Kansas Wrestling Forums General Discussion Kids Folkstyle State Tournament of Other States

By introducing this topic I am not meaning to say that other States have a better system. My hope is it might encourage some possible ideas for Ned Price our State Competition Director. Ned has encouraged us in this forum to come up with ideas and outside the box suggestions. I think we can learn from others. I am sure that we would also find that we like much of what we do in Kansas better than other States. I am going to talk about some differences in one State in my next post on this topic.

Smokey posted this in another topic. He did not include the Bantam age group in Iowa (97-98 7 & 8 year olds).

1. So their age groups are about the same as ours. They have the same 5 age groups as us. The only difference is that their birthday cutoff appears to be Jan.1 instead of our Sept 1.
I like our birthday cutoff better because it keeps the majority of the kids in the same grade wrestling each other every year. I know others advocate the Jan 1 cutoff.

2. They finished 3 weeks earlier than us on March 5th. I really like this possible earlier folkstyle season finish. Actually the previous 2 years they finished around Feb 10th. This year's difference was that they included the Cadet division 16&U with the Kids in 2005. In 2004 the Cadets had a separate tournament. In 2003 it does not appear that they had a Cadet folkstyle tournament. This earlier finish is something that our high school coaching association the KWCA advocated to Mike Juby 2 years ago so the high school and youth kids could go right into Freestyle after the high school state tournament.

3. They do go pretty much right into Freestyle starting with tournaments in March and just about every week in April. They have a lot of these tournaments scheduled during the Spring. They have a Freestyle State scheduled for May 6 and Greco-Roman May 21. I would think they must get better freestyle numbers since they are scheduling so many freestyle Spring tournaments. Maybe the early start encourages more freestyle participation.

4. They also offer a Triple Crown State Award for the winner of State Folkstyle, Freestyle and Greco Roman tournaments. Maybe this award also encourages more participation. Do we have a State Triple Crown award?

5. One folkstyle regional qualifer for kids, no qualifier for Cadets. It appears that they have five regionals and 6 qualify from the regional so they must qualify up to 30 in a bracket. Could we do the same with say splitting a couple of districts into 3 instead of 2? Then maybe we would only need one qualifier instead of two. I have wondered before whether we could do without a Sub.

6. They appear to only have 71 weight brackets in their 5 age groups compared to our 104 (Jeff Broadbent posted our 104 number in another topic).
This allows them to do the State competition in one day of wrestling. Many have said that we need to reduce our weight groups.

7. They have weigh-ins on Friday evening but they do also offer a early morning weigh-in on Saturday the day of competition. We went to just one weigh in the night before in 2004. Some of you might remember my opposition to this change a year ago, so I had to mention this difference.

I wasn't comparing states. I was saying the USA Kids Folkstyle NATIONALS includes: 9 year olds thru 16 year olds. They must do this for a reason. That has been the same way in Iowa and when it was held in Kansas. There is not a Bantam weight at this tournament.

USA Wrestling Folk Style Nationals in Iowa

Midget - 1995 & 1996 9 & 10 year olds
Novice - 1993 & 1994 11 & 12 year olds
School Boy/Girl - 1991 & 1992 13 & 14 year olds
Cadet - 1989 & 1990 15 & 16 year olds

Now that makes sense!

Smokey, I see now that you were just talking about the National tournament. I did not read that close enough. I guess I assumed State because it was in a thread that we were mainly talking about the State tournament. Anyway it made me look into the Iowa State tournament.

Smokey, do you have any thoughts about the different ways they run their State tournament from what I listed above? It seems like their emphasis is on a little less folkstyle to get a little more freestyle and greco roman participation. I would be interested to hear what you or anyone else thinks about some of these Iowa State tournament differences.

I do not know that much about how USA Iowa Kids run things. I would look at their talk forums and glean some info from someone that has been up there a few years. I have been involved with Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas kids. Mostly - Kansas and I think we are very well run -and organized. No matter what state you look at there are a bunch of people in every state devoting enormous amounts of time for these kids and parents involved in wrestling.

You won't find much out about Iowa from their talk forum. It is pretty much a dead forum. After talking to some Iowans at USAW Nationals last year and this year I found out that AAU wrestling is just as big if not bigger than USAW there. Their USAW organization is not nearly as well run as ours so I would not look to them as an example.

Jim:

You are correct about Iowa having an AAU folkstyle tournament system that appears to be as big as its USAW. I got on the AAU wrestling site and found some state information. I saw that Iowa had an AAU Super PeeWee State on 3/13/05 with three separate age groups: Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade division. Then on 4/3/05 they had another AAU State Kids tournament for three more divisions: 3rd & 4th, 5th & 6th, and 7th & 8th in which you could not wrestle if you turned 16 or older in 2005 or if you are in high school. So you are correct, we would not be comparing apples to apples in comparing Kansas Kids just to Iowa Kids. It appears that Iowa is wrestling kids in folkstyle at least as long as Kansas if not longer.

I do think this is kind of a neat idea though.

Thank you, Jim. I really like the Triple Crown idea too. I think anything we could do that potentially could encourage more freestyle and greco roman participation would be a good idea.That is the type of feedback positive or negative I hoped for in listing the seven differences above between USA Wrestling Iowa Kids and Kansas Kids State tournaments.

The one I am most interested in hearing others thoughts on is this one:
I really like this earlier finish March 5th for a couple of reasons. First I think the season goes a little long and it always go thru their Spring breaks. This can interfere with potential family vacations. I have heard from a number of people during our eight years that they chose not to do the State tournament series due to planned Spring break vacations. There are other things that kids miss out on potentially during Spring break due to their training like staying over at a friend house or not worrying about what they are eating (if they have to be concerned about making weight).

A second advantage to the earlier finish to the season is that I think it might encourage some more freestyle/greco roman participation. I think the season just goes a little too long for the majority of the wrestlers. They get a little burned out by the end and they do not feel like spending more time in gyms at wrestling tournaments during the freestyle season. Maybe if we would end by the first weekend in March and give them a couple of weeks off, they would get enthused about wrestling again and give freestyle and greco roman a try. At least this is what the KWCA proposed to Mike Juby a couple of years ago. It seems to me that we might want to give it a try to encourage a little more freestyle and greco roman participation after the folkstyle season.

Another smaller benefit to an earlier finish would be that for there was be less overlapping of two sports for the kids who do Spring sports instead of freestyle. Many Spring sports start their seasons during our State tournament series.

Back in 2003 I made a post comparing the Oklahoma and Kansas State tournament. There were some after that post that made the recommendation that I move back to Oklahoma, actually some of the comments were pretty brutal. The link to that thread is: http://www.usawks.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001268#000000 I still hold to the comments but will say that I also really like the triple crown award and believe it may very well encourage more Freestyle and Greco wrestling.

In brief, I still agree with my comments on that thread some time ago. I also still believe that compared in a head to head match up, Kansas tournament is superior to Oklahoma's and is among one of the best tournaments, local, state or national that I have attended.

Regarding the length of the season, I actually like it here. We can wrestle in Oklahoma for some of their locals if we choose, and it is good to keep our wrestlers fresh as they go to Folkstyle Nationals or Reno. I know that Oklahoma looses that "freshness" after their 3-4 week layoff.

IOWA's a AAU state. As a matter of fact their AAU State tournament was the same weekend as the USAW Iowa Nationals. I can't imagine Kansas allowing their State tournament to conflict with Nationals especially when it is in your own back yard. I think when your done comparing Kansas to other State's you may find that Kansas is a State to bench mark to. Some of the other states I have visited with over the years on the road do not have the numbers and competition that we have. Some don't even have enough in many brackets to fill the awards podium at their state tournament. I do like the suggestion of adding the State Triple Crown award, it will certainly promote more wrestlers to continue through FS/GR. Awards are are a huge incentive for most of the kids at this age. Already I have been asked what the awards are at the State FS/GR tournament. If the awards were similar to the huge(5x7)slab Medals they gave out at USAW Nationals the attendance would go up. Call it bait or incentive it goes a long way with kids in this sport.

I would still like to see the Jan 1st cutoff date as the date that is used we are not tied to the school year and I would like to use the set USAW weight classes. Just curious?

Sunflower State Games, Hershey Track & field, and National AAU athletics all use Jan 1st. Although I do think this is an arbitrary point. When the age divisions cover a 2 year period there will always be someone on the top and someone on the bottom of the age divisions.

I think the age cut off needs to be July 17th. No particular reason.

SlamBam

how about 7/1 for middle of the year...

or the 182nd day of the year in non-leap years

:p

The age cutoff needs to remain the way it is. My kids are at the wrong end of age cutoff anyway. Because when these young wrestlers attend high school. There will be two and three years difference. Freshman vs. Senior, Freshman vs. Junior, Sophomore vs. Senior. Just let it be.