Are there to many weight classes

[ru4mocs]

After all the talk ............. the answer to the question "Are there too many weight classes?"

 

No

[relentless]

There should be 10 weight classes like they do in college. They should up the 103 to like 110. 215 should be 225. Heavyweight should be unlimited again. Dream2achieve you are right they need to eliminate weight classes, we have talked about this, forfeits are killing the sport.

[noonesfool]

There should be 10 weight classes like they do in college. They should up the 103 to like 110. 215 should be 225. Heavyweight should be unlimited again. Dream2achieve you are right they need to eliminate weight classes, we have talked about this, forfeits are killing the sport.

 

Did the program you wrestle for couldn't fill it's weight classes? If so, what team did you wrestle for? That could be your answer concerning where your take is from. Also what is your expertise or lack of expertise in filling weight classes? Rather than being so emphatic about cutting classes wouldn't it be better to have a dialogue with coaches and wrestlers who come from programs 2 and 3 deep or always have every weight covered.

 

Easiest thing to do is fill the weights, toughest thing to do is developing winning wrestlers across the whole team.

Once a systemic system is in (wrestling style, at least middle school up, and developing a community buy in) that is community oriented you will find this is the best way to eventually fill the weights.

 

Finally if we cut to 10 weights and you can't fill those, do we cut to 8?

[relentless]

The program I came from we won the league my freshman year. That is the only time we did and we had every weight class filled. Everyone on the team bought into the coaches philosophy. We did not have community support back then. I think we need to have bingo halls support wrestling programs. That would fund non faculty coaches full time all year around. We need no restrictions on wrestling in the offseason period. That is my oponion, you know what they say about that oponions are like ######s everyone has one.

[perfessor]

After all the talk ............. the answer to the question "Are there too many weight classes?"

 

No

 

 

"No" may be your answer, but mine is "yes".

 

I wasn't going to comment on this topic because the last time I did, I was met with rude, mean-spirited opposition that was completely unjustified because I was simply stating an opinion. And that opinion was that maybe we should think about a modest reduction in the number of weight classes.

 

Let me just say right now, if you don't like "long-winded" posts or "diatribes", just click off of this right now and try to keep your mean comments to yourself. As I have said before, to make a point you must use words and sentences, and I will never make a post on here unless I feel that it has been adequately stated.

 

And I will also first say that these comments are presented only to give everyone some points to think about. I am not married to the idea that we need less weight classes, but I do believe that it may be worth trying at this time. The only thing I know for sure is that I don't know anything for sure, so I'm not trying to come across as the person with the answer to all of our problems.

 

But yesterday, I took my team (with 14 weight classes filled) to a duals tournament that included five other teams. Of those other teams, one had 13 classes filled, one had seven, two had six, and one had four. If you do the math, you will see that of 70 individual match opportunities, we received 34 forfeits! 34!!!

 

To me, the trip was worth it because we got to wrestle some good individuals from another state, and the team with 13 kids is very good (they beat us). But my kids were a little frustrated, making weight for this (it was one pound over scratch there) while a couple of them got only one match all day. Some of them didn't even get a good workout.

 

You can't blame these coaches for the low participation in their programs. In fact, the coach of the team with four kids is in his first year at his school, and he is starting a program from scratch. There are new programs in our region, so we know that there are people out there trying to "grow the sport". But those new programs are hard to get off the ground for many reasons, not the least of which is getting kids out. People have posted on here that it has to do with the coach's attitude or personality or whatever, and that may be true in some small way. But I feel that there are some institutional problems here, not the least of which is maybe too many weight classes.

 

You can say what you want, but I see way too many forfeits out there. And I'm not talking about strategic forfeiting. I'm talking about lack of participation forfeiting.

 

You train and train and train, watch your diet, go to bed at night instead of staying up playing video games, and you end up getting forfeit wins. Some kids are glad to just get a win, but the ones who work hard want to wrestle. Coaches try to increase attendance at home matches, but a lot of casual spectators who show up are turned off because first, they don't understand scoring and the conduct of matches (a major problem in my opinion) and secondly, they sometimes see a dual meet that is over in 20 minutes and has been a seemingly endless parade of hand-raising with little wrestling action at all. They think "This is it? What a waste of time and money!"

 

Some people have posted that wrestling is the sixth most popular sport in terms of participation. Yeah, sixth out of ten. And if your reply to that is "Yeah, but they only listed the top ten", then I say what's left? Golf is there. Soccer is there, above wrestling. What's left? Field hockey?

 

And as for those who cite the growing numbers of wrestling participants, think about this. Isn't participation growing now in nearly all if not all sports? I believe the answer is yes, and this could be attributed to general population growth. The bottom line is you can find statistics to back up your argument, no matter if it's right or wrong.

 

We rarely have trouble fielding full teams at my school. And I know of programs around the state with fifty or more kids. We wrestled in a tournament with a school from Georgia with nearly ninety participants! Am I saying limit the opportunities for all but 15 or 20 of those kids? Certainly not. This is what JV is for. The way I see it, competition is a good thing not only among teams but within teams. Let the kids compete for the starting spots, and the cream will rise to the top. The quality of the wrestling would increase with actual depth within a wrestling team and it might help to improve practice attendance if your kids are being pushed by someone for their spot. I know I don't have 14 elite wrestlers who can compete with anybody out there. Anybody who knows me knows that is the case. In fact, for some coaches, if they are lucky enough to have a kid to fill a spot, that kid pretty much becomes just that: filler. You have to work with that kid and help him get better, but when he has 30 matches and gets pinned 30 times, he may not come back next year. Then you don't even have the filler and you have to forfeit.

 

If you have 50 kids in your program, look down that roster and ask yourself how many quality kids you have. How many of those kids could wrestle with just about anybody and compete? For those of us with 20 kids or less (and those, also like me, who are average coaches at best), you just don't feel real good about yourself when you put a beginner or otherwise not very good kid out there with an elite wrestler. Then that elite wrestler goes out and builds a big lead by taking down and cutting, taking down and cutting, or just comes out and tackles the kid and pins him in seven seconds. Now I know that's going to happen no matter what, but it would naturally happen less with less weight classes. And you would have less kids in over their heads quit because they think they can't compete or because of the humiliation in front of family or friends. How's the sport going to grow like that? These beginners need to get experience just like any kid in any other sport that fields freshman and JV teams. For those of you fond of comparisons with other sports, do you want to see a football game featuring a quarterback who just picked up a football for the first time last week? Less weight classes equals more JV opportunities for kids with less than outstanding abilities.

 

As far as the feeder program argument, that's just not possible in some places. I work in a rural county school, where there are just no resources for nor interest in wrestling. What little youth program we have is run by my assistant and myself, and we used to do okay back when the AAU season was in the spring. But since they moved the tournaments back into the high school season, we've been hurting. Last year, two of the tournaments we could take our kids to were canceled at the last minute. Yeah, most of those schools with 50-60 kids have great youth programs, but they also have full-time coaches and facilities with which to work with those kids. Those programs are wonderful and I love what they're doing, but most of us don't have those opportunities.

 

And finally, there are those who say a reduction in classes would sound the death knell for our great sport. That it will be the beginning of the end, that little by little high school wrestling will evaporate from that point and eventually cease to exist. Who says a reduction in the number of weight divisions is etched in stone, permanent, or otherwise never to be amended? If we can reduce them now, we can increase them later. You gotta do what you gotta do when you gotta do it. Right now, most (I dare say) wrestling programs in this state have less than a full roster. If we have less classes, say maybe 12, for at least a little while, my hope is that participation and attendance and the overall quality of wrestling in Tennessee will improve. Then we can bump it back up to 14, or maybe 16, or even 18 or 20 weight classes!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahem. Sorry, got a little excited there.

 

Wrestling is not going to die as long as there are people out there like you and me. Even if we continue for years to come on our present course (which, again, is alright by me), we'll continue to get the kids out that we've been getting out and their parents will support us and our school boards and directors will let us have whatever they've been giving us. But there are programs, unfortunately, that will fall by the wayside because the coach moves on to another job or gives up wrestling because it's become too much of a strain for the money or because nobody's showing up at the first of November to wrestle. The coaches are the ones who make it happen and as long as we're here, there will be wrestling.

 

Overall, I myself (and there are many who may dispute this) have observed a decline in the popularity of wrestling. We always get second dibs on the gym, no media coverage, and far less respect around the school than we should. And I personally feel that there are many things that could be done to make the sport more fan friendly and broaden its appeal. I will live with what we have for as long as we have it, but I will at least be open to any changes that come along. And the one thing right now I'd like to see is how the NFHS would align new weight classes. I might not agree with it in the end, but I really think this is something worth looking at.

 

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten."

[maj]

There should be 10 weight classes like they do in college. They should up the 103 to like 110. 215 should be 225. Heavyweight should be unlimited again. Dream2achieve you are right they need to eliminate weight classes, we have talked about this, forfeits are killing the sport.

 

 

No insult intended but have you given ANY thought to your post ? College wrestling is dying and you want to emulate them at the high school level? How smart is that ?? 10 weight classes is not enough for college. It should be 12 and there should be 10 for international. There should be a 118 or something close and a 225 or 230 in college. Forfeits are not killing the sport, feminists and apathy are. I really couldn't care less about the heavy weight going back to unlimited though I sure as he!! wouldn't want to be refereeing between two Chris Taylor types.

[2blLeg]

Maybe the answer should be that the smaller schools should go one route. But I know that the bigger schools are having no problems filling 14 spots, and many are 2 and 3 deep at quite a few of those spots. So reducing their chances down, does nothing but lessen the sport. And that is the last thing that needs to happen right now.

 

Feeder programs are the answer, so if you are having trouble filling those spots, build a feeder program and many of those issue will go away. If you don't like going to tournaments with that many forfeits, my suggestion would be to be a bit picker about which tournaments you attend. I know our coach is great at picking the best tournaments available and we see very few forfeits. This includes our local duals.

[maj]

Maybe the answer should be that the smaller schools should go one route. But I know that the bigger schools are having no problems filling 14 spots, and many are 2 and 3 deep at quite a few of those spots. So reducing their chances down, does nothing but lessen the sport. And that is the last thing that needs to happen right now.

 

Feeder programs are the answer, so if you are having trouble filling those spots, build a feeder program and many of those issue will go away. If you don't like going to tournaments with that many forfeits, my suggestion would be to be a bit picker about which tournaments you attend. I know our coach is great at picking the best tournaments available and we see very few forfeits. This includes our local duals.

 

 

I agree with you , feeder programs are the answer. Whether or not we need to go small school / big school at individual states is another topic. Some of the teams forfeiting the most weight classes are among the largest schools in the state so this is not a big school vs small school issue.

[2blLeg]

I agree with you , feeder programs are the answer. Whether or not we need to go small school / big school at individual states is another topic. Some of the teams forfeiting the most weight classes are among the largest schools in the state so this is not a big school vs small school issue.

 

 

Actually, I was being a bit of a smart-alec; I really don't feel that way. I was pretty much picking on the whole idea of why we had a split in the state in the first place. People complain about what they can't do, instead of figuring out how to fix the problem.

 

To me, build the sport. Don't break it down even further that it already is. I would actually like to see a few more classes added and some moved around a bit. I personally would love to see something put in between 215 and 285. Maybe moving 215 down to 210 (or 208) and adding in 225-230.

[MVM]

No insult intended but have you given ANY thought to your post ? College wrestling is dying and you want to emulate them at the high school level? How smart is that ?? 10 weight classes is not enough for college. It should be 12 and there should be 10 for international. There should be a 118 or something close and a 225 or 230 in college. Forfeits are not killing the sport, feminists and apathy are. I really couldn't care less about the heavy weight going back to unlimited though I sure as he!! wouldn't want to be refereeing between two Chris Taylor types.

 

maj....feminist are killing the sport??? /blink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":blink:" border="0" alt="blink.gif" />

[maj]

maj....feminist are killing the sport??? /blink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":blink:" border="0" alt="blink.gif" />

 

 

Does the phrase " title ix " ring any bells with you ?

 

I suspect there is a direct link between the decline in college oportunity for wrestlers to continue their sport and lack of participation at many high schools. Do you not think it at least probable wrestling in the Knoxville area might be just a little stronger if UT ( along with the rest of the South East Cowards ) still had a wrestling program ?

[MVM]

Does the phrase " title ix " ring any bells with you ?

 

I suspect there is a direct link between the decline in college oportunity for wrestlers to continue their sport and lack of participation at many high schools. Do you not think it at least probable wrestling in the Knoxville area might be just a little stronger if UT ( along with the rest of the South East Cowards ) still had a wrestling program ?

 

Yes Title 9 "rings a bell" but you didn't make that clear in your earlier post. And I thought you were trying to imply that mamma's didn't want their baby boys to wrestle now days. /roflol.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":roflol:" border="0" alt="roflol.gif" />

 

Now to your comment.. "Do you not think it at least probable wrestling in the Knoxville area might be just a little stronger if UT still had a wrestling program ?" My answer would be no. Kids play sports because they want to play the sport, not because some college has a program in that sport.