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You guys have too much time on your hands. I might be interested though if some of the D&L representatives will be rasslin too. /roflolk.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":roflolk:" border="0" alt="roflolk.gif" />

It's good to hear from you to Sherrock. I know what you are saying about my life is changed. Seems like all I do now when I get home from work is change diapers and make goofy noises I never thought I would make. Like you said though its all worth it. Wish I could come around the team more often but I work in Franklin so its hard to get by. I follow through the message boards though. It satisfies the itch some. Why don't you do the web site anymore? Not enough time? By the way, I'm another that can vouch that CHS practices are just as intense as any collegiate practice I went to.

So I'm not hiding behind an alias this is Michael Hampton and I wrestled for CHS back in the mid to late 90s and even back then Kenwood was always a team you had to be on your toes for. They had a lot of scrappy athletes that could hang in there and catch you "off guard" every once in a while. Unfortunately for Kenwood, Coach Jordan or Coach Cobb never let us get caught "off guard". Kenwood may pull off an upset but it won't be because CHS isn't ready, trust me. History tells us (many CHS victories to Kenwood's one victory) that CHS will be ready for the scrappy athletes and their "new school" approach. I'll just say this, I'm not around the team much anymore because I'm old, washed up and have my own kid now to take care of. (Can't wait until he is old enough to hit the mats. I would put him out there now but his mom thinks its a little much for a 4 week old. I guess she has a point since he can barely hold his head up on his own.) As for old school versus new school. Finance (new school) can be fun to watch and impressive but in the end the basics (old school) always wins. I.E. Bradley and Ryan will always ride legs, Soddy will always beat you with takedowns, MBA will always ride wrists, Baylor will lull you to sleep with unorthodox style, and Clarksville High will always beat you with power wrestling. Its just how it is. I come back every year for the State Duals and it never changes. That is what works for those teams and they stick with it. Their track records speak for themselves. Kenwood has a whole lot of "we almost beat x" and "if we would have had just a little different match up" but how often do they say "we beat x" or better yet. "in x year we won x championship". Just a little more advice from the Jordan camp. There are no excuses you either win or you lose the rest is just details. Oh and we can never forget "To be extraordinary you have to do extraordinary things."

I don't know enough about all the regions to place them in order of strenght. I just wanted to let you know that Clarksville is the region 9 champion.

ddb I respectfully disagree with you and here it why. Winning the Dual tournament and the Tradtional tournament takes a whole different strategy. Now I admit the majority of the years the same team wins both but for the past 2 years that hasn't been true. ('05 Franklin/Brad, '06 Brad/Soddy). Winning the state duals takes a much deeper team, a lot of times a back up is asked to wrestle and perform a job so that the starter can be matched up against another weight in an effort to get a point swing. The traditional tournament you have to qualify and certify for. You can't move people around and the tournament is won a lot of times in the consolation rounds. My point, I'm not sure I'm backing it up well, it takes a different strategy and different team to win the duals than it does to win the traditoinal. If your team is able to do both in the same year than by all means claim both titles.

The Advair Discus was definetly a great addition to the Asthma medication line. I wish it was around when I wrestled as well. I'm training for the Country Music Marathon now. I take Advair once a day every morning. My cardio on my runs is never a problem. Currently I'm up to 19 miles moving to 21 miles next week. I just wish I could get the endurance in my legs to perform as well as I do cardio wise. I would also like to say that wrestling and the many other sports and activities I did only helped my Asthma. Ironically enough exercise decreased my excercise induced Asthma attacks.

I wrestled with asthma and all I can say is this is a great post. I would also like to secong the inhaler suggestion for sure. If you wait to your shortness of breath begins it will probably be too late. I used to take mine ideally 5 to 10 minutes before my match but no more than 15 minutes before. This was suggested by my phyician and it seemed to work very well. I also tried to do extra cardio work.

CB, I agree with you that the kids don't need to miss days of school, I not a teach so I don't know the struggles of preparing for a sub, and would love to see the medal matches back in McClellan for old time sake. However, do you think eveybody would fit in McClellan with D1 and D2 together? Honest question because I don't know. If so I say that is the idea. I guess ESPN pays more than the TSSAA though huh?

I mostly just read these posts to keep up with what is going on. I read them with a light eye conideing I typically don't know the source of the information and only very rarely to I post or reply. Typically when I post I am looking for the answer to a question that I couldn't already find posted. However, something urged me to post me opinion here. At one time I was one of those that said the polls don't really matter. The only thing that matters is the end. As I read these boards though I've become convinced that is only half true. Yes, the wrestlers with much rather win the state tournament, whether it is the Duals, Traditional Team, or Individual, than be ranked first in a poll. Although, I would bet a lot of money that if you walked into any wrestling room in the state those kids are talking about where their team and they are individually ranked in the polls. If not things have drastically changed since I was wrestling in high school and even college. The polls matter to the kids and isn't that what this whole thing is all about anyway. Not parents, coaches, or old has beens (myself not Mr. Killian) to sit around and talk about on a message board. With that said I agree with BayouBear, if we are going to split for competition, split for the polls too.

Didn't Farther Ryan and Clarksville wrestle last night at CHS? If so does anybody know the result?

I hope this gets corrected as well. I don't know Daniel Crosby but I do know Jason Pennington very well. Jason had the utmost respect for Daniel and he deserves his two time medal. I'm not sure there has been a span of year's where the heavyweight division has been as competitive as those years Crosby won. Jason and Brugal were both top notch competition. If I remember correctly Brugal was there again in 2003 and finished 3rd losing to Jason in the semi finals. I also think that Crosby and Pennington's match was the best heavyweight match ever. Didn't it go into sudden death overtime? Both of those guys were fighting with everything they had.

RMC, How awesome it must be to be part of a program that big. That is great. I know you probably receive great money from the school system too. You must have some pretty awesome parents to be able to keep a program like that going. Koodoos.

I think the key is getting them as many matches as possible. That way they don't feel like practice dummies. I was lucky enough to be part of one of the top programs in the state. I was a starter but I know without any one of our 2nds we couldn't have done as well as we did. Our coach continuously found ways to get them in the line up. In fact he wasn't even scared to put them up against top knotch competition because he new that they could probably be starters at many other schools and they practice the same as us so they were prepared. I can't ever think of a time that it backfired against us either. When it came time for the state duals some of those seconds even got matches then as well. Coach knew they were prepared. Again it did not backfire on us. We didn't win the duals but I don't think we could have done any better than we did. Also I don't ever remember calling anybody JV. We didn't view them as JV just because they weren't the starter. You were either varsity or freshman. However, if you had certain goals that had to be achieved to earn a varsity letter. Again, I can't remember a time that the non-starters didn't acheive those goals and they were not easy goals either.

BayouBear, I agree, when I was wrestling all I cared about is being a state champ. In fact the disappointment that set in when I lost in the quarterfinals in overtime to the eventual third place medalist might have kept me from placing. (At least it makes me feel better to tell myself that anyway). Looking back on it now. 6th place would have been terrific.

texas23, How can you turn someone's compliment about another coach into a dig on another program? He didn't say anything specific about Bradley Central he just said congratualtions for taking on all the competition. Two things, 1. Everything is not about Bradley Central just because Bradley County is mentioned. 2. Stop being so defensive. There are some Bradley Central fans on this board that are just looking for an argument. That is why it is so easy to get you guys going. At least you are passionate.

RegionX, I think ut18vols just answered you questions. This is how it has been for a while now. If you are wondering about the teams people are just speculating. It's fun try it. I think that Walker Valley is going to win Bradley's region. See it's fun.

I would like to see Soms versus Walkenvol. Or Soms versus Bayoubear. Oh, wait maybe Soms versus Rigger101. I believe they are in the same region now aren't they.?

Will was an awesome wrestler but he was also a great football player. How is Ben on the gridiron? Are we looking at another top notch full back that will be playing in Neyland Stadium on Saturday afternoons?

cbg, That is a good start at a solution but needs some work. One state tournament would have been great 10 to 15 years ago but the sport has grown way too much recently and only having 16 wrestlers at state would be entirely unfair. However, splitting public and private isn't how I would split it. Let me say too, that I was wrestling in high school with the uproar. I experienced the 2 week delay of state in '95 when they were trying to decide whether to allow the McCallie wrestlers to participate. As a freshman state qualifier you can only imagine how this tore my nerves up waiting for the tournament to begin. I was also a senior during the 97/98 season when they first split the divisions. I just wanted to state that so you know where I was when this split came about (right in the thick of it). So back to my original point, I would put the divisions back together for the traditional state tournament (leave them separate for the duals). Have two classifications (A/AA). Then go back to the old format of a district tournament feeds a region tournament which would feed the state tournament in the AA division and ultimately 32 participants would qualify for state with 6 medalists. In the A division have only a region tournament that feeds 16 people into the state tournament with 3 medalists. With this scenario we would still only have 2 state champs in each weight class, which is accurate for the size of the sport we have in Tennessee today. Plus we might spark more growth in the small school sector for future teams and more opportunity for kids to experience what we have. Remember other states have 5 and 6 state champions per weight class so 2 isn't bad.

Soms, you love getting the Bradley fans wound up don't you? I know its so easy to do. You would think with all the success the program has had they wouldn't get som defensive about not wrestling private schools.

What I think is another joke is that eveyone wants to critque and dog the rankings but nobody else wants to step up and complete one. Hamm is not God he can't be everywhere and know everything. Keep up the good work Hamm, I think you do a great job.

Did Clarksville wrestle Ooltewah? If so, how did the match go?

Rigger - You have to look at the seating at the State Duals from a positive point of view. It gives you a chance to get closer to you friends and family. In fact, you can get real close. To answer your question, I haven't been to Slamfest in a while but I believe the seating is a little better just because the difference in attendance. I could be wrong though because like I said it's been a couple of years since I've went.

Can't we all just get along? Lucas, just be thankful that Hamm and Cocah Bray take time to put the information they can get their hands on together to fill out a list of rankings. When I wrestled we didn't have such a blessing. I would have loved it. Be realistic about it the magnitude of what the rankings mean and don't take them personally. Besides you keep saying that there are others who deserve it more. Why do they deserve it? All of these kids work hard or they wouldn't have generated enough success to even be considered for the rankings. We all know how physically and mentally demanding the sport is. Just because they have wrestled longer doesn't mean they're better. Keep up the good work Hamm.

Haggard was not a region champion this year consequently he is not eligible to be seeded. He is thrown into the blind draw with qualifiers who have not previously medaled. Landon Hall did not officially receive a 2nd seed he just wound up there in the blind draw since there were not two eligible wrestlers for the seeding in the 171 weight class.