Embarrassing occurrence in FL

[ArrowHeadWC 0]

I know the Sunshine State take a lot of heat on this board because we can never be as good as your precious PAs, NJs, and OHs, and just when I think things are getting better, our state body effs up big time. Reclassification of districts has been a nightmare because the powers that be worry more about travel than competition. A district on the east coast was created with 4 teams-congrats district participant, you're going to regionals! A district in Tallahassee had 1 kid show up for 220-congrats "district champion"', and hello 3 byes in regionals. The worst, however, happened yesterday and we may see a similar situation again today-A St. Pete/Clearwater area district had 10 teams on a 16 man bracket...sounds harmless...until a kid who loses early wrestles back to the consi final...only having to FFT due to wrestling 5 matches already (1 day tournament). Now this kid opens regionals against a district champ because he didn't have the chance to earn his 3rd place. Has anything this asinine happened anywhere else recently?!?

[greenmt. 4]

The one thing the south needs to understand if they want to try and close the gap with the northern states. They need 1 or 2 state classifications for wrestling, any more than that it spreads out the talent too much and it devalues winning a state title.

[Matburn155 3]

That kid not being able to wrestle for 3rd is really messed up.

[Voice_of_the_Quakers 127]

I used to coach in FL. I'd love to tell you the situations described by ArrowHeadWC are infrequent, but they're not. Reclassification for wrestling is an afterthought - the state's primary concern is to have 3 divisions with an equal number of schools of the 400 or so that wrestle. The discrepancy between the largest Class A school (1480 students) and the smallest Class AAA school is (2010 students) is comically small, in my opinion, With 16 man brackets for three state tournaments, about 1 in 8 kids make the state tournament - not a very exclusive experience. I could go on and on.

[SetonHallPirate 988]

I used to coach in FL. I'd love to tell you the situations described by ArrowHeadWC are infrequent, but they're not. Reclassification for wrestling is an afterthought - the state's primary concern is to have 3 divisions with an equal number of schools of the 400 or so that wrestle. The discrepancy between the largest Class A school (1480 students) and the smallest Class AAA school is (2010 students) is comically small, in my opinion, With 16 man brackets for three state tournaments, about 1 in 8 kids make the state tournament - not a very exclusive experience. I could go on and on.

It's not just wrestling in the FHSAA...take a look at football, and the numbers imbalance there:

 

http://www.fhsaa.org/sports/football/assignments

[greenmt. 4]

FL has 8 Classes for Football???? Wow, why? Just have 100 classes and everyone can be a state champ. How many does wrestling have?

[DiMaria 8]

Three. 3A, 2A and 1A.

[flwrestler14 0]

FL has 8 Classes for Football???? Wow, why? Just have 100 classes and everyone can be a state champ. How many does wrestling have?

 

I don't disagree about it having too many classes but this is the best football in the country, I'd say 6 classes would be good because all 6 of those champions would be nationally ranked and numerous nationally ranked teams wouldn't even come close. Illinois does have the same set up for both football and wrestling FYI. For wrestling, I believe three classifications is a little much and I'd like to see it dropped to 1A and 2A (1750 student pop cutoff) and it would improve the overall wrestling. I don't like the one classification idea for the state though.

[SetonHallPirate 988]

My answer for Florida is the same as my answer would be for any other state: Two classes is one too many for individuals. However, if they were to run a team (dual) state, I would like to see multiple classes for that.

[RealAmericanHero 127]

One has to wonder why the NFHS doesn't consider a time limit rather than a match limit.

 

5 matches = 30 minutes. (Technically, it could be 8.5 = 42.5 minutes.)

 

Why not just put a time limit on it?

 

A) How many times in a 16-man bracket is the 5 match limit going to occur? (If it happens more than 4, maybe 5, times, someone should revisit the seeds.)

 

B) If it should arise - based on seeing that a kid has wrestled 5 matches - then the tournament director looks to see if all 5 of his matches went the max distance!

 

C) One stipulation could be ensure that the kid has AT LEAST 8.5 minutes before stepping onto the mat for his final match.

 

Hey, but I'm a nobody.

[BobDole 1,192]

My answer for Florida is the same as my answer would be for any other state: Two classes is one too many for individuals. However, if they were to run a team (dual) state, I would like to see multiple classes for that.

That is the quickest way to kill the sport. Glad you are so adamant about having the sport die at the small school level. It is funny how you don't care about DII, DIII or NAIA wrestling and also don't care for small school wrestling at the high school level.

[Pinnum 836]

I know of an instance in the post season where, due to a snow storm closing a few of the schools on Friday, the two day event was cut to one day. As a result, there were a few weights that ran into the 5-match limit rule. (I have no problem with the rule.) Placement, like in Florida, is used to determine seeding in the next week's event. The solution was to have the 3rd place match the Friday the following week before the first round.

 

Not an ideal situation but it was a fix that worked out well.

[RhinoWrestler 0]

It all works out in the end. By regionals, all 16 spots are filled in every weight class and a very competitive state tournament occurs. No need to change anything.

[RichB 226]

Well one thing needs to be done!! That is that you need to make sure that in a 10 man bracket no one can wrestle 6 times. It can be done. However, you cannot design an 11 man bracket to guarantee no one will have 6 bouts.

[RhinoWrestler 0]

Yes, the 6 match thing needs correction. Either move to 2 day event or some type of waiver.

 

Checked brackets and neither of the wrestlers involved advanced out of regions with both losing to a common opponent.

[troopscott 0]

They need to hand the reigns to Russ Cozzart and let him set everything up the right way

[Bob1974 7]

While we're at it, let Russ run the state tournament at the Lakeland Center whenever he retires.

 

I thought it was outrageous that they ran the semifinals and the remainder of the wrestlebacks, including the placement matches, on three mats per classification. The announcer made a speech about how some of the best matches are in the semifinals, and what an important round it was, but it was obviously not important enough to run on two mats (they did the same thing last year). It was even worse when they ran some of the 3A wrestlebacks on the 2A mats, and vice versa. At least they put the bout numbers up on the score towers most of the time.

 

It wouldn't bother me so much if they were crunched for time, but there was time to do it right and they didn't.

[simple 296]

Absolutely agree, Bob. There's plenty of time to do semis on two mats. If time is their reason, then they might as well use four mats as that would be easier to follow than 3. I think they had a 132 semi, 160 semi, and 182 semi going on all at the same time.

 

Another thing is the order of which the rounds are wrestled. The quarterfinal and semifinal rounds should be wrestled before the first and third round of wrestlebacks, not the other way around.

[RhinoWrestler 0]

Another thing is the order of which the rounds are wrestled. The quarterfinal and semifinal rounds should be wrestled before the first and third round of wrestlebacks, not the other way around.

 

I think the order of rounds is all about money...trying to have as many people buy as many tickets to as many sessions as possible.