It is amazing how much tougher 106 is than 103 was. Not necessarily at the very top, but the depth now is where a weight class should be. Not nearly as many opens at 106. I think moving this up was a very good move. The kids in the article seem to be doing fine.
This is not an accurate statement.
103 was already BA. It did not have to be changed to 106 to be tougher.
106 is not " much tougher" as you state if even any tougher at all. Although I do see that you did add the disclaimer "not necessarily at the very top".
Of course it would seem as though 106 would give it more depth, but more likely it is the same and it is just that the kids just didn't have to work as hard to "make weight" at 106 so they are probably not as tough and hungry to reap the rewards of their effort and sacrifice.
Most of those little dudes whether 103 or 106 are total BA’s though. They are very athletic, and well conditioned, and highly skilled, and perhaps even more disciplined. And in some cases, the best are the best pound for pound as Tommyboy once stated.
Let me submit for approval the following list which I submitted last year when this came up:
Bo Pursel
Austin Hood
Aaron Seybold
Dylan Schumacher
Konnor Kriss
Colby Watters
Javier Vieyra
Lincoln Lemon
Zach Dremel
Tommy Williams
Anthony Calderon
Jason Perez
Hunter Stalford
Alex Wolfe
Ty Kolterman
Clay Mulligan
Alex Garcia
Austin Avelar
Andrew Morgan
What does this list represent?
Yes it represents wrestlers graduating last year. But for the purpose of this discussion, it represents wrestlers who wrestled at 103 at state as freshmen. Every one of them would have been BA no matter what weight they were at or what grade they were in. All of them certainly could have made the team at whatever weight they weighed when they were freshmen. They were tough enough, skilled enough, good enough. They just happened to be small freshmen.
Pretty BA list huh. Every one of them went on to multiple medal careers and all were either a champion or a runner-up and most at a heavier weight, many at the traditionally toughest middle weight.
I challenge anyone to come up with a better list representing a collection of kids from the same weight in the same year that were the same age that went on to be champs or runnerups.
I guess what I am trying to say is when you say 106 is much tougher, you are saying these guys didn't have it as tough and they sure as hell did. Maybe even tougher. There is a whole butt load of quality kids that I didn't even mention that were at 103 that year as well that were freshman, and the list doesn't include all the studs that were not freshman at 103 that year.
