Grapplin...You are making a very large assumption here, and that assumption is this -- that school administrators can actually comprehend statistics. Like the old saying goes...those who can, teach. Those who can't, administrate. And those who can't do that get elected to public office.

Seriously, though...HB is right -- this is a Skutt-driven rule and one that, quite honestly, doesn't need Skutt winning 8 (soon to be 9) straight titles to make it right. With more schools getting involved in wrestling, there is aa need to adjust the numbers in classification. There are 75 schools in Class D -- 19 schools per district. And while Class D rarely, if ever, has more than 1-2 full 16-man brackets per district, that is still too many schools, IMO.

Ross makes a number of good points as well, and I'm not going to rehash ones I made earlier. Bottom line...40 schools in A is overdue.

Grapplinman and Mike, you are correct.

Schools want to have the data before they vote that is why you see a large number of schools pass on round one. Also many schools that vote yes in round one will vote no on the final vote in the spring. This gets the item off the table for two years and if they vote no in round one it can be back on the table the next year. Small schools are not going to give up class D - its not going to happen. For those of us that have been around more than 5 years we had the same situation in all sports and to resolve the issue they split C and D in most sports.

Most schools do not talk to the coach until the issue is up to final vote. You will also see schools trade votes on issues. We have seen class A go with Class D on a number of issues. That is actually how the C-1/C2 D1/D2 classes came into being. We have to wait until the spring to get the answer. Coaches do not vote - this is school Admin that vote. AD's in most schools have input however they are not the ones that actually vote.

The board of control would have to vote on this-correct me if I'm wrong. They obviously take input from district members, but I believe its the 7 BOC members that vote.

I always look at the better winning percentage of the lower classes with a grain of salt.Do you realize that most lower class wrestlers take between 5 or 10 forfeits per year due to teams having open weights for duals.I'd go so far as to say that there are wrestlers out there this year that have as many as ten forfeit wins.You also see a lot of very good records especially in D. I know these kids are very good, and some may be or probably are the best in the state, but they would not have the same record if they wrestled A and B teams every time out.I'm most familiar with the Howells kids, and know how good they are,and admit that 4 or 5 of them would probably be on our varsity but I also feel they'd each have a couple more losses if they wrestled our schedule which is an about average schedule,and would do even worse if they wrestled some of the really tough schedules.

I'm not against putting more teams in A, but just look at the enrollment numbers difference from Omaha Central to an Alliance or Gering.The top schools are more than twice the size.

If you check out the 71 votes 44 of the total came from Districts 5 and 6. Only two of the 6 districts supported the measure however district 2 does not show any results.

Have to wait and see how the vote goes before we set the new schedules.

I don't think we need a 3 class system and I definetely don't think we need a 5 class system. Panther is right when he says the lower class schools receive more forfeit wins. It is unfortunate because the lower class kids deserve to be able to dual which is a good way to get a mid-week competition especially in front of the home crowd, however most small schools don't have full teams. Heck I have seen duals in small schools where each one had 7 wrestlers but none of the same weight classes.
I truly beleive co-ops are the wave of the future in small schools, not only in wrestling but in other sports as well.

Every time I hear these discussions several people always bring up, "The little schools can't compete with the big schools". Therefore, the Class A state tournaments must be dominated by the biggest schools in the class. I went to the NSAA website to see the 2005-06 enrollment figures that are being used to place teams in the classes for the current year. Then I went back 10 years to see if the big schools in Class A really have dominated the class. The first number after the school name is the 2005-06 rank in size and the second number is the 2005-06 enrollment.

2005 Millard South (6) 1576
2004 Lincoln East (17) 1172
2003 Lincoln East (17) 1172
2002 Lincoln East (17) 1172
2001 Papillion LaVista (21) 1096
2000 Burke (7) 1563
1999 Omaha North (4) 1592
1998 Kearney (24) 1062
1997 Gering (43) 467
1996 Millard North (2) 1777

If we were to go back a little further we find a 4 year stretch where the Class A state tournament was won by schools that are now Class B: Scottsbluff (1989), Hastings (1988), and Alliance (1986 and 1987). During those years the biggest schools were probably bigger than the biggest schools are now because of Papillion La Vista South, Lincoln North Star, and Lincoln Southwest diluting the numbers today. It seems to me that the strength of the program is more important than the size of the school in determining success.

Looks like grapplin is worried about Skutt moving up to A and knocking them off. He is no different than the coaches that want Skutt moved up except he want to keep them down to protect himself.

LOL...you got me all the way granby. With 7 Seniors this year, I better worry about getting into the top 10 next year! I thought maybe you would want to ask the 7 teams that would move up with Skutt whether they want to move up to class A????? Seriously, if you want the full rundown of my paradigms, then you can email HB, he can send you my recent email. I think it speaks pretty well about this whole issue. If, after you read it, you want to talk point by point......bring it on! Fact of the matter is this.......the whole thing was proposed with very little data....it was proposed with a hidden agenda.....it has NO foundational data....and it doesn't look at the future. NWI can talk all he wants about the growing number of wrestling schools, but the 10 year prediction as schools contract and consolidate is that there will be less high schools in Nebraska and less schools with wrestling. We are, for all practical purposes at our peak or near our peak. Within 10 years we might see 10 to 20 teams less or so as schools consolidate. Now, look into the crystal ball. I can tell you one thing, though, granby.....we will get all the facts in front of everyone and then sound data driven decisions can be made.

Proposal:

Leave class size alone. Leave them as they currently are.

Have two sites for the state tournament, AB in Qwest or Devaney, Class C-D in Devaney or Kearney.

Class A and B, keep same number of schools, have 16 man bracket at state.

Class c and d keep same number of schools, have 24 man bracket at state. (6 per district)

By having 2 sites, C and D could hold the additional two rounds that it would cause.

Seeds 1 and 2 from each round recieve 1st round by, Seeds 3 vs 6, 4 vs 5 wrestle in round 1. Creates one extra round of wrestlebacks.


just a thought...now get mad!

quote:
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Whatever happened to legislation being driven by data?
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WHAT?????? legislation (at ALL levels) is driven by $$$$$$$$ grap

can't argue dat

i didn't see the "simplest" answer mentioned here.....break down all classes at the end of each school year, based on next years projected student population.....put 25% of the schools into each class (as close to that as possible), and that "class assignment" would go for all extracurricular events. at least in wrestling that would give everyone the same "road to the podium" (sp?), it may "even the odds" in all other sports / events as well.....

Hey fellas....I am just going by what the proposal was. If you think about it, the proposal was written by a class B school and not a C or D school. C and D would theoretically have the greatest complaint with the present alignment. The assumptions cast about in the proposal are not verified and conjecture at best. I don't like this as a way to do business. If Skutt were not in the picture right now....think of it in that respect...and the class B battle was as close as close could be.....would ANY of the B folk want to move up to A? I don't think you draft legislation based upon one team.

Now if you want to look at data.....do a sampling and wee if the assumptions are true or not. Look at our distict A-2. We have a good sample of teams: Four Metro, 1 Metro Area, 1 Lincoln and of course Fremont and Norfolk.....good sample within the district. So lets look at the A-2 data and then maybe the B-2 and C-2 and D-2 just to see how it goes.

Right off hand here are some facts about our district. Of the 8 teams in our district, only two are ranked in the top 10. That being said our district is a good sample because we aren't that "LOADED" district that could invalidate the data.

1. Our weight classes are .929 full. The district entries indicate only 8 byes in the whole tourney. What is the percentages in the other districts. It is valid to use percentages.

2. In our district, .562 of our wrestlers have winning records. Slightly more than 4 per weight class have winning records. This isn't too bad.

3. Every class has 6 or more wrestlers

4. 7 and possibly 8 of our brackets have 100% full brackets.

So as you can see, all, this is a good sampling and something that you can use to compare with the other districts in the other classes. When you start reviewing this stuff, I think you can come up with some conclusions.

Is there anything wrong with administrators making informed votes......? That is all I am asking here.

I do not think Grapplin is afraid to have Skutt move into Class A...I am sure he is not is afraid to wrestle them. He signed on and is one of only a few top teams that wanted to come to the Skutt tournament when it first formed! Where are all the other teams? Why are they not lining up to face the Sky hawks? He is going to get his 2 titles and then will have to see how the recruiting goes over at Burke, Prep, and other schools to see who will challenge him next year. That is right…Public schools recruit with the private schools. So if we are going to have this debate about who belongs in which class…let’s be fair to all.

HB you might have said that 40 was the magical number…But in reality, those bottom 10 schools are giving up to 3 times the number of students. Does that make A fair? If you are in the bottom of A with 500 kids and then you have the big boys with 1500 plus…that is not equal. You see Nebraska is like the geeky kid that can not buy clothes that fits. The proportions are just not right. We have a couple of large population centers, some midsize locations and a whole bunch of one horse towns.

If you want to make things fair…have Kearney and Scottsbluff become major populations centers. The argument here is not with the NSAA but with the governors office. Why are we not putting resources in the state to entice business to come in and grow our communities? We need more people and more kids to grow our schools! Once we reach 7 million residents then we can configure some school classes.

Until then there will never be a fair way to spilt the classes. The state is happy making all of out athletes state qualifiers and state champions. Enjoy what you have. Cause if you were to live in a populated state the still values the title “State Champion” then most of our athletes would not even make the state tournament.

So what to do…the logical thing would be to make B the predominate class. Take the top 24 and put them into A. Have 2 districts that qualify the top 8 and then seed them into the State tournament. The big boys in A then would be teams in Lincoln and Omaha.

B then could be 6 districts and the next 48 teams. Qualify 2 from each district and have 4 wild cards…Now that would make for some great wrestling. Even if you have a kid that does not place in the top 2 but is one of the better wrestlers, he could still qualify! All districts would be decided at Christmas time based on the strength of the teams. We would have parity in all 6 districts…

Boy what we could do if they let us have the decision making authority…

If you want to make population centers, the solution is not within the offices of state government: just move your town within a stone's throw of Omaha and watch the population explode.

Gretna's population has doubled in the last five years, and if Omaha is successful in its hostile takeover of the city of Elkhorn and the Elkhorn/Millard/Ralston schools, the urban flight into Gretna, Bennington, Yutan and other outlying communities will be mind-bending.

You don't need state government intervention...all you need are greedy big-city politicos who aren't competent enough to find their backsides with their own hands, but are quite capable of biting off more than they are able to chew by sucking in adjacent property that they had no interest in 20-30 years ago when it was nothing but farmland.

THAT, my friends, is progress...

Hey wrasslin-who would win a dual between Howells and Omaha Central? Or East Butler and Omaha Benson? Having spoke with those that legislated this, I can tell you I got the feeling that it was more about parity that anything. Right now the main thing is that you've many kids in Class A who are getting into the state tournament by default. Not good. That to me is the crux of the issue. Parity. And you can't be serious about the bottom 8 Class A teams in the new proposal. There's a reason why Class B teams don't play A in football but they wrestle them almost on a weekly basis. Could it be that wrestling is just a little different sport? Anyways, I'm off to Gothenburg. Have a great day

If people can just get their feelings behind them, then maybe a good resolution can be made.

What is best for the kids and the sport?
Is it only about winning?

I don't know the answer but I see 2 areas that bug me.

1) How silly to have 1/2 of all kids that wrestle class A make it to state.

2) Private schools may have a slight edge. But all schools have open enrollment in Nebraska. OK -punish the private schools a little.

Open enrollment was created with athletics in mind (although schools tried to tell us it was all about educational opportunities...I still laugh at that 15 years later). That may be the reason why people make such a big stink about Skutt, yet aren't willing to go to the NSAA because it might open skeletons in their own closets.

As for bumping a to 40 teams -- I've been a supporter of it ever since the NSAA made the mistake of reclassifying all sports a decade ago, making Class A 24 schools in all sports. The result -- 5 qualifiers with ZERO wins, 1-2 byes at state, about 1/3 of the Class A qualifiers with losing records. It should have gone to 40 back in 1996, rather than 32.

Right on HB...comparing wrestling and football is like comparing apples with greenbeans.

Look at the average offensive line in A versus the average offensive line in D.

Wrestling is a team and individual sport..football is not. A class D team with 10 team members can go to Clarks and wrestle competitively against class B teams because its weight class driven. That in itself brings the playing field down a lot more.

It only takes 14 guys to make a wrestling team. How many to make a football team, don't say 11 cause you know that's impossible. HS teams with 25 boys out for football would be considered small numbers. 18 to 20 boys out for wrestling in class C and D would be decent numbers. I believe Tekamah had 17 this year.

The other reason why alot of C and D schools can compete with A and B in wrestling but not in football is because of the youth programs. I don't know of any small town that has full contact kids football, but almost all have wrestling. That means their skills are much better by the time they get to high school.

The weight class thing is the biggest reason. Team sport versus individual sport and you can't compare the two.

On a side note: I heard that Bancroft was adding a kids wrestling program. Good luck and maybe in another few years they will add HS wrestling as well.