Jackson

This is among the oldest pre-season tournaments in the state having started in 1982 . It has been used as a training session for new referees and a warmup for experienced refs as well as trying to get wrestlers as many matches as possible. The nature of this tournament makes it impossible to run it like a regular season tournament. Beause you never know how many wrestlers will show up or their experience level, it is important that coaches help with the pairings. Some years, when we had too many wrestlers show up, we had to call on coaches to help referee. I am sure that Coach Weldon and his staff did the best job they could, but with any tournament wrestling is the one sport where help from fellow coaches is important. Dan Dogger

Jim, My thoughts and prayers are with and your family. Dan Dugger

I would like to add my congratulations to both Joel and his Dad. Coach Brimer is one of the most outstnding coaches I have had the opportunity to coach against. He is class from top to bottom. Dan Dugger

Noonesfool, I plan to come up for your tournament on the 12th. What time does it begin and is it still at the middle school? Also what time is breakfast? /laugh.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":lol:" border="0" alt="laugh.gif" /> I am retiring from teaching on Jan 11, so this will be a good way to begin my celebration.

Noonesfool, I hope you guys have a great time at your reunion tonight. I wish I could be there as a friendly opponent. We have shared some great competition and it is great to see that the folks who have followed you are keeping up the standards and Matt is certainly a great representative of those accomplishments The tournament at Catholic started at Carter High School and has been running for 33 years, 8 at Carter, 15 at Karns and 10 at Catholic. As far as I know Greeneville is the only team to have been at every tournament. Good luck to Matt and the Greeneville Wrestling Team.

I started a wrestling team with only a year's experience as an assistant coach and no wrestling experience. The Principal lent me 1000.00 from the general atheletic fund to start the program. I paid it back at the end of the first year and from that point on found ways to pay wrestlings own way. By the end of my tme coaching we were traveling to tournamnents in Middle Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio, and Georgia and doing quite well. Granted a blind hog finds an acron every once in a while and I found more than my share. The Administration at my school gave me a master key so they would not have to come to wrestling meets and tournaments. The only support they gave me is that they let me coach and have a team. Very rarely did I have a football player out for wrestling, it would have helped. Those football players who did come out usually did not last long because they could not stand the discipline or the conditioning. I took every one who came out. Many years I had more kids out for wrestling than the football team had. I got plenty of publicity because I called everyone who could possibly give me some, local shoppers, the original Knoxville Journal, the News Sentinel and every TV station in town. Never failed to call in meets, win or lose. I got to know any reporter, print or TV, who could do a story about our team. As a matter of fact our wrestling program was one of the Journal's top ten stories in 1984. As far as getting publicity in your school, get to know the person who makes the announcements and make sure you write an announcement before a meet and the results after, create your own excitement. You can't worry about the "ifs", you have to work to be a successful wrestling program. You recruit your school. I went to middle school football games, rec league softball games, baseball games, Christmas plays, school plays, band concerts, visited parents, and on ocassion to court, anything to get the kids I needed. You can check out the cross country team, the soccer team, establish a rapport with the football coach, talk to the kids the basketball coach cuts, look at the kids who are behavior problems, talk to kids who are having trouble with grades and find them a tutor, talk to parents, go to middle schools and put on clinics. In other words sell your program to everyone you meet. Don't sit around and whine that you just can't get kids out, get off your backside and go to work. Find out why Seymour and Greenback are successful. Get to know Steve Logsden, Turner Jackson, Jim Morgan, Gordon McConnell, The Simpson brothers, Steve Henry, Chris Vandergriff, Bill Brimer, David Hollowell and the myriad other successful coaches in Tennessee. All I ever got from my administration, on rare ocassions, was an "Attaboy". My desire to have the best team possible and the responsibility that I owed to my wrestlers and their parents to do my best, made me work hard. Bottom line, developing successful wrestling program is a 24/7 year round job, not that your are wrestling and coaching all of that time, but you are constantly aware of what you have to do to be successful.

I didn't get to go to the tournament, but I saw Greenback wrestle a couple of weeks ago. They don't do anything fancy, just the basics and they do them in an outstanding manner. Congratulations Coach Ridge on an outstanding job of coaching and congratulations to your outstanding team.

Coach Beardsley also forgot to mention the cut that TSSAA gets. I can't remember the percentage, but it is quite a bit.

Back in the "Dark Ages" of wrestling before the 8 regions were setup, we were in District 2, which included all of the schools Knox, Blount, Sevier, McMinn, and Bradley Counties, each school was assessed a certain amount for the production of the tournament. The first year we did a tournament at Karns, not every one paid their share because they disputed some of the expenses and so we were left holding the bag for the deficit and I had to pay it out of my meager wrestling budget. The next year I propose that the school putting on the tournament be resonsible for financing the tournament and allowed to keep the profit, if there was one, or eat the loss. This gave the director the opportunity to run the tournament in a first class manner as he saw fit. The admission prices, $4.00 for students and $7.00 for adults per session, are very reasonable based on the expected attendance and the type of tournament Region 2 will have. Anyone who complains about this cost has never been involved in running a tournament. The expenses outlined by Coach Beardsley are in line with running an outstanding tournament. If you have attended a tournament at Catholic, you know it will be well run Good luck to all Region 2 teams both in the regional and state tournament. Dan Dugger

Does any one hae anything on the region 2 seeds?

Karns along with Maryville were the two Region II teams in 1996. The tournament went on without us as well as without Red Bank. And I believe Seymour missed the small school tournament.

1996, my last year to coach.

For all of the East Tennessee teams, remember that in 1996 the weather report for East Tennessee was the same on Wednesday before the Dual Meet Tournament, as it is tonight. Those teams who left on Thursday morning got to participate, those teams who had planned to leave on Friday morning did not. And we will never know who the real 1996 Dual Meet Tournament Champion might have been. A word to the wise Seymour, Greeneville, Science Hill and Maryville best get on the road as soon as possible.

Justin is doing a great job at Greenback. The fact that he is taking them to some good tournaments is showing up in how well they are wrestling. I watched them last Thursday night and was quite impresssed, not only in their ability but in the fact that they have all weights filled. They never quit even when they are down, which does not seem to be often, but keep working to win. At the rate they are going Greenback, I am sure, will be noticed and make it into the poll. When I was coaching I never knew who did the poll or who was doing the voting, I was just happy that my teams were doing well enough to be mentioned.

One of the first coaches to give me a hand when I first started caoshing in 1981 was John Klock. He made a great contribution to wrestling in East Tennessee. John along with Farrace, Johnson, England, and Hollowell all contirbuted to my education as a wrestling coach.

I believe that the match score was actually 7-4, with Farragut forfeiting 3 weight classes. Who is to say that the three Bearden wrestlers would not have pinned their Farragut opponents, but we will never know because the Farragut wrestlers weren't there. A big part of winning dual meets is making sure that you have 14 wrestlers to put on the mat. Recruiting wrestlers within your school is an important part of winning dual meets and a successful season in both individual and dual.

Congratulations to Coach Hernandez and the Bearden Bulldogs. They won over Farragut by a score of 39-37 and Kingston by a score of 56-18. It would appear that a lot of work is being done to have a full lineup, which is certainly what a coach has to do if he is to win and build a team tradition. Junior, it appears, you are doing an outstanding job. Dan Dugger

I had parents who helped, but I was the one who recruited wrestlers in my school, kept them interested and planned what would be done. One of the greatest problems that I see young or inexperienced coaches having is that there is no one for them to rely on to help with organization skills. You can be a great wrestler, but if you can't teach or organize you are wasting your time. Obviously I had a lot of support from some very good coaches, but I sought them out. I also bought a book which came out about the time I started coaching and I can't remember the title, but it covered everything you could want to know from recruiting to how to clean mats. I did not wrestle in either high school or college. My total experience was a year as assistant to Gary Walker at Carter High School. Then I became a head coach starting a brand new program at a school where the only wrestling they knew was WWF. If it had not been for books and coaches who were willing to help and parents who knew nothing about wrestling but were willing to help a coach whose wrestling knowledge was severly limited then I would not have been successful. Just like wrestlers who work and sacrifice to win, coaches must do the same. A good coach can't be afraid to admit that he doesn't know something and needs to ask for help. Maybe a good idea would be to organize some seminars for coaches just like we have camps for wreslters. Coaches need to have continuing education for their craft the same as any other professional.

I have followed this thread and the one about how do we keep wrestler out, with a great deal of interest. I am a retired coach who started out knowing absolutely nothing about wrestling and 99% of my wrestlers had never seen a wrestling mat until they got to high school, they came in looking for the ring ropes. I coached in a school where the football and baseball coaches did not want their athletes to wrestle, and the basketball coach got first look at all athletes. I got the athletes no one else wanted for whatever reason too small, discipline problems, and poor grades. I took the left overs and like Roosevelt Greer, sorted them out until I found what I needed. The smallest number that I ever had at the end of a season was 28 and the most was 55. I averaged 40-45 wrestlers each year. Some years I had an assistant and some years I was by my self. I got a CDL so I could drive the bus where ever we went and we traveled from to Carbondale, IL, Rockmart , GA, Cincinnati, OH, Nashville, Clarksville, Greenville, and Chattanooga . Some years we wrestled more in Chattanooga and Nashville than we did in our home region because of the competition. When we went to a meet I took everyone with us, and would try to get matches for as many as we could. If we couldn't get matches for many, at least, we sometimes had more people at the meet than some of the teams we were visiting. Any where we could find a tournament for our JV and freshman we either took them or sent them. Each team had warmups and unifroms and were expected to look like a team. Every morning starting in October we ran at 6 am, ate breakfast together, and did any home work that needed to be taken care of and went to class. From October through the state tournament we were a family. Since I started with very little knowledge, I learned from books, other coaches, (Turner Jackson, JIm Morgan, Gordon Connell, Steve Henry, David Hollowell, AL Miller to name a few), taking wrestlers to camps, and when UT had a team, getting UT wrestlers to sign up for class room experience at my school. Every year I took anywhere from 20 to 35 wrestlers to camps, sent groups of 4 to 8 to elite camps, and brought in outstanding coaches from TN and GA to conduct workshops. Eventually I started running my own camps with folks like Jim Morgan, Steve Henry, and Turner Jackson. I could get more of my wrestlers to attend these camps, because I could control cost. I learned very early as a coach that I either had to go to strong competition or bring in strong competition ie Parkview, McCallie, Baylor, Soddy Daisy, Father Ryan, Franklin, and Bradley Central, if we were going be competitive. I have beaten some of the best coaches in the state either in tournaments or head to head. We could not have not done that if we had not had good competition. There were also times when we came home all beaten up but we used those occassion to learn. When you have just lost miserably to Red Bank you can get back to Knoxville in a hour and fifteen minutes and be ready to run for an hour the next morning at 6 am. We qualified for the state dual meet tournament four times in the last five years I coached, finished fourth, fifth, eighth, and got snowed out the last year, so we will never know how that team would have done. My last two teams were ranked 7th in the state in the final rankings each year. My point is not every coach knows what to do, but he can learn; to have an oustanding team you have to wrestle the best competition you can find, wherever you have to go; you can get the numbers to fill weight classes and have depth, but coaches have to work at it.

In 1982, the standard in this part of East Tennessee was Turner Jackson and Bradley Central and Al Miller and Cleveland. Finally with hard work and some luck, Karns was able to beat Turner and Bradley in 1984 and on that same day lost to lost to Al Miller. If I am not mistaken John Lennon had just graduated from Cleveland and Steve was a senior at Bradley. It will be great to see Steve back as head coach and it would be great if John were to become the head coach at Claveland. Coaches like Turner, Steve L., Steve H., Jim Morgan, Gordon, Jeff J. and the Simpson brothers certainly contributed to my success at Karns. My record against that group probably was way less than even, but because we were trying to beat them we had a few state placers and at least one champion. I may not agree with all of their philosophies, but I loved the competition. I for one, if I were still coaching would welcome Steve back and would work hard to compete with him. WELCOME BACK STEVE. Dan Dugger

It would be awesome to see the man with the red wrestling shoes back at his alma mater.

Second place points are awarded to both semifinalist winners i.e., each wrestler will get 10 points as he moves into the finals bracket. The winner will get 4 points and any bonus points he earns, if he wins with a pin he would earn a total of 6 points. Fourth place points are awarded to both wrestlers in the consolation finals, and the winner is awarded 3 aditional points plus any earned bonus points

Karns wrestled in the Slamfest in Dec 95. Freddie Weaver (Karns) was wrestling Kirk Wood (Clk) at 145. We were well into the third period when Wood crossfaced Weaver. His arm went against Weaver's teeth and the referee who was calling the match DQed Weaver, deducted two team points and removed Weaver from the gym. Wood and his mother both talked to the referee and told him Weaver did not bite him, but he refused to change the ruling. The score according to the scorebook at that time was 11-10 Weaver. At the end of the second period the score was 7-5. Weaver chose down at the beginning of the third period. Wood took him to his back for 3, Weaver reversed for 2 and then took wood to his back for 2. Wood reversed for 2 and was attempting to turn Weaver when the biting took palce. To be honest I did not remember that this referee called the match until I looked it up, but I can assure you I have never forgotten the match. In nearly 20 years of being involved in wrestling as both a head coach and assistant coach I can only remember the referees of three matches. In each match a good wrestler got messed over.