FalconWrestling

From my understanding Indiana had to do set up their brackets that way to counteract the old rule of bye's not counting for team points. But a couple years ago it was changed that byes can be used to score points if the wrestler wins their next match. As it currently stands Indiana tournaments I have been to can be kind of ridiculous having wrestlers down on the mat in full gear to "collect a forfeit" rather than getting a bye

We are currently down to Five Middle School/Youth Programs for all of Louisville

Ya I'm going to assume a lot of these don't ok for weight drops. Maria Martinez from Moore is currently at 132, may go down to 126 and Emili Aguilar has been out injured most of the year unfortunately

He’s not there

Hanson won’t be eligible this year to my understanding but Kulmer should be back soon. He had a pretty unsettling injury while weight lifting that has kept him out for awhile

Since Cornell is Ivy League and unable to redshirt they do what is called a "Grey Shirt" You will be able to find Ryan's results if you look for the Finger Lakes Wrestling Club. Mason may be at the Prep Academy

I'm glad I think people leave me alone about doing Region 1 these days. Apollo looks pretty set on top of Region 2, nice to see North Hardin start to come back

Jo-el Hatchett picked up a win over Carson Deckard at 145

I don't think Hanson is eligible this year Lenhart and Lawrence are on the rosters now

Jon and I are from around the same time frame, early 2010’s. I think he just posts his link and high tails it out of here. He’s still up in Cleveland to my knowledge

Garrison is from the school which shall not be named haha I'm a John Carroll grad, he's a Mount Union grad

I'm a big numbers guy, I watch the addition and dropping of programs at all levels like a hawk and I feel there is nothing more damaging to the sport than dropped programs. Based off of the statistics I last saw- Wrestling is the second most dropped program in the country after Cross Country, and wrestling has dropped from the fifth most popular Boy's Sport to I'd estimate about the 6th or 7th. Note I don't want to turn this into a Title IX bashing fest since I feel that is where conversations have been steered towards in the past and I think history has shown us that it's a losing battle that at the end of the day isn't really the true source of our problems. Now I am aware of issues that affect Kentucky in regards to adding programs but I do feel that if there was a concentrated community effort to actually try and add programs we would see results. In the time I've spent watching wrestling getting discussed I feel a lot of us have sat on our hands, myself included. The past two years especially I've tried to reach out and get programs started in the Louisville area but so far I have seen nothing in the form of results, hence I am posting in here in an effort to increase the quantity of the voices speaking out and hopefully younger guys willing to take over and lead a program. It doesn't always have to be a Kentucky guy, we can reach out across the border to Indiana and Ohio and try to attract candidates there as well, they would be willing to make the jump if they felt the support was there. Arkansas had a powerful voice speaking out in Pat Smith to help grow the sport there and you can see it slowly starting to come to fruition and I hope to find a similar effort started here. Really at this point what do we have to lose? I'm going to offer some schools in the Louisville area I feel could have successful wrestling programs first then some programs around the state I think could be successful. Louisville 1. Butler Butler is already a powerhouse in most sports and have the tools necessary to succeed as a wrestling program. I kind of had the door shut in my face when I offered to start a wrestling program at Butler but the chance of having a successful program in that part of Louisville is too beneficial to the state of Louisville wrestling to pass up. 2. Louisville Collegiate A powerhouse in soccer with the resources to be competitive even if the enrollment size is probably too small to be an actual powerhouse 3. Eastern Every day that I am reminded that the legendary Eastern program has been shuttered hurts. I did have the door shut in my face here as well but there has to be a build up of alumni support to get the ball rolling here. 4. Ballard Not as well remembered as Eastern's program but Ballard has the potential to be a successful program if restarted 5. Christian-Academy Louisville A small school football powerhouse with resources to spare, honestly should be higher on this last. With the right coach in place could be a state powerhouse. Rest of State 1. Fort Thomas Highlands High School 2. Bowling Green High School 3. South Warren High School 4. Franklin-Simpson High School 4. Pulaski County High School 5. Muhlenberg County High School 6. Warren Central High School 7. Madisonville North-Hopkins High School 8. Campbellsville High School 9. Graves County 10. Rockcastle County With this list I mostly looked around the state for top level athletics programs that I have felt before would be successful in wrestling. Since most of these are in parts of the state I don't really have that much knowledge outside of say Graves County I wasn't able to provide a write up like I could for Louisville. If anyone has knowledge or beliefs that these are good targets for programs or that better ones exist speak up. If we agree on programs on this list start up dialogues with administrations and Athletic Directors, find out what we need to do as a community to get programs started in these places. It is better that we try to get programs started and fail than to never try and wonder what if. For the record going off of KHSAA Coaching Listings Kentucky has around 247 Cross Country Programs 95 Bowling Programs 107 Bass Fishing Programs 162 Archery Programs 250 Baseball Programs 272 Basketball Programs 237 Golf Programs 194 Soccer Programs 131 Swimming Programs 203 Tennis Programs 243 Track Programs 220 Football Programs But only around 97 Wrestling Programs. For Boys Sports, Wrestling in Kentucky is only two spots from the bottom slot held by Bowling. I don't know about any of you, but that number doesn't sit well in my stomach. We have to try something.

Could've sworn he was in 6th grade when I first met him, might be mixing him up with Simon

I’m pretty sure Jude Powell is a freshman at Fairdale this year

They don't have a wrestling team to my knowledge

Looks like Holy Cross in Louisville needs a coach but Paducah Tilghman thankfully got filled

The attendance frustrated me as well, we were in the middle of the largest city in Kentucky, we gotta do better. I am frustrated with myself as well since I had told so many people in our community about the event and none of the students who gave me an affirmative showed up, no teachers showed up, and a huge chunk of our team didn't even show up what could I have done differently to get them there? So I get it, it's hard to get people to come out from your school community but I'm always trying to come up with ideas to get more people out, it could be an issue of we need to push more marketing.on our end. Wrestling, in my opinion, is a very poorly marketed sport at all levels and we gotta do what we can as fans, coaches, parents, wrestlers, etc to fix that. I've got about 50 billion ideas floating in my head in how to improve "marketing" for the sport but there's always room for more ideas

To make it really simple you're going to want to be in the main parking lot which is behind the school, follow the road on the right going around the school and bam you're there, no problem.

Got eat some sandwiches at Melt for me

As someone who has a personal history involving Calloway County I am well aware they have a program. Didn't know about this history involving Murray and their school board however. I have no issue bringing more women into the sport myself

So a big call to action in my mind would be to start reaching out to listed schools, especially the ones in green and yellow and inquire about wrestling programs. I've had little luck myself in Louisville but I am notoriously prickly

The way I’d start programs in Bowling Green would be to come in and take over a huge gym facility and create the “Bowling Green Wrestling Club K-8” Get have groups of kids coming in from all over Bowling Green, start with inter team competition before taking them out to competitions throughout the state. As these kids start to hit different high schools in Bowling Green there will be parental pressure on the AD’s to create programs. At this point we almost need a committee of coaches going around to different AD’s, matching them up with potential coaches, and helping them get programs off the ground

Did I include them? I know that program. That's an oversight on my part your eyes start to cross when looking at district maps and school addresses for a couple hours There was talk at U of L which from my understanding apparently fell through to nothing a couple years ago. A lot of people in Kentucky I guess feel that the correct way to create pressure on a college is through starting a club team which through my understanding has never actually created a D1 program. At the same time we can't hold ourselves entirely at fault, D1 programs aren't being created anywhere

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1q0q8axR7-FG_RWNAmp_I-yyxmcr1uGWFgzfYwvcwW3A/edit#gid=0 Here is the first draft

So far I'm setting up a Google Spread Sheet with as many high schools I can find more or less grouped by probable region (would need some rebalancing). I'm color coding each school Green- Is in a county that already has a wrestling program or has recently had a wrestling program within the past 10 or so years Yellow- Borders a County with wrestling Red- Borders no counties with wrestling I included the football classification for size when I could and estimated when it was a school without a football team to get an idea of the size of the school, if we think it would be better to have just flat enrollment numbers we can alter that. Ideally this spreadsheet can then be used to reach out to AD's and start to determine which schools are open to the idea of starting programs and then hopefully as a state we come together and work on finding potential coaching staffs, I've honestly been debating creating a list of former wrestlers in the Kentucky area with coaching potential for awhile.