TSSAA Proposals.....

[deadlift]

I believe we will have plenty of HS coaches that will continue to work with off season clubs and National teams for the right reasons. Guys that will help anyone get better without worrying about how the process helps or hurts recruiting.

[durdon]

I don't think our HS coaches are going to have a choice after this rule goes into affect. My guess is that the vast majority of AD's and school districts are going to ban all of their TSSAA coaches and trainers from having any contact with kids who are not enrolled in their program including helping with club teams and travel teams. This isn't just wrestling, you have to remember HS have a multitude of sports and a ton of coaches so for them to regulate their contact with students will be extremely hard so they are just going to move to a blanket no contact system.

 

Even if the AD's and school districts don't ban this activity, the HS coaches are going to have to stop coaching those teams. It simply puts them at to much of a competitive disadvantage.

 

Kids transferring schools isn't going to be slowed down at all by this new rule and in fact I think it will continue to increase year after year even if the high schools have zero contact with kids outside of their program. In every sport all of the high level to midlevel kids all know each other from camps, travel teams, training centers, and all of the kids and parents today are extremely well networked together. At some point in every kids high school career, they and their parents will get frustrated with coach, school or program and in today's society when you don't like the situation you just jump ship. Parents have a ton of other parents to reach out to when they are unhappy and those parents will try to pull their kid into their kids program. Plus, so many of the high level kids are used to playing on very competitive club and travel teams that are very successful and if they get into a high school program that starts not to be successful they are going to want to find a better program. The days of high level kids staying in programs that falter is over. This is the by product of specialization of all sports where you have high level competitive travel teams for 8u kids now. Parents are investing to much time, money and effort in their kids today to not have them achieve the high level success they expect in HS.

 

The other trend you are going to see is in every HS sport, is more and more of the top level kids coalescing around a few top programs. It is another offshoot of the travel teams where top kids and parents travel together for years during their youth and middle school days and then they are all naturally drawn to all compete together on the same HS team.

[deadlift]

I guess some coaches and AD's that are looking/hoping for transfers could have the reaction you speak of. I think you will still have a lot of competitive programs that build their kids from the ground up. Programs that will win and take pride in the fact they won with homegrown kids.

[rgiii]

Geeze.. Does this Durdon guy even have a kid or ever had a kid compete in high school wrestling? He sure has a lot of answers for someone with 0 experience. Here is my opinion for what it's worth. I don't think this affects anything . In all honesty some of our best coaches in the state are club coaches. There aren't many high school coaches running club practices and the few dedicated ones that do it are doing it to benefit their programs and not using it to recruit other schools kids. Those coaches will not stop running clubs nor will their AD make them because their goal is to make their existing teams better. If they allow kids from other teams to participate will be up to them but if those kids decide to transfer then they will do it knowing they may have to sit out a year. I agree , the rule is probably geared towards other sports but don't think for a minute there aren't a few wrestling teams it's also geared towards. The bigger , more pressing question will be if they move the public schools with open zoning and the ones that allow you to attend their school from another school zone if you pay some form of tuition to div II. Look at how that would have changed the landscape of Tennessee wrestling over the last few years from both a team and individual perspective.