CBender

If you do the hourly math on Carr's monthly group fee, it comes out to about $7-8 / hour, if you attend all of the 3x / week sessions. For the top shelf instructor qualifications, that's a superb group rate (yes, their 1-1 rate is more). If you'd like to compare across sports, try finding a pitching or batting lesson with ex-college players anywhere around Lexington for less than $20 / 30 minutes or $30 / hourly, you won't be very successful. Granted sometimes that's 1-1 instruction, but usually that's the comparable small group rate.

Lexington's coverage is here: http://www.kentucky.com/sports/high-school/article133653294.html It is decent coverage as far as a recap goes, and does include links to a few videos as well as a photo series. Unfortunately it only lists placers down to 5th. They also ran a nice recap of Madison Central's region 7 title last week, which I posted in a previous thread. Where the Lexington-Herald coverage really fell short is by providing absolutely no preview of the event. If I look on their website I can find links to every district bracket for every boys' and girls' basketball tournament in the entire state, rankings for every district in the state, and "what to know heading into the post-season" write-ups for the state, as well as for local and area teams. No preview information was written up for the state wrestling tournament though, on any scale. No links to brackets. No write up about Lexington / surrounding area / Region 7 wrestlers and who they are, and what they might be ranked or trying to achieve. On a state-wide scale, no short bios on kids that might be going for multiple championships or capping great careers. As the paper for the host city, running no previews is unfortunate. Prior to regionals they did do a nice piece on Henry Clay 195 - Ray Karl Irving and his injury / recovery, so I will give them that nod. That article was here: http://www.kentucky.com/sports/high-school/article130444599.html

I'm interested in people's thoughts on the way byes are handled vs.forfeits. My opinion is that these two conditions can and do create some scoring / seeding anomalies, at least at the high school level: 1. Why are tournament byes not given the max team points? No bonus points are allowed for tourney byes, just standard advancement points, but conversely a full 6 points are given to the opposing team for dual forfeits, not 3. In tournaments byes usually go to the higher seeded kids, who then lose an opportunity to score bonus team points, an opportunity the other kids in the bracket that do have matches get. 2. Since overall record is almost always used as a seeding criteria, why do forfeits count toward your record, but byes don't? By the end of the season, this skews in favor of the heavier dual participant. The kid receiving the bye scores team points in the tournament for advancement, but isn't allowed to count it toward his record. The dual participant receiving the forfeit also scores team points in the dual, and does get to count it toward his record. It seems to me that in a true comparison of overall record, you'd either want to use "all matches actually wrestled" for both kids, or "all potential matches, both wrestled and not wrestled' for both kids. Not a mix of the two conditions.

If all events drew byes into a tournament first and randomly as a matter of statewide policy, I believe you would certainly take a significant step to help to minimize the impact of both situations, maybe as well as could be expected within the context of the current NFHS rules. When byes are not random and esp. when they are assigned to seeded wrestlers first, then I have difficulty understanding any "tourney byes don't score max points" argument, or any "forfeits count on your record but byes don't" policy. There is little logical argument to include a non-injury dual forfeit as an achievement of highest merit (a worthy-of-the-record books win by fall), but not treat an assigned tournament bye that results from high seeding similarly, when scoring or when comparing two overall records for seeding purposes.

Bearcats Coach - yuck, I can't say I'd want to watch that, but why not? At one team dual we attended this year, Adam's first 3 matches were forfeits. He went 3-0 and scored a max 18 points for his team. Why shouldn't he get max team points for tourney byes? Coachteater - you're mistaken that this has anything to do with regional team outcomes, so you can abandon your hidden agenda premise. I've had this discussion with people from well back when we were a 1-man team, and couldn't viably participate in dual format events. After attending tournaments exclusively all year long and having 1st round byes in 90% of them, he'd come out of the season with a record 10-15 wins short of everyone else and compare unfavorably with the other low-loss kids that had picked up forfeits all year long. I'm not arguing for or against either system...merely discussing the discrepancy that gets introduced. As for the source, I'm sure it's a national HS rule, that derives from a college rule, that has less impact and thus less discussion merit in wrestling hotbed states with 5x the teams and with more complete rosters / full tournaments on average.

If at a dual and the other team doesn't have a weight or chooses not to send someone out to wrestle, then there's also "no one to wrestle". I am willing to accept that duals handle the situation correctly...but if they do, then tourney byes should get max points and +1 to your record as well. After all, some team at the tournament didn't have one, or chose not to enter whomever they had. Comparing records as a seeding criteria, with forfeits (at least non-injury forfeits) counted and byes excluded, seems to breed an inconsistency.

Herald-Leader / Region 7: http://www.kentucky.com/sports/high-school/article132237409.html

Region 5 - 120 was a 3, yes 3, man bracket yesterday.

RATS! I thought we'd finally found a HVY. Woodford had several kids sit last week to help with dings and dents, yes. One other note on my belief that early exposure is a key to getting kids to stick and ultimately having numbers...not very many kids (under 6'8") pick up a basketball, or a baseball bat and glove, for the first time in their freshman year and end up making their varsity squad by the time they graduate, much less contribute to their team placing in a state event. I would assert that wrestling actually has a shorter learning curve to at least achieving modest competency, and offers more opportunity to late starters than several other sports. And it crosses over very well with several other sports. But if a kid has tried it as a youth or in middle school, then he at least knows what he's turning down when he commits to going another direction with his time. Otherwise, since there's minimal national exposure, it's doubtful he even knows the rules or has seen a live match when he says "sorry, I'm sticking with <some other activity>". If you want a sport that you absolutely cannot compete in at a state level without going year round, take swimming. In any modest sized area you simply will not place in a local three team meet if you don't swim year round. Swimming with a club and maintaining a year round training schedule is table stakes to qualifying for state. Most clubs take 2-4 weeks a year off at most. I'd say qualifying for our wrestling state tournament as a seasonal participant is much more viable. "More duals, fewer tournaments" - I find well-matched duals to be more exciting than tournaments, but the kicker is you still have to have reasonably full teams to generate a positive experience. I watched two teams at state duals that posted a 36-30 score before their first match was wrestled, just due to alternating holes in the lineups. Teams in the 5-9 weight classes filled range would probably rather participate in a tournament full of other half-rostered teams.

Yes, Woodford is missing HVY. That's been a hole all season. IMO early exposure to the sport / feeder programs is the single most effective key to growth and sustained numbers. I believe a kid can still wrestle seasonally (at least in KY) and have a solid chance to place, IF they start learning the sport early and get several seasons under their belt before HS. There will be several multi-sport athletes making the podium this year, and some are going to be on or very near the top stair. The majority of the top steps of the podium may go to the year round kids, but this state isn't as deep as others, particularly at upper weights which is what the multi-sport guys tend to be. If, on the other hand, a kid hits HS having never wrestled and also having played football all through youth and middle school, and now they think they'd like to try wrestling but their HS football coach says "it's us or them...", then at that point you lose that kid 99% of the time. There's no decision conflict at all in that kid's mind. Early exposure is especially important when you start talking recruiting / retaining upper weight kids, that the other sports are definitely going to want.

106 placers were competitive - Yenter 2-2 in soph, Bender 3-2, Roth 2-2 in Frosh bracket.

Adam tells me Andreoni reeled off 7 in a row this afternoon after losing a tough opener yesterday, at 152. Into conso semi's. Nice job Max!

Congratulations to the region 7 106'ers for a very deep showing - 3 of 4 make the podium and all 4 do damage and survive to day 2. Bender, Wallace, Miller, and Deck all brought quality wrestling to the show, and elevated the competitive level of that bracket considerably. Nice job guys.

Yes, while I've seen no official statement yet, I've heard conversation that supports your assertion. I'll reiterate that I make no judgement here on the merit or lack of merit of the Fayette arrangement. I merely present it as an example of what's occurred in one community over the topic of in-city transfers for athletic reasons.

The Fayette Co. Public School system and the Lexington area private schools (Lex Catholic, LCA) have had a participation agreement in place over the past few years, whose root intent was to curb in-city athletic transfers for the major sports. It has a long and interesting back history and has made the news again recently, as Catholic has withdrawn the agreement. I will offer no personal opinion here of the merits of the agreement or of Catholic's withdrawal from it, but you can read a good summation of the conditions it imposed on the participants in this public newspaper article: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/10/29/3507569/lexington-catholic-ending-athletics.html Suffice to say that public vs. private "recruiting" has been a well-discussed topic in Lexington for a long, long time. The other interesting side note is that, with this agreement being locally applied and enforced, KHSAA state alignment keeps both public and private Lexington schools in the local geographic districts / regional alignments that you'd expect. So, regardless of the sport you're discussing or any play / don't play agreements that may be in place, Lexington public and private schools usually end up being required to compete against each other at the end of the season anyway, in order to advance in post-season play.

I'm guessing Brown is headed to Philo.

when your daughter's swim meets seem short. when you make your kid "clear the arm" when he stands up out of bed.

I only saw 2 of his matches yesterday, but HC's Tyler Storck d. Simon Kenton's Carpenter (Fr.) and pinned Woodford's Fallon (So., who in fairness was prob. a bit underweight at 120, since he's been at 113), yesterday at HS state duals. Not sure where he belongs on the list at 121 or what his total body of work looks like, but he's definitely earned a hat-tip over the past 3 weekends. Favorite? Probably not. Top 5? I still don't know. An interesting kid to watch at state and in the future? I think he's there. I'd also note that 121 was a pretty balanced weight class coming out of dist. 7 (and a full 16-man bracket at that), not one of our weaker classes.

I will agree and say that in the past two years, the tournaments at John Hardin, North Hardin, Bearcat Brawl, Union's "Brave" Tourney, WCI, Harrison, and a host of other tournaments I'm not referencing by name have let me bring as few as 1 wrestler to them. I've never asked to enter more than 3-4 wrestlers in any tournament in the past 2 years, and I've almost always been accommodated. The weekends that ARE tougher on the smaller clubs/teams are the weekends that only duals events are running. But even then, I have usually managed to find overflow matches for my kid(s) by working with the folks hosting the duals. Only on a very few weekends over the past two years have we been completely shut out and had no in-state venue for matches, or found that an event (almost always a duals/teams event) would simply not work with us. "You just have to ask" has usually proven to be the case. No matter the small size of your group, you're going to be able to get into 1-2 of these larger events, if you really want your kids to participate. Plenty of coaches in this state are willing to do whatever it takes to help kids get matches in their event.

To me, 92 and 121 both have very interesting competitive depth and balance, even with (or maybe because of!) Smith vacating 121 in favor of 113. I believe there are at least 7 or 8 kids in each capable of being, or beating, one of the top 4 seeds at state. "On paper" several other classes appear to be the usual top-heavy 2 or 3 hammers vs. the rest of the field, but for me the depth in these two classes is going to be interesting to watch from the quarters on, and there will be some middle-consolation dogfights in each.

I don't know about the overall and how it compares to last year, 105 was shockingly light at District 7, with 5 kids in the bracket for a weight class that's usually pretty thick. I saw a Louisville district bracket that I believe only had 3 at that weight as well. The heavier weights were also more sparse in our district, but that always seems to be true of those higher classes, at the MS level. We had no real weather issues to keep folks home, in the Lexington area.

KHSAA oversight and regulation is coming, in some form, to all middle school sports. I personally applaud the efforts of the board to engage KHSAA, and I appreciate their proactivity in trying to help structure how any MS wrestling oversight and regulation gets handed down. The sport and the board and coaches that care about it at the MS level can be a valuable resource to KHSAA, and they can help to shape its future structure. Or, we can all sit back and watch as MS wrestling has its future structure dictated to it. If I'm not mistaken many other sports have no similar statewide board structure at the MS level, at least none that I'm aware of. It will be very interesting to compare the smoothness of wrestling's KHSAA oversight transition to some of the other popular sports, esp. those that don't already have organizational structure / don't engage KHSAA proactively, in a few years. At any rate, for this year our board has certainly made meeting and submitting the new coaching requirements pretty darn easy.

I've never completely grasped why folks point to the bracket sizes and the 5 match rule when discussing overall tournament length, but no one discusses the typical delays in overall start time, or the length of the intermissions. When weigh-ins are 7:30-9 and you're not wrestling until 10:30, and you have 2 45-60 minute breaks during the day to try to drive extra concession sales, then you can absolutely book a 9pm or later finish time. I'm not pointing to any tournament in particular, but a fair # of the typical weekend tournaments we've attended in KY over the past 2 years have issues of this nature, particularly with start times. I do understand that occasionally a short break is warranted to try to catch up on bracketing paperwork, team scores, feed/rest officials, or to give consolation wrestlers their required minimum. Those 15-20 minute breaks are not the ones that I refer to here. And I understand that overall manpower plays a role too in how quickly and effectively a tournament can be driven to conclusion. Even face offs are often significantly time consuming. I love them for regionals and state tournament (esp. with the projector!), but I'm not sure every single tournament every single weekend needs to have one, if time is truly an issue. My point is that there are ways to drive "the usual weekend tournament" to an earlier finish time that do NOT involve limiting how often you can wrestle, or how many kids can be allowed to wrestle, which is what we're all there for in the first place. The other elephant in the room is there aren't very many MS tournaments going on in KY on any given weekend, maybe one or two at best, so everybody wants in...until there are more venues able to host/host more often, and you can choose from 3-4 events consistently, it's hard to grow the sport and tell teams "sorry, we're full" at the same time.

Regarding the overall cost of participation, if you're not willing to pass the full cost on to parents or parents are unable to bear the cost and refuse to participate at the current expense level, then IMO you have hit a point that requires creative and season long fundraising. You have to go after that cost yourself, rather than hoping the events can come closer to you. It is the price we pay (no pun intended) when we choose to participate in a "minor" sport or a sport that is not popular in our local area, i.e. one that isn't football or basketball, and in some areas baseball. Fewer teams and fewer kids involved overall always means fewer / no local leagues, more travel cost, and more effort for parents. Swimming, tennis, equestrian, archery, fishing, and plenty of other sports have the same complaints, I'd suspect. I don't begrudge the N. KY and Louisville areas for having more clubs & teams around them, and for not having to travel as far to find good competition as a result. Their proximity to IN and OH and their efforts to bring those models over the borders and into their areas have been a very good thing for our sport. I wish the Lexington area was the same way (it is improving, at least on a MS level), but until it is we're stuck with packing our bags. That being said, my 1st son, who does not wrestle, plays MS basketball and baseball. Those season fees (plus tournament team entry fees, equipment costs, etc.) easily exceed the typical amounts we spend on a wrestling season. As does my daughter's year-round swim team, with pool rental fees and a paid coach and most meets 2 days long. During wrestling season we travel at least an hour almost every weekend for events, and we spent 4 years driving 2+ hours to tournaments in Cincinnati all winter long as youth, so I think I'm in at least a somewhat comparable situation. We definitely don't wrestle in the Central KY neighborhood exclusively during the season. When everything is weighed, I still consider MS wrestling a "bargain". Our summer travel baseball team chooses to try to help alleviate the cost pressures with coupon book sales, gift sales, yard sales, mulch sales, car washes, comedy club nights, and darn near everything else you can think of to try to generate a positive team cash flow. The swim team has a license that allows them to work bingo nights, etc. No reason a wrestling team can't do the same thing and fund-raise year round. That being said, it's dedication and elbow grease any way you slice it to be sure. Just like the sport itself.

That's ok...it's almost time for a 2014 pre-season List anyway!