Kansas Wrestling Forums General Discussion High School Eastern Kansas Wrestling

People are always doggin on the East sayin they stink and aren't as good as the West. Just cause they have more champs doesn't mean they are necessarily better. Effingham won 2 straight titles and they're from the east. Give me some feedback and give me some reasons WHY the West is better than the East. The East loses a lot of what could be good wrestlers to basketball.

I know that this year in the 3-2-1a state championship matches 24 of the finialist were from the 2 west regionals. And also if you look at top of the leader board most of the teams were from Northwest like Hoxie, Norton, Oakley, and Oberlin. They all seemed to do pretty well in the state tournament. If you ask me that looks pretty dominating.

I think part of that comes from the fact that a majority of 3-2-1A schools come from out in Western Kansas.

Eastern Kansas did really well in 5 and 6A which is where the majority of the schools back here are. I didn't see much difference.

In 6a only 3 theams (less than 10%) of the schools were from east of I 35. yet two of those three finished 1-2. So I think that 6a was dominated by west wrestlers. 5a is east dominated because the Liberal and Hays High were weak. start at the colorado line and combine students until you get 3000 kids and you could combine sainty, Goodland, Colby, Hoxie, Oakley, Atwood, and Norton, and you would probably have an average or better crew most years.

Dang Farleigh you did some numbers there that is pretty impressive stuff. Being from out there however I have no idea what you said but I was impressed with it. True the team strength is still out there but when you look at some of the kids from Manhatten east there were a heck of a lot of finalists from east schools and they did a good job. Those numbers were good though wish I had learned stuff like that out there when I was a kid lol.

Define east and define west.

Gentlemen..to borrow a phrase "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?".

Nice topic, but sooner or later you'll stop chasing your tails :-)

What should be noted is the growing capability of ALL Kansas schools to produce top quality wrestlers through SUSTAINED programs. That's the achievement you should be discussing.

Thanks for the soap box time.

Tim

The east definetly has some good kids- just not near as many as the west nor are there as many good programs (at least not in 321A). Besides the 24-4 split in the finals the top 4 placers at Hays had a big west east split too. To say there are more small schools in the west is just a dumb statement. I agree that the quality of all the wrestling in Ks is improving but look at it any way you want and the western part of the state is dominant.

Does the west really have more 3-2-1a schools?

Weren't the regionals basically split along a line that cuts from Belleville to Wichita with the schools east of that line going east for the NE and SE Regionals and the schools west of that line going west (with the exception of Garden Plain & Hesston) for the P-burg and Lakin Regionals?

And didn't each of these regionals have 14 - 16 teams (although the Lakin regional had a lot of partial teams)?

If this is the case, the count would seem to be pretty equally distributed among each half of the state.

Hello?!?!?!

Draw a line from north to south, closely approximating highway 81--how many 4, 5, 6A school are there on the west side of that line?
4A = Ulyssess, Hugoton, Scott City, Goodland, Colby, Pratt, and Larned. That is 7 of the 64 4A schools which is a tad over 10% of the total.

5A=Hays, Great Bend, Liberal; 3 of 32 right at 10% and if you want to argue I will give you the two Salina schools, so 5 of 32, or 15%

6A = Garden City, Dodge City, Hutchison (just so we don't quibble about it) 3 of 32 = less than 10%.

Therefore, eastern Kansas "dominates" 4-6A wrestling because the number of 4-6A schools comprise about 12% of the total number of schools in those three classes.

Now count the number of medals won at the state tournament by those Western Kansas schools (and here you can count the two Salinas or not)--I have not done so but am willing to bet that they won a percentage of medals this year that is greater than 11%.

In the west the same line will yield an almost 50-50 split between western and eastern Kansas 3-2-1A high schools that wrestle. When you count medals (and you can go back as far as the tournament has been held at Hays--I have ) you will find that the number of medals won by Western Kansas schools is far greater than their percentage of membership. (You can distill it down further to the medals won by the 3-2-1A school in the NWKL and MCL ; a total of 15 schools or about 25% of the 3-2-1A schools that wrestle. That just gets obscene) It was not until the 5th and 6th place medals were added that the percentages of medals between west and east quit being totally ridiculous in the favor of the west.

Hey, you can look it up! ;-)

Egg- Could not have said it any better myself! However I would be willing to bet that when regionals roll around next year somebody from back east will be saying how tough their regionals are and how their wrestlers will dominate state this year. Then it will just be a repeat of the past 50 years a week later at the state tournament with the west dominating! I also am not seeing a lot of ppl. from back east posting on here. How come?

I guess Augusta has to be considered an eastern school even though we compete in the same basketball tournament as Liberal for sub-state because the Orioles went to Gardner for regional wrestling. And glad of it. NO way could Augusta have qualified 12 wrestlers in the Valley Center meet.
Myself, I thought the Gardner Regional was really weak considering I watched this team finish in the mid range during most tournaments this season, and three of the top five teams came out of one regional.

Hey nobody is saying that Western Kansas doesnt still have the best wrestling. I from out there and I am proud of what they have done and still do but some good wrestlers, actually a lot of good wrestlers did very well and happen to reside in the east part of the state and the sooner the east gets to the same level of the west the better it is for Kansas wrestling. Just because of the geographics of it, that doesn't mean kids aren't doing well and a lot better than they used to. Just look at the NCAA's and see where those kids came from. That doesn't mean anything except that there are some fine kids back there and I can see where they get tired of being badmouthed because of where they happen to live. I hope I don't have to turn in my Western Kansas citizenship card for saying that .

Westfahl I can not believe it but I am agreeing with you (a little bit) again! However we are not talking about the NCAA or a few select kids we are talking about a majority of kids and programs. There is no doubt the eastern part of the state has some great wrestlers- it simply does'nt have the team powerhouses or volume of great kids like the west does. What irritates me is before regionals/state all the eastern ppl. get on here talking smack but where are they now when the proof is out?

Well for one thing they are mostly kids. Kids talk smack, even when we don't want them to. Often when smack has been spoken, it is hard to find the smacker when the smackee comes looking for him after delivering physical smack on the mat. Its just a whole lot of smack don't you think. Its funny, I coached at Schlagle when we trophied in 5A state and nobody ever said a word about where we were from. Bob Brown at Wyandotte had 10 or 11 state champions in a decade and nobody ever said a word about where they were from. Where was all that smack then. Lots of those schools that have been mentioned in this thread didnt have any of that success in that time. I just think its getting better, all smack aside. Paola won a state championship last year, Blue Valley a couple of years ago, Columbus several times (they are in the east you know), Effingham last year and third this year. Hey that ain't too bad..... and that ain't just smack either lol.

#1 In 3-2-1A , when you talk about eastern schools who have won state you are talking about the exceptions, not the norm.

#2 We in the west get tired of being bad mouthed and looked down on because we are mostly from small towns--the prevailing attitude seems to be that small town athletes are inherently inferior to big town athletes becaause of the size of town? Puh-leez!

#3 Augusta was in the "western regional" because of the dearth of schools that size west of the Kansas mason-dixon line (hwy 81).

#4 College recruiters also subscribe to the notion that bigger schools automatically produce better athletes--don't get me started with that! I can list a LARGE number of D-I caliber athletes from small Kansas communities that were passed over due to the size of their community.

I too competed and then taught and coached in a 6A high school community. The superiority in athletes is a function of statistical probability, (think of the bell curve) NOT some sort of genetic anomoly that evidences itself only in big town athletes. The superiority rests in the numbers, not in the quality.

Actually I have never heard anyone say otherwise. I think you guys have developed an inferiority complex about yourselves. I am from a small town in western Kansas (Kinsley). There is no doubt that the more people you have the more likely you are to have a concentration of good athletes. I don't know anyone in my life that ever thought there was some inherent difference in the species that exist in these two areas. I have coached in both arenas and my kids that were in 6A schools never thought they had any advantage over the small school kids in fact they wrestled against them all the time and they knew where the toughest wrestlers were regardless of size of school. Me thinks you protest too much. I don't hear, and have never heard this large school conceit you speak of. Might be the other way around maybe.

Would it injure you in some way if the big schools in the east started pulling their own weight and got better? Wouldn't that make wrestling better in this state?

" I don't hear, and have never heard this large school conceit you speak of. Might be the other way around maybe. "

Puh-leez!

If what you say is true, you must be deaf. I have nephews who are "big school" athletes, and their comments always end in "for a small school" as in, "they are a good team for a small school," or, "e is a good player for a small school."

Too, being a 6A high school graduate and having coached at a 6A high school I know what is said by athletes AND coaches and the media, etc. in regards to small schools. I must admit that I too had this bias before I became involved with small school athletes.

Me thinks you have your head in the sand.