FalconWrestling

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Posts posted by FalconWrestling

  2. Posted · Report reply

    2 hours ago, coachteater said:

    2 schools stand out to me as prime locations to start wrestling Mercer Co and Clark Co. 

    Both have great athletic programs. would have the whole county feeding in,making it easy to build a feeder program.

    Mercer has 4 counties that border it with wrestling, and 10 counties with in 2 counties with wrestling.  

    Clark has 4 counties that wrestle bordering them, and 9 with in 2 counties. 

    I think Shelby Co would be great too. 5 counties that touch them have wrestling, and 9 with in 2 counties, more if you could Indiana schools. Thst a prime spot in the middle of great wrestling with no program.

    This gives you competition close to home and keep travel cost down. That's a big thing as you start a program. It also provides you and opportunity to find coaches from the area. Often it's hard to start new programs because if there was no wrestling near by, theres no coaches around. 

    I think you need to expand by working your way out from the highest concentration of wrestling. Think that's why it's hard to get started at say Warren co. There is no program with 1 county from them and only 1 program 2 counties away. They would have to travel far for every event, plus find coaches willing to move there to start the program. You may find a head coach, but then you have no pool of ex wrestlers there to find assistants. Makes it much tougher. 

    Excellent point on needing to be near other existing programs. I competed in Region 1 and I know the long bus drives aren’t something every AD is willing to invest in. A lot of programs closer to that southwestern corner of the state such as Lyon County don’t have programs. UHA’s program was one that had a flash in the pan of success but then died out very fast.

     

    1 hour ago, cmccoy said:

    I agree that we need to work to add programs but right now our focus needs to be on getting open coaching positions filled so we don't lose those programs. With a little over a month from starting we still have several schools with no coach including Doss, Hopkinsville, North Oldham, Thomas Nelson, and I am sure there are others.

    You’re not going to hear me argue about the need to find qualified head coaches. I believe Hopkinsville found a head coach? I may be mistaken. Paducah Tilghman is still looking for a coach to my knowledge.

     

    I agree with the idea that if the AD’s won’t advertise these positions properly then we should do so ourselves. Especially in Louisville we should be seeking coaches from across the river

  3. Posted · Report reply

    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.

  8. Posted · Report reply

    McCloud was one of Damoreon Travis's few losses this past season, blast doubled Damoreon to his back and pinned him. A very impressive wrestler and I'm happy to see he won the state title, didn't know he started out at Holmes, a true testament to his ability and the abilities of all of his coaches that he could win an Ohio D1 state title with relatively few years of wrestling. 

    • Upvote 1

  11. Posted · Report reply

    Ok I've been trying and failing to clear those quotes for awhile but for some reason it won't let me

    I know why the wrestler was ejected, I witnessed it, I will say that the situation was handled properly and that includes how his coaches treated the situation. The wrestler was a first year wrestler and while I don't want to say that excuses his actions it does provide some context. It was an after the match event that occurred involving unsportsmanlike actions by the wrestler in question.

    Now the real issue is that these points were not properly deducted from the team score per my interpretation of the rules. Of course in the end it had little say on the team race, we would hope such issues don't arise in the future

    On 2/19/2018 at 5:09 PM, Josh_Claywell said:
    6 hours ago, tja said:

     

    10 hours ago, halfhalfhalf said:

     

  17. Posted · Report reply

    4 hours ago, DrBaker said:

    He had only 1 loss. People in west Ky knew who he was. 

    He will hate me putting him on the spot like this but at the start of the tournament Tyler Nikolao (former Fort Campbell state qualifier, one of David Nikolao's many brothers) came up to me and told me flat out that David Woods was going to win the state title and he would put money on it if he could. I laughed and shook my head at him at the time but he was right.

  18. Posted · Report reply

    14- Saul Ervin, 138
    13- Trent Johnson, 145
    12- Ryan Moore, 132
    11- Kairus Washington, 285
    10- Mason Smith, 170
    9- Damoreon Travis, 220
    8- Zane Brown, 152
    7- Derrick Smallwood, 160
    6- Diion Leavell, 182
    5- Ben Deprest, 195
    4- Sam Bacon, 126
    3- Brandon Miller, 113
    2- Preston Mattingly, 120
    1- Isham Peace, 106
    Dark Horse- Devon Herron, 106 NR
    Team Tiebreaker- Union County 170.5
     

  19. Posted · Report reply

    In regards to refs there have only been a handful of times I have been truly mad at refs this year. I've come to accept that judgement calls will always be judgement calls but in regards to missed calls this generation of refs we have coming up are very open to communication with coaches and I make a point to only discuss judgement calls after a match is over to either gauge their opinion or see if they recognize they missed a call in a constructive manner.

    The only things that have made me angry are examples of refs letting things get out of control including one example that I won't really discuss much of since I've already gone through the proper channels about it but the ref blew a call and rather than go through the correct process to rectify the situation tried to shift the gravity of the situation on to the coaches rather than have the guts to make the call themselves. I can understand a ref stonewalling me but a ref turning to me and going "well coach I guess I will let you decide what I do here" (paraphrasing, not the exact quote) is out of line

  25. Posted · Report reply

    13 minutes ago, enthusiast said:

     Who are the individual hammers that will represent the out of state teams? I would love to watch our top studs versus the Ohio studs. 

    Jordan Ward from Moeller, he might be at 138 this weekend but he's 5th at 132.

    edit- Unless he's at Ironman?