tnlonghorn

If all those teams went down to a/aa this year why didnt the AAA bracket get smaller? Yes, they have large numbers but lets be honest here. The majority of those schools arent true wrestling schools and the depth of talent isnt reflective of the oveerall number of teams.

BAM! Mr West, again the comeback King!

lol, How do you figure he cant? he might not but it would be just as crazy of you to say he cant.

Your missing the whole point. The point is that this should be the ultimate experience for our wrestlers. All aspects , tournament location, excitement, pre finals show, and awards. This tournament is taking 10 steps backwards from what they are used to. My nephew won the Aau state last year and he received a huge plaque that held his bracket, a picture and his medal. How can the Aau give out such awards when the Tssaa can't? I bet there are 3x the number of state champs in the Aau with all the age groups than in the tssaa. So how can an organization that is getting the facility for free and charging a fortune at the gate not put more effort into the product. The state finals should be a step up from anything they have experienced, not a let down. I liked the smoke and lights and wrestlers faces but it needed much more organization. They dropped the ballon everything else and it's a moment those kids will never get back.

Did you attend any of the state tournaments elsewhere? We aren't talking about the duals. You are the first person I've heard of that likes it

Ok, let's be realistic. Memphis brings the fewest fans by far. Chattanooga brings the most. Knoxville and East Tn are really growing . If it's in Nashville East Tn drives further, if it's in Chattanooga Memphis drives an extra two hours. Either way somebody is driving further. Put it in the best place period!!! It's about the kids experience and nothing else should matter

I didnt mean to imply the kids suck and should have thought about that. I was just saying we are lowering our standards to apease people. Im sure the kids feel great about themselves that did well in the a/aa tournament and the coaches and parents are proud of them. I just think its going to take many years before we see much of a benefit if at all. Hopefully Im wrong and it helps schools attract kids to the sport. I do think they need to redo the numbers though and out the truly small schools in that division. Hixson and a couple of others should compete with the big boys.

Huh? I dont understand your statement? Why wouldnt they compete for championships? They have their own league now and compete whithin it. It would be no different except it wouldnt be under the Tssaa banner. In all actuality Im suprised they havent done it already. Its a no brainer really. If they do you might as well kiss a lot of the good wrestlers goodbye because they will really want to attend those schools more than they do now and the Tssaa wont have any way to stop them. They will be able to travel and go to any tournaments they want to and hols their state tournament in the facility they chose.

What's going to happen next is the really small schools are going to complain they can't compete with big schools like Hixson. Hixson is way bigger than a lot of those schools. There is a much larger gap between Hixson and some of those schools than there is between Hixson and some of the Aaa schools. We have just opened Pandora's box and there will be more divisions coming. How many new teams did we have this year because of the split??? One year into it and did we see a growth rate any higher than we normally average?? Let's check on that next year and see if 2 years into it we have grown at any higher of a rate.

Hmmm... I suck at my job but I'm going into work today and tell my boss to give me a raise because otherwise I would never get one. Maybe since it's just given to me I will work harder and get better at what I do. It's really not fair anyway because I live in a small neighborhood and some of my co-workers live in neighborhoods with 100's of people. Sounds crazy doesn't it????

Have you seen Alabama wrestling? It's horrible . Before you copy and paste a Brandon Womack article we all know he's good but most of the others not so much.

The good: Watching the emotion and happiness by the wrestlers when they reached their goals. The attempt of making the pre-match finals more exciting, (still needs a lot of work but atleast they tried) Some great sportsmanship by wrestlers, coaches and fans. Some great calls by refs in pressure packed situations. The bad The venue- being able to see the mats , score tables, score clock, 4 charis full of trainers all right in front of the bleachers on the A/aa and d2 end. No excitement or electricity in the air. Most boring tournament in history. Its progressively gets worse every year as everyone’s expectations and faith in the Tssaa continues to decline. Absolute chaos of the finals show no reading of bios no announcing of finalist as they wrestle because there were three mats and awards all going on. no announcing of winners for the reasons mentioned above. The fact that there was a a/aa tournament at all. It was a hard pill to swallow for some aaa and d2 kids watching a/aa kids medal and even win that they had beaten badly and they couldnt do the same in their division. I had two a/aa coaches who had champions laugh and say their champ wouldn’t have even placed in aaa. They were against the division as well. We have ruined the sport in Tn to be politically correct and make little Johnny feel good. If they want their own tournament let them hold it somewhere else because its basically what caused everything else to be messed up. Nobody watched the matches except their families. poor awards as usual inconsistent officiating. ( some were very good and some were very bad). Our paper in Chattanooga actually quoted Mark reeves as stating this was the most exciting tournament ever and that everyone loved it. I did not hear one single person say that. Everyone I spoke with in AAA and D2 hated it! absiolutley hated it!

Perfect ideas !

A hard thing to do and very time consumong. Thanks Hamm

They didnt take pictures of all the finalist. It slipped their mind i guess just like reading the kids bios and accomplishments. wow!!!

Everyone i have talked to 50+ people all want it moved from the ag center. This is people from east Tn, Chattanooga, Nashville and memphis. I personally dont care if its in Chattanooga or Nashville or wherever but we want it to eb the best experience for the kids as possible. If it cant be moved the finals definitley need to be seperated without question. It was a chinese fire drill the other day. Move the girls tournament to the state duals weekend if you have to.

I bought a paper today to see all the state champs and for the first time in my life there wasnt a picture. I wondered why not. They didnt announce the names, credentials, or anything. How can one announcer announce the winners and then try and keep up with the matches? My friends bought the online package to watch because they refuse to go to the cow palace after not missing a state tournament in 25 years they are now done with it. They said they were announcing one mat only on the online matches. So you might be watching d2 but they were announcing a/aa and vice versa. Can they not get announcers for each division online? Its truly sad that our kids cant get the best possible experience.

The problem is a lot if the kids only know the cow palace. Let the coaches vote that experienced the tournaments when they were exciting. Yesterday was the most boring , lack luster event I have ever seen. It's a shame how far the tournament has fallen.

The a/aa wasn't very competitive to watch. There were state champs and finalist who wouldn't have even placed in any of the other divisions. I'm not going to say names but I've seen them get destroyed this year by kids who didn't place in the other divisions. The bad part is there are some who can compete no matter what division and they won't get the credit they deserve. The Mullins, Boatman, Evans, ect.. We just don't have the population, depth of talent and coaching and support to warrant three divisions. Will it make the sport grow? I think the sport will grow but it's going to take a long time ( 10+ years) to see any improvement .

exactly!! and most importantly it is boring and there is no energy! Its not about making money, it should be about whats best for the kids!

yes I liked the idea, it just needs some tweaking. There were huge major flaws though. 1) you cant run all three and make it and exciting product. 2) do a division at a time, have the kids come out of the smoke and jog down and shake hands as the spotlight follows them. You can read their bios ( which was totally forgotten)as they do this. the way it was ran the announcer couldnt keep up. No bios were read, wresrtlers werent even announced most of the time, a few winners were announced but not many because they were too busy trying to call wrestlers down to stage for awards or give out awards.

no, location is a huge part of the problem. The workers all bust their butts and do a great job other than the planning portion by the Tssaa. The gym is just not condusive to holding a tournament of this importance.

Ezra Taylor just got hosed . The ref assisting was all the way on the other side of the mat daydreaming and said time was out . He didn't have a clue a match was even going on

Hey he just announced on of the winners atleast

He did it again, please learn when your opponent is trying to make you look like you are stalling. Now he called it on the other guy.