I see lots of posts about how this school or that can't compete with schools twice their size. I just checked the standings in the Iowa State Tournament. Apparently size doesn't mean much to them. The standings I give will probably change after the finals tomorrow night but probably not much.

Class 3A is the 64 biggest schools that have wrestling. They range in size from 2118 to 478. The biggest is 4.43 times the smallest. As of now there is a tie in 3A. Iowa City West is the 8th largest school with an enrollment of 1336. They are tied with Waverly-Shell Rock, which is the 57th largest school with an enrollment of 515.

Class 2A is made up of the next 96 schools and ranges from 466 to 234. Biggest is 1.99 times the smallest. Creston-Orient Maxburg is leading now. They are the 22nd largest school in 2A with an enrollment of 380.

The remaining 130 schools are Class A and range from 234 to 68, which is a difference of 3.44 times the smallest to the largest. Don Bosco pretty much has it locked up. They are the 116th school out of 130. I assume it's still like it was when I lived in Iowa. Most of their competition is against 2A and 3A schools.

Of the 4 schools leading or tied for the lead 2 are in the upper half of their classes and 2 are in the lower quarter of their classes.

Well a school of 515 is still a descent size school. Let's remember that at the state level it doesn't take but 6-8 good wrestlers to make a run at the team title. If there are 200 boys in that school and you only need around 7 good wrestlers, that's a pretty good pool to chose from. That would be a school the size of Blair Nebraska.

These things can change from year to year, buts its really just a numbers game. More kids to chose from the better chance of getting that 7 or 8 good wrestlers to take the state title.

Enrollment doesn't have much of a factor IMO. For the past three years, Howells probably could have beat 95% of the schools in Class A. Demographics is what really matters. There is a growing disparity between the schools located in Urban areas in Nebraska and the smaller schools located further away from "major" cities. We discussed this on the show last night and gave some examples of schools that have fallen off the map in the past few years. Consolidation will continue and at some point in the future Class D will simply run out of wrestlers to make it competitive.

i think we have the highest enrollment at central or one of the highest, and we only get 15-25 kids to come out it seems like. hopefully with our kids club we will produce more wrestlers. you can have as many kids as you want to go to yer school, but if they dont wanna wrestle it doesnt matter how many go there.

Follow the kids that are successful & most of them came from a good little kids club. It takes parents & coaches that will give the time to work with the younger wrestlers on the basics as well as mat time. The Skutt & the Howells kids most all wrestled tons of youth matches for other clubs. High School practice takes up so much time that many varsity coaches don't even start kids club till after State is over. By that time the youth schedule is already in full swing & if you are going to compete, you had already better be wrestling for an active club. It's in those early years that connections get made that impact where a kid will eventually end up.

Those youth tourneys are also where the recruiting takes place. The good/very good/elite wrestlers at the youth level become a pretty small group and everybody knows everybody else because they see the same faces every weekend.

There are a number of "independent" clubs that get recruited heavily by teams that are near or at the top of the standings. Then there are kids (parents) from "feeder" clubs that get a bug up their butt about something or get the grass is greener syndrome and also get recruited to other programs. Loyalty to a program for the effort put forth in a "feeder" club hardly even comes up in conversation anymore.

I know times change but when I grew up in my small town I would not have even considered putting on the uniform of any other school. Today, not only do you have to try to build a feeder program at your school but you better be at every big youth tourney and a lot of the small ones schmoozing the other club kids. Just my opinion as a small town farm boy living in the city.

Well School size makes a big difference for a example my son goes to D.C. West we have to play class A baseball a team like lets say Millard West or Any large class A school has 100 kids go out for lets say 20 spots how good to you think those 20 are compared to we are lucky to get 20 out for varsity and j.v combined not saying a small school could not come up with a good team but the depth would not be there the same goes for wrestling i am sure there are some class a wrestlers sitting on j.v that could start at some class c or d schools