bradley08

When is the last time you went to the youth state tournament? They are very good no doubt but since the inception of team scoring I think Baylor has won every age group at the state tournament. i would also say Higher Calling is just as good but dont have quite the numbers and Soddy in the middle school division. You can go to trackwrestling and see the team results for each age group.

Is the McCallie tournament this upcoming weekend? What teams are coming this year?

how many freshmen do you see win hwt? Im not saying Hwt is the hardest but its not 106. Disillusion yourself all you want but 106 always has been and always will be the easiest. Nothing against those kids but they are wrestling mostly freshmen and in some cases 8th graders. Do you see 8th graders come in and win the 132-152 lb weight classes? no you dont. Not only are the kids all younger but they are also 106 lbs so if there is an older kid he is usually not as physically develoed as other wight classes. Now that being said, there are always exceptions to the rule. Debein and Oliver were studs last year and there have been others but the overall depth isnt there. In my opionion the easiest weights on average are 106,113,hwt,220,195,182, 119,170,126,132,160, 140,145,152.

uh.... its 106

No they did not participate against Heritage. I know West and Austin Oliver didnt anyway and I dont think Hamilton did either.

Who did they wrestle after the pools were completed ?

It does appear to be that way. I cant ever remember this many kids being out from so many different teams. Im sure some are valid injuries, sickness, weight descent. I do think our sport is becoming victim to the same thing that plagues the rest of our society though. Its often more about the individual protecting his record or not wrestling when hes 100% that putting the team and his friends first. I have heard complaints from some schools about certain kids that have done this regularly.

I think there is something in the air. I have never seen a tournament with so many kids out. Besides the Cleveland and Baylor kids mentioned above I think Soddy had atleast three starters out if not more and Cbhs had some missing as well. Not just wrestlers but studs missing left and right. I wonder how much of it is due to the stupid descent rules? Are Deckelman and and Blake Henry hurt for Soddy? Also what about the kid that won the state at 106 a few years ago but got much bigger? Jonah ???

I watched the match with some Bsfbag parents I know. I think they had three starters out with injuries and 2 more out due to the Act test. Then in addition to that they had to bump up I think in most of their weights to compensate.I think they even forfeited a weight or two if Im not mistaken. As far as the forfeits at the end I think that was right in the heart of their lineup so it probably would have been the same outcome. I know several a couple of the guys out were Houston Clements and Holloway but dont know who the others were. That being said, how did Heritage do against Cleveland. I know Cleveland had three of their best wrestlers out in Oliver, Hamilton and the new kid from georgia. I was impressed with Heritage even though especially the big red headed kid about 160 or 170

who will Soddy be missing? I am in Chatt today and thought i might go watch the match but if its not going to be good I can stop and catch Cleveland vs Father Ryan on my way home. Which one will be better?

I would think Asu means he signed with Arizona State University.

I think he was poking fun at you and using the same logig you have been. After all it isnt fair some of these college teams have more $, better coaches, better facilities is it? Some have wrestlers from other countries, some recruit nationally and some are just bar;ey hanging on. Iisnt that what you are saying about the high school teams.

Comparing wrestling to football is ridiculous. There arent enough wrestling schools in Tennessee to support divisions. Let me rephrase that, there arent enough schools who actually care about wrestling in Tennessee to support divisions. Did making classes for the duals help increase participation? No, it did not and neither will creating divisions in the individual tournament. Who is going to coach these proposed new teams? We dont have enough quality coaches right now as it is. Thats why the same schools win year in and year out.

Good points. Its a complex issue and I dont think there is any clear cut answer. I think there are many things that need to happen to grow the sort. I do think that if you have kids growing up wrestling then when they get to middle school or high school they are going to want to continue to wrestle and will be passionate about bringing this to their school district. I know if my sons put in all that time a dedication and then got to middle or high school and didnt have a venue to wrestle I would raise immortal hel* until something was done. If you dont have any wrestlers or wrestling parents I think starting a program is much harder and much more unlikely to happen. If you already have passionate people in place in love with the sport then your odds of getting a program started are much more likely.

Good point Soms! Ive seen it mentioned before but every seems to ignore the most common solution. Put the tournament back together. Keep seperate team points for DI lare, DII small and DII. The kids get to wrestle each other, and the teams can compete for team trophys against the others in their division. When our state grows and gets above a certain number of REAL wrestling teams then start thinking about separating it but not until then.

The grass in my yard will not grow. I think im going to divide my yard into two seperate yards. Yard east and yard west then surely it will grow. Isnt that what we are suggestiong? Divide wrestling up and it will miraculously make our numbers grow? Shouldnt we cultivate it? Create kids programs thus increasing the number of kids interested in our sport. Go to the middle schools and high schools without wrestling and propose they start the sport. Get some of our coaching staffs open to the idea that we need more programs and talk them into taking over at schools wihout coaches/ teams or in need of more qualified coaches. Im all for growing the sport but it wont happen just by adding more divisions. Its all about supply and demand. If we have numbers of kids and parents reqesting their school take up the sport then thats more likely to have a direct affect than simply creating a new division.

valid points and Im sure this would get mixed feelings depending on what part of the state you live in. I think the Chattanooga people are more open to it because they think of this as one community. They do not think of North georgia even being in another state even though technically it is. Im not sure about memphis but I would think they would feel the same if Olive Branch, Southaven and those other communities had wrestling. In bristol you have Virginia wrestling 10 minutes away and those people are part of the Bristol community more so than their Virginia communities. I can see both sides of the argument. I personally like them wrestling as long as they declare themselves to be Tn wrestlers and dont wrestle in ga's states. I do think they should wrestle all year or a minimum number of tournaments with us to eligible. On the other hand I can see the other side of the argument as well. This is going to be a topic that is going to have many mixed feelings and will never fully be agreed upon. Each regional manager should send out an email to each head coach in his are and get a vote on this. Then at their state meeting each region can vote based on what his region wants and then you have a true majority say so in the matter.

See we are making progress! Excellent post and observations.I of course will have to check that math. lol I think one factor is that maybe region 5 didnt send as many kids who didnt have a chance to place as areas that are closer. I know if I lived in memphis I wouldnt send my kid just to get matches but somebody an hour or two away might. Regardless, the west is getting better and better and there is no denying that. That is great for our sport and Tennessee!

Troll? If speaking the truth is being a troll them Im guilty as charged. I think I read somewhere there were 12 out of state kids in the entire tournament. Im assuming that includes Ky and va as well so I dont think that would fix the problem. I for one dont think that too many kids is a problem. I think that is awesome in my opionion. Being on the Tn/ga line I can understand why people would want ga to participate. If you dont live here you wouldnt understand. We are one community. Many of them work here, go to school here, many of us work there and so on. They participate in our tournaments, we participate in their tournaments. They want to wrestle Aau instead of Usa. I think its a great thing. State lines are imaginary and whats wrong with letting them compete with the communities they are most closely associated with? Does it not add wrestlers? Does it not add to the quality and competetiveness of our tournaments? I guess we need to clearly define what our goals are. That being said I can see the other side of the argument. I can see where parents are going to complain when a kid gets beat by a Ga, ky or va wrestler because that means their son didnt win and we all know that a mjority of the people dont care about promoting and growing their sport. They just want their kid to win. Ive probably been guilty of that as well so Im not throwing stones.

Good post. I stand corrected and maybe judged too harshly. If you arent Humour then you have my sincere apologies

Region 3 had 23 champs based on my quick count. I dont think region 1 had that many but I will double check. I will check the ga kids but i only saw two. Im not sure about the Va kids Ill check that as well.

Im not privy to if they posted the meting date but Im not sure why they wouldn't? It seems they are always begging for volunteers. Would you have known Stone Memorial didn't have the capacity to host 750 kids and all the fans? I guess not knowing how many fans will show up might be an issue. really they weren't that far off. There might have been 100 people standing around the mats. Now Im sure you are going to correct me being the pompous person you are so Im sure it was 157 because you counted them by gosh. How do you know if track screwed up? Were you in there helping them? How do you know what plans they had in place? Again, were you helping or offering your expert wisdom? On that subject, what tournaments have you ran of this size? I wasn't aware Memphis has ever had one even half as big? We would all love to hear that. While Im no expert on Track I have helped a few times and I know you cant import the kids until you start to make the brackets. Evidently there was some problem with this. I dont know the details and you dont either but you seem to have no problem blasting people about things you know nothing about. I may not be the smartest man in the world but i know your geography lessons suck. yes it matters where the biggest wrestling population comes from if they are the ones coming to the tournament. Do you really think putting tournaments in Memphis i going to make it grow? I dont care where the epicenter is for wrestling. I wish it was more competitive than it is but the fact of the matter is wrestling is a tough sport and based on your little whiny attitude I can see why you arent as successful as Chattanooga. Dont hate Chattanooga because they have busted their butts for 30 years and are ahead of you .Do something about it but if walking around crying all the time is your answer then its going to rub off on your kids. Chattanooga didn't start winning because they whined, they didn't start winning because they live next to georgia or any of the other idiotic statements you have made. They started winning because they worked their butts off, built enthusiasm, created traditions. As far as making comments about your kids I wasn't doing that. Im just trying to figure out where your animosity comes from. The only things I can think of is you feel inferior or you feel like other people think you are inferior or you didnt do as well this weekend as you had hoped this weekend and wanted to make exscuses for your failure to better prepare your kids. Again, Im only guessing because you are full of anger and hostility. Usually when someone starts attacking people and putting down others efforts there is an underlying reason. Im really not trying to be mean but thats just my casual observation about your apparent anger and dislike of people who are trying to make a difference. People who have done more for wrestling than you will ever dream about. As they have said in their posts, call them, email them, work with them. Maybe you will hit it off and can work together but one thing is for sure you wont get anything accomplished if you work against each other.

Humour, Im beginning to think you and Mr Moon Einstein are one and the same. What Chattanooga tournaments have you been to that you can discredit them? Im guessing 0? Their tournament running skills arent on the same level as who? You just complained the Nashville top 100 lasted until 2am. It was ran way worse than the state and had way less kids. You went to the Aau meeting last year ? Im pretty sure Mike or one of the other board members stated not one member of the public showed up last year. Are they imagining that? So in what medium did you offer you profound suggestions? You apparently dont like the way a democratic society works or you dont like your region rep. Why dont you run against them? My guess is you would get one vote from your area coaches and that would be your own vote. Ill let one of the board members answer but its my understanding that Memphis and Kingsport both have a region representative that does vote. Im pretty sure Chattanooga only has one vote. Are you seriously saying Jackson is as centrally located as Chattanooga? I think when people say centrally located they mean to the majority of the wrestling population which is Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville. If 75 % of the wrestlers come from there then why should they drive to memphis who has 10%? I see where everyone has offered ideas for the state so why do you say they havent? Why do ignore the issues at hand? Do you understand that the majority of the complaints last year were that the tournament was a two weekend affair and people dont have the money to travel two weekends in a row? That appears to be why they changed it. Do you understand that the complaint that they started an hour late wasnt their fault. If they are running a tournament using Track and it goes down and they cant make brackets until 7:00 then you are going to have issues. The other complaints were that the brackets werent perfect. Well I bet the reason we started an hour late was because they were trying to fix the brackets as best they could. Overcrowding issue? yes it was crowded but what would you have done if 750 kids signed up at midnight on Thursday night? Ive been to 50 tournaments worse than that one and none of them were half as big. They started late and ran straight through with little to no dead time. the refs were pretty good from what I saw. The coaches all said the hospitality room was great. The trophys were awesome but Im betting you didnt see many of those and thats whats really got you mad. was it crowded? yes it was we all agree. Again that was out of their control due to everyone wanting a one day state tournament and not knowing how many people were going to come until a day before. I for one am glad it was one day instead of two. Every coach I talked to was glad it was a one day instead of two. I know many families on our team were glad it was a one day instead of two. In fact you are the only one Ive seen complaining. Now the dumbest thing you have said and its hard to decide because you have said many dumb things is that Chattanooga gets its way. Hey GENIUS... Pay attention closely... If Chattanooga would have gotten their way the tournament would have been at McCallie. You and Mr Moon if you arent one in the same person must be very close relatives.

Hey Einstein. If you combined regions 4 and 5 you would have had 3 qualifiers instead of 6. Then you would have gotten beaten worse. So while you are adding the two regions together to come up with more medals dont forget that. You were together every year and you havent won more yet. you make me scratch my head sometimes and wonder how you survive each day.

I wasnt really reffering to Memphis as much as Nashville. Cry baby said add regions 4 and 5 together and they would win more. My point was, you should win if you have 10 X the population. But in reality they wouldnt just like they didnt last year or the year before or the year before,. Because what cry baby is forgetting is that they got to put 6 people in the state this year with two regions as opposed to Chattanoogas 3. Oh.. forgetting that are we Einstein? . So in essence if Nashville and Memphis were together and you only had 3 kids instead of 6 you would probably win less like all the years in the past. Moon, you seriously need to stop posting. You are embarrassing anybody who even knows you. Population does matter tremendously when looking at a pool of potential wrestlers. Its common sense. If you have 1,000,000 people surely you have a better chance of finding wrestlers than a city of 300,000. I understand Ms and Ark doesnt have wrestling but Im not sure what that has to do with Memphis having a larger population base. Is Chattanooga strong because its next to ga? It has nothing to do with that what so ever. Thats even more reason memphis needs to grow their numbers so that they have more people to compete with and dont have to travel as much. I certainly feel their pain and understand where they are coming from. They are on the right track and will be a powerhouse very soon as some of their kids already are.