tnsmokediver

Let's see......Class A school with a wrestling team....an acomplishment in itself. Then they come around in their 2nd or 3rd year and beat quality teams like WB and Maryville........ To top it off they send three wrestlers to the Big Dance in a region that is relatively huge in respect to number of teams..... Put all that together.....and I come up with ....... Give it it a break voleagle...you're and idiot. Great job Greenback!

Are Potter and Robbins both freshmen? Also....thanks to the Coaches of Region 1 for honoring all of our retired coaches before the finals. It's was very cool to see all the coaches who were around when I wrestled in one spot at the same time again. We owe these guys alot of credit for developing our sport to what it is today. Thank You!

I will have to give a nod to a couple of teams from region 1. Elizabethton and Sullivan East. Both of these teams did not field a complete team all season but had very competitive wrestlers. I believe if these teams could field a full complement of weights they would have been able to win more dual meets. Giving up 6 points for an empty scoresheet hurts. Along those lines a team from region 2 deserves some credit. Although I only saw Gibbs a couple of times they seemed to have competitive wrestlers. There is a new format for dual meet tournaments that Coach Brimer has brought back from a tournament that he took Greeneville to last year. It's actually a split format. Starting with two pools each team wrestles a dual meet format. After pool wrestling is finished, the best record of each pool in each weight class wrestles each other for 1st and 2nd. The second best in each pool in each weight class wrestle for 3rd and 4th. Each team is given points for where their wrestlers finish in their respective finals match. It is an interesting format and helps a team like those mentioned above who don't fill 14 weights classes. They get alot of wrestling done and have a shot at placeing in the tournament. Any thoughts?

Which means you are older than I thought!

Clint, I am one of three brothers who wrestled in three different decades for the same school. (Class of 74, 81 and 91) All three of us have wrestled with you on the mat and all three of us enjoyed you being there for us. I hope that I am able to keep going half as long as you have. Wish you were hanging around long enough to officiate my own kid. Thanks for being there for our sport. People like you have made it a better place.

I agree with you to a certain degree. However, you may only see a particular official one time. And it might very well be the one time that the official has had a bad night. When you have your region meeting to pick officials you have a bad taste in your mouth about that one official. You have devepoled a bias toward that official. Also, each official in the state has there own style of officiating. You may not like how I call stalling for example. But several other coaches might or vice versa. Several years ago in our region (back when the coaches picked the officials for the region) we had a first yera official that called the region and some who had been around for several years had to sit out because an official had made the principal of the school mad during a tournament for asking him to keep the gym floor clear of fans who were standing around the scorers table.(As a result of this a kid wrestled out of his weight class due to the score keeper not being able to hear him say his name). The official asked the principal several times to clear the floor so this would not happen again. He refused to comply. He then told his head coach that this official was not allowed to come back to his facility. The official was doing his job but was unjustly black listed because of it. The coaches were not aware that the principal had no control over whether or not that official could officiate in his facility. It was not up to him but up to the coaches voting on the officals for the tournament. Was this fair to the official? Was there a bias toward that official who was merely trying to do his job? I am sure there have been more instances like this across the state. And this is not the only one that I am aware of but it is certainly something to ponder.

It is my understanding that the officials that attend the state events are there on recommendations by their association's assigning officer's recomendation. Our assigning officers see us throughout the year and know more of our capabilities than someone who sees us maybe once at the rules meetings. Mr Carter makes the decision on who will call the event based on those recomendations. Anyone who has ever put on the stripes knows that we are all capable of having a bad day or even a bad. We have all had a bad day at work when nothing seems to go right for us. Being an official is no different than that. I have officiated for 13 years and have had an off day or two. We all suffer one one inescapable problem....we are human. Even 30 year vetran officals have the same problem. The 1984 World Series showed that (boy I just really dated myself). The NFL has had some really great officials who have made some really close bang bang calls this year only to have them overturned by instant replay (this in no way implies I want instant replay for us). They didn't miss the call because they were bad but because they called what they saw in the blink of an eye. Wrestling is no different. when you get to see officials in an environment like this where we all come from different areas you see different methods of officiating, even different interpretations of rules. I have seen that from state to state on little aspects of the rules. Until you have put on the stripes and been in the hot seat you will never know what it's like to be there.

I wasn't at the dual meet so I didn't see what happened. However, here is something from the rule book that might be helpful. A warning for the coach is something that takes place only at the table. If a coach goes to the table to argue misapplication of a rule, and he is correct in his argument, the sitation is corrected and nothing happens. If the coach argues misaaaplication of a rule and is wrong, he is given a warning for misconduct. If he goes to the table again and is wrong then there is a deduction of one team point for unsportsmanlike conduct. If a coach is doing anything from the bench area, that is deemed by the official or his assistant as unsportsmanlike, there is a deduction of a team point for unsportsmanlike conduct. There is no warning. Also action that is unsportsmanlike can also be deemed as flagrant misconduct if the official or his assistant deems it as such. On a side note, if the assistant coach goes to the table and argues misapplication of a rule and is wrong, he does not get the warning. The warning goes to the head coach. Unsportsmanlike conduct applies to the individual commitiing the unsportsmanlike act.

Well put Coach! I agree with you. Adding the smalll school class back to the format would be the most fair way to go for all involved.

Adding the second place teams in each region would only make for a bigger tournament. I don't have a problem with that at all. Matter of fact it would be rather interesting. As for how well would some of the second place region finishers place, they could do well. If you've been around this sport long enough, you've seen some matches that literally go down to the coin toss. I was involved in a match like that myself. (Karns vs. Morristown East '91) Coach Hooban told me the morning of the dual meet that if we won the toss we would win by 3. If we lost we would lose by 3. We lost the toss and got beat by three. I spoke with Coach Dugger 10 years later at the DII state tournament about the match and told him what Coach Hooban said. He told me that he had figured the same thing or at least close to it. Granted anything can happen during the match. But for the most part coaches know who to wrestle against who and how to match up. The region One tournament this year had one swing match that I don't think Coach Mann thought would go the other way or his predictoin would have been correct. (He said they would pull off beating SH if they won the toss.) DB is a quality as is SH and it was really a shame that both could not be there this weekend. And I am sure there are several more quality teams out there this year that did not make the big dance by just a few points that may have swung the other way due to the coin toss. Besides, the DI state tournamnet is bigger in size than the DII tournament, so why not make the Dual Tournament the same way?