great news. After following Tennessee wrestling for over 50 years I don’t ever remember Tennessee having over 300 kids at the state tournament. If those numbers are correct I could see having 700+ kids wrestle in the tournament next year. We’re there any good matches at the tournament?

For this question there is absolutely to separate it out into divisions. Simply ask what Tennessee high school football team has the toughest schedule in 2023-24. A team's out of conference/non region schedule says a lot about the head coach.

This statistic alone tells me that we have very few coaches that are sharing athletes. There is absolutely no reason that high school kids should not be multi-sport athletes. When the football coach and wrestling coach work together both sports benefit from that relationship.

That is a terrible attendance number when you consider you played 9 state championship games. But who care because the TSSAA was guaranteed X number of dollars that had zero bearing on the number of fans.

He needs to transfer to another school where he can get in the lineup on a regular basis

The one thing that the TSSAA will not do is combine everyone back together for one state championship even though the girls are not separated. I would like nothing more than to sit back and laugh at the crying from both the soft parents parents and coaches if “LITTLE JOHNNY” would have to compete against everyone in Tennessee for a state championship. I can hear it now, IT’S NOT FAIR

I am totally good with 12 weight classifications and everyone placed back into one division for the individual state championship. Do I feel as if this is even a remote possibility, heck no because we have way too many soft people making decisions based on what benefits them personally.

The major issue is those individuals making the decision don’t know the difference between and takedown and a LAX ball. The TSSAA board of control is clueless but that is a story for another day.

I don’t know anything about what the TSSAA will do about girls wrestling

I have been told by a very tenured coach that Tennessee will go with 14 weight classifications and use the NFHS weights

In my youth teenage boys would fight and someone would get a bloody nose and maybe the occasional broken nose. I stand by my statement that most of todays parents are helicopter parents and the result is kids are not allowed to make mistakes and settle their personal issues with friends while growing up. Hovering adults are truly ruining todays kids.

1. That was a horrific act of a wrestler being a coward in defeat. 2. Was the lady on the mat a certified athletic trainer or mother? Moms and dads have no business on the mat, court, field, ect... unless it is a terrible injury, and they are summoned by the official or coach to go to the mat. Today's parents are much too involved and need to learn how to stay in the bleachers. The officials and coaches know how to handle the problems.

You are correct about the population explosion and the growth of wrestling in Georgia! It only makes sense that the more people you have living in a state the higher the level of competition. Let's also remember that those rust belt states being New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are beginning to lose population due to the really good blue collar manufacturing jobs moving to the southern states along with no or very low state income taxes in the South. Those individuals that are moving South also bring with them a love for wrestling and often times much more knowledge and experience with the sport of wrestling. Today, Tennessee wrestling reminds me of where Georgia was in the late 1990's.

People forget that to AA at the D1 level kids must not only be exceptionally good but they must also stay injury free.

Back in the day, moms and dads were not at practice or the training camps unless the father was a coach. Dads had to work to put food on the table and mothers typically were working or had other kids to watch after. I really don't remember a parent attending the national tournaments during the summer. Most of the kids did odd jobs to come up with enough money to attend the training camp and national tournament. The parents would drop off the kids and say bye and good luck! To say that times have changed would be an understatement.

Back in the day when you only had one division most of the kids were two and three sport athletes, so the only "OFF SEASON" was in the summer. A large number of the Iowa's high school athletes still remain two and three sport athletes. The only true off season training that I am aware of was at Cleveland High School with Al Miller, a little was happening at UTC, some of the kids from the Knoxville area would roll around with the University of Tennessee wrestlers that were attending summer school and in the Nashville area Brian Dunning and David Scott ran a training camp out of Father Ryan and at Goodlettsville High School Doug Newman had Tony Rowland running workouts for the kids. Believe me when I say that the upper East Tennessee was almost completely void of offseason wrestling. Al Miller and Doug Newman would conduct a training camp at Castle Heights with Doug Mays where the temperatures inside the training gymnasium would reach 110+ and the kids went through three workout per day. Like Al Miller once said, the kids were able to eat three meals per day and still make weight with very little effort due to the heat and hard drilling. They would then load up the kids for a two-week national tournament adventure to the AAU Nationals and then on to Iowa City for the USWF Nationals. That was three consecutive weeks of training/wrestling camp for the kids like Howard Langford, Adrian Norfleet and Mike Newman that were tough enough to endure the torture. Very few of the kids and parents today would want to be away from home for three consecutive weeks focusing on nothing but wrestling. Most of the better high school wrestlers would go to various camps around the country. This allowed the college coaches the opportunity to see them, and they learned what has become the lost art of drilling. Look back at the podcast where Ethan Reeve discusses how kids today wrestle live but really don't understand how important hard drilling is for a wrestler.

Anything that I say is strictly my opinion. After being around the sport for fifty plus years I will say that the only thing that has helped wrestling grow in Tennessee is the population explosion in the state and much better coaching throughout the state. My contention is that if you only had one champion the wrestlers would be required to work much harder than they do today and they would have no place to run. With three divisions the talent is spread out and kids can separate weight classifications and the good kids are able to avoid each other at the state tournament. If we had one division and a 32 man bracket per weight division the matches would be much closer at the state tournament. Today we have kids pinning or winning by technical fall through out the tournament. When it was one division most all of the matches after the round of 16 were within two or three points or overtime. Learning how to win close matches is what seasons kids for national tournaments.

Did any of the games have a paid attendance of over 7500

You have absolutely zero proof that 3 state champions equal more kids wrestling in college than one overall combined state champion. I personally watched both Gray Simons (Tennessee) and Ethan Reeve (UTC) recruit the number 2 or 3 kid over the state champion because those kids while not state champions were actually better athletes than the state champion. The higher the level of competition the better the athlete must be to win a championship. Long gone are the days of someone just being a strong and tough brawler like the Brands brothers and them winning a national championship. Todays national champions are typically very good athletes.

I am not sure that this statement is correct. If you only had one division but you had the same number of wrestlers, you would actually have more kids disappointed as you would only have one state champion and not three state champions. While I am a big proponent of one division for all individual sports you would find that more kids would experience defeat before in the district and region before they ever had the opportunity to compete in the state tournament. Like the "old timer" told me, we currently have kids winning a state championship that would not even qualify for the state tournament if we had one division.

I totally agree with you about many of today’s parents and the life lessons that are to be learned from high school athletics. Another topic that most people fail to mention is the academic side of high school. The kids that have the high gpa’s along with great ACT/SAT scores are really setting themselves up to be successful in this world economy that is ever present in our lives.

Yes, among the top tier wrestlers, high school wrestling in Tennessee is better than ever before. IMO, this is due to three things: 1. The population in Tennessee is now just over 7 million people and with that growth you have also had wrestling families move into the state. 2. Kids today have much better access to top quality training and coaching other than the typical high school coaches. Before it was all about who ones high school coach was and the culture of their program. Today kids in some geographical areas are being trained by D1 AA’s. Yes, exceptions were around back in the day but they were not available to everyone. 3. There are so many offseason national tournaments available to kids that were not around in past years. It wasn’t that many years ago the only national tournaments were the Junior Nationals and the AAU Freestyle/Greco Roman Nationals. I don’t want to hurt peoples feelings but the items listed above are what has grown wrestling in Tennessee. All that having multiple divisions in wrestling has done is give some kids gaudy records and state medals that would not have been achieved if Tennessee had one division. Like one “old timer” told me, we now have kids placing in the state tournament that would not have qualified for the state if we only had one division.

The T$$AA has basically said that they do not want to work at creating a great crowd atmosphere and the message that they are sending out to the various cities is show me the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. If you want a great crowd you go to where all the people live and that's Nashville. Vanderbilt University did a great job hosting the TSSAA State Football Championships for many years and the population is Nashville is larger than ever.