Coach Burton

Thomas Nelson High School, in Bardstown, is looking for an assistant coach. A stipend is available. If interested, contact Coach Burton at josh.burton@nelson.kyschools.us

We used to have 1 v 1 duals at Woodford back in the 90s. I miss single dual nights, especially when it was a good match up.

I am not a fan of the KHSAA and the attention they give to wrestling, but I do understand the change. The format for the post season is basically the old format of district, region, state. The problem is the desire of the KHSAA to wait another year to realign the regions, when it was supposed to have been done before last year. With their finances low, I understand not being able to get facilities. There aren't a lot that suit the size of our sport right now. It's a problem we have to live with, but the KHSAA makes things more complicated than they should be because we are not a priority. Semi-state does not take care of all of the problems. The regions need to be split back into districts, and the post season needs to be 4 weeks long: districts, regions, semi-state, state. 16 districts, top 4 advance to regions, 8 regions (8 man bracket) top 4 advance to semi-state, 2 semi states (16 man bracket) top 8 advance to state to make a 16 man bracket. As far as girls wrestling goes, it is absolutely the future of our sport. The sanctioning of girls wrestling by the KHSAA will grow boys wrestling. Schools are more likely to add wrestling because it is sanctioned for both boys and girls. Teams that have never had wrestling before will start teams and our numbers will multiply. Also, a combined boys and girls state tournament would be large enough to move into better, bigger venues.

If the five match rule is changed to six then it could just be ran as a normal double elimination tournament

You're leaving some of the best wrestlers in the history of Kentucky off the table limiting it to the 32 man bracket era.

KHSAA should just make it mandatory for teams to enter results within a certain period of time after an event.

Thomas Nelson is looking for events on 2/27 & 03/06 near the Louisville/Bardstown areas.

Hopefully that's why they bought Track, for their tournament/bracketing platform.

Is there any chance the KHSAA could get Memorial Coliseum? It would work for a 16 man tournament of four mats. They could bump the 5 match rule to 6 matches for one tournament and have it on one day. I think they should extend the season by 2 weeks, add a district tournament and a semi-state tournament to make all the post season tournaments smaller one day events. They should also suspend the 5 match rule for the post season so there are no 2 day post season tournaments.

Suspending the 5 match rule would certainly help with the regional tournaments as well. They could all be one day tournaments. The KHSAA has dropped the ball with our post season. I know we aren't a revenue sport for them, but they could at least pretend like they are putting some effort and forethought into it. I know the regions are going to be realigned next year, but they should have realigned them this year and split them into districts. 20 teams at a regional tournament in a high school gym for two days during a pandemic is not a good idea.

They need to create more regions and reduce region size and reduce the number of qualifiers from each region or they just need to go ahead and split into two divisions. It's not fair that these large uneven regions cause some tournaments to be two days. With wrestling still holding on to the five match rule, no region should be more than eight teams.

With so many teams barely fielding teams this year, the KHSAA needs to award state spots based on number of teams/participants in the regional tournaments.

That would put a real financial strain on some schools that would have to travel and lodge on two different weekend.

Thomas Nelson is looking to host a couple teams for a tri on February 6th. Email Coach Josh Burton at joshrufusburton@gmail.com if you're interested.

Going to be some big shoes to fill when he eventually retires. Coach Upchurch is one of the last of that era of coaches that many of us grew up learning from and competing against.