MINNESOTA WRESTLING COACHES ASSOCIATION

January 23, 2004

Hey everybody! The dog days of the season are upon us. It's starting to feel long for the kids and the coaches and the parents. I hope all is going well.

I have the results from the voting on the weight class issue and the co-op question. There were 215 'ballots' sent out to the head coaches who are members of the MWCA. About 15 were sent back because of bad e-mail addresses. Of the rest, 160 responded, which is an 80% voting rate. That's not bad, and enough of a response to get a clear picture of what the coaches want, but we need full participation to remain a strong organization. I'm disappointed that some did not vote - THIS WAS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE!!!!! Answering an e-mail ballot only takes two minutes at the most, and there was a two-day window to get it done. Please do better next time. For those who did respond, thank you.

On the weight class issue, the vote was 102-58 in favor of 12 weight classes. That is a clear majority, so now we will formulate a proposal for 12 weight classes to submit to the National Federation. Some have suggestions on what the new weights should be - send them to me and I'll run the numbers on the data. Remember, though, that we have to be able to back up our proposal with the data; so if a suggestion produces unbalanced numbers, we probably won't use it. We do promise, however, to listen to ALL suggestions and proceed from there.

On the co-op question, the vote was 120-31 in favor of pursuing a change in the calculation of enrollments of co-op schools with 9 abstaining. Again, a clear majority. So I will bring up this issue with Skip Peltier on Tuesday at our meeting with the MSHSL.

I hope everyone feels this was a fair process. I worked very hard to make sure that all felt informed and could participate in the dialogue. Thanks to everyone for your active discussion - we need more of these. It makes our organization and the sport stronger.

Take care.

John Peterson
Elk River Wrestling
President, Minnesota Wrestling Coaches Association
(763) 241-3400 x2238
jhpeterson@elkriver.k12.mn.us