Is Iowa High School/Youth Wrestling Getting Worse?
- Thread starter Is_there_vodka_in_heaven
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And Fargo isn't NCAA division 1 nationals.
Is Pennsylvania and New Jersey sending all of their best kids to a tournament in North Dakota? I would think Iowa sends more of their top kids than the Eastern states or California, etc.
Fargo has gotten significantly better the past 3 years. But no, not everyone is going.
Iowa is also held back by not being able to compete in the top tier in-season tournaments (Ironman, Beast, Doc B, etc)
Since when are duals an indication of elite talent?
Fargo isn’t the tourney it used to be. The best kids aren’t going there like they once were. Some of those brackets are no better than solid.
The same kids that are high in rankings are the same kids that are on these dual teams.
It's an indication that Iowa isn't this waste land of high school talent.
How does this hold back Iowa kids in regards to being elite in college? If I'm reading everyone's comments here, it's apparently saving Iowa kids from getting exposed as not as good.
I think this is close to the answer. Iowa is wrestling against two states (Penn and Ohio) with strong high school teams and nearly 4 times the population. Iowa and Okie Stat are 3-4 million population against 11-12 million for Penn and Ohio. Size matters.
Remember, we out-punch Illinois, which under-performs in all sports, so there's that.
Whoa, sick burn. I guess keep bitching about how bad iowa high school kids are even though they just fine in national competition.
Did a few minutes of search and found this link: https://mwolverine.com/Top_Wrestling_States.html
Of course more digging needed.... But intriguing data.....would need to bring from 2011 to now and sift through placements to find more out.
And when trying to assess how well a state does at producing D1 AAs or champs, state population is really not the proper denominator, # of wrestlers is...which may be somewhat correlated to population. I mean, Florida could add another million post-reproductive retirees and it is irrelevant to wrestling population. Some useful data on wrestling population here https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/5067286-you-do-the-math-high-school-participation-numbers
Will let somebody else take the math from there.
Interesting data. Thanks for sharing. But this data doesn't help to assess the changes over time. Unless there's another link on that site that I'm not seeing when viewing this on mobile.
"Everything that is counted does not necessarily count, everything that counts is not necessarily counted".
The quality of Iowa High School wrestling waxes and wanes (increases and decreases). The number of NCAA wrestling champions produced by any individual state is likely an extremely inaccurate metric of the quality of high school wrestling. Post high school wrestling competition many(!) intangibles factor into producing a NCAA wrestling championships.
The quality of high school wrestling is a very subjective thing. Phrased another way "beauty is often in the eye of the beholder".
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So I had a kid that wrestled two years. Even had a few of his friends come out for a year.
IMO the problem with youth wrestling is that these tournaments get totally unbalanced. Yeah, trackwrestling does an okay job. But you have kids like my son and his friends who are just doing a community club going up against kids who are doing big clubs, wrestling 50-100 times a year, etc and just getting their asses kicked.
You take a bad L on the basketball court and you move on. You get smoked on the mat and man that's just not a good feeling.
IMO the problem with youth wrestling is that these tournaments get totally unbalanced. Yeah, trackwrestling does an okay job. But you have kids like my son and his friends who are just doing a community club going up against kids who are doing big clubs, wrestling 50-100 times a year, etc and just getting their asses kicked.
You take a bad L on the basketball court and you move on. You get smoked on the mat and man that's just not a good feeling.
Iowa wrestling as a whole is bad. The state tournament is filled with kids that can win multiple titles while being multi-sport athletes.
But when I say its getting better - you provided some stats yourself. Nationally they're doing better because of Sebolt, Big Game and Immortals. They're both a bit young to be worried about how their guys are doing in D1, but I think eventually it will prove fruitful. (jury is out on sebolt kids for me - they seem pretty beat up by the time they graduate)
My comment about Iowa High school not being able to go to the higher level folkstyle tournaments has more to do with their progression as folkstylers. Not having those matches where top/bottom and folk scrambling and being truly tested throughout a season against really high level folkers is definitely hurts their initial development/success in D1.
Not trying to insult you, just pointing out, that, nationally, Iowa is doing BETTER. Would love to see them do more in the folk pre-season (journeymen, Grappler, Indiana Classic, Super 32, etc) - because I think that would help a ton.
I had the same worry about AWA with folkstyle, they don't really do the big run, don't do super 32, can't travel, don't hit folk nationals in the spring - but its clear they truly focus on being elite in the skills that win in D1 - namely, top/bottom and scrambling.
Iowa wrestling at a high school and younger level can be better but also behind other states because they maybe have improved more relative to Iowa.
That's the problem with youth sports, in many cases it's a huge money racket and overall will benefit more elite athletes but will not be good for the average kids. Kids should be playing multiple sports and being active in general.
Could be completely irrelevant, but something worth discussing. We can all agree that wrestling is about as blue collar of a sport as it gets. You've got rural Iowa shrinking. The blue-collarness of running a farm (or just being a rural Iowa kid in general) is shrinking. Mix that with with rural families having 2 or 3 kids instead of 3-5. The sport went from "you have to be a tough badass brawler" to win in wrestling to more of a technical and skilled wrestler to win. At the national level especially, I think it has taken our state awhile to adapt to that change. We were behind the 8 ball, but I think it's getting better. Our club scene (proportionate to our population) is finally starting to catch up and I hope we'll see more of the results soon. Also, I know Big Game and Sebolt were mentioned quite a bit in that article, but it's hard to overlook the surge Immortal has had in our state as well. I was all over the map there, but it's Friday morning and I'm not as precise as I'd like to be.
All add that what some parents pay for these sports can be beyond the means of many and the time commitment might be more than some families can allot. A friend had his kid in youth hockey and if he saved the money spent on that and put it on a college fund and gained no interest he still could've paid for a a full ride for the kid.
Many sports are becoming a rich man's game if you want to succeed at a high level. Unless you're phenom but some of them have rich parents too. Or the means involving time, look at Bo Nickal's family. I believe they were teachers and dad coached. Certain time off makes it easier to travel compared to some folk.
Many sports are becoming a rich man's game if you want to succeed at a high level. Unless you're phenom but some of them have rich parents too. Or the means involving time, look at Bo Nickal's family. I believe they were teachers and dad coached. Certain time off makes it easier to travel compared to some folk.
ding, ding, ding, ding.
One need only look at state tournaments across the nation. I think Josh Lowe sent out a tweet about it in relation to California's single class system - but it's wrestling right now is - you're either REALLY good, or not. There are very few kids you would consider national level/d1 talents who don't wrestle year round.
And honestly, that's in all schools now apart from football. If you don't specialize pretty early - you had better have Christian McCaffrey genes (Dad NFL wide receiver, mom d1 track athlete).
Neither of those clubs comes remotely close to the NCAA successes of Pablo Ubasa. Pablo has a shot at adding a couple more AA's to the list this NCAA.
In the Gable era, Iowa was the center of the universe for US wrestling and the level of interest in wrestling from in-state youth athletes was likely at an all-time high. Since 1997 when Dan hung it up, we have seen a slow shifting of youth wrestling enthusiasm from Iowa to other states like PA, OH, NJ, and even CA. Collegiate wrestling also took a huge hit with so many schools dropping their programs over the years and that's not helping out either.
In many ways it's just a numbers game now and it is driven by population. I would think a larger percentage of PA kids consider the sport now than Iowa kids do, and that's because PA is now the center of the wrestling universe and it will likely stay that way for some time going forward.
In many ways it's just a numbers game now and it is driven by population. I would think a larger percentage of PA kids consider the sport now than Iowa kids do, and that's because PA is now the center of the wrestling universe and it will likely stay that way for some time going forward.
I wouldn't use NCAA D1 champions as the primary method of objective evaluation, but rather NCAA AAs and average AA placement over time.
I don't agree that it's mostly subjective. It seems clear that the state of Iowa is producing/outputting fewer high caliber D1 wrestlers than in prior decades which is a major indicator that Iowa wrestling is relatively worse in comparison to other states than in prior decades.
It's a little eye opening how many people in this thread alone have twisted logic to deny that Iowa wrestling has gotten comparatively worse. It's hard for people to admit that, but the data seems to support the fact.
To me, the take away is that Iowa college coaches need to be much more heavily prioritizing out of state recruiting than they currently are. Iowa did fantastic a handful of years ago recruiting from Pennsylvania. That has dried up and I'm not seeing the effort currently.
And at the high school/youth level, more needs to be done to prepare kids for D1. I think part of that has already been discussed here in that multi sport athletes are often at a disadvantage to the kids who focus almost exclusively on wrestling. However, then you run a greater risk of burnout. That seemingly has happened with some Sebolt kids. What are Wyoming seminary and Blair academy doing differently and could a school like that work in Iowa?
Right. Which by definition means that Iowa wrestling is getting comparatively worse.
Agreed regarding the sport's transition from blue collar/toughness to more technical/fluidity.
Interesting take regarding the demographic changes as well. Maybe that's why the eastern states are doing better (PA/NJ/OH) - they have a mix and diversity of blue collar, rural toughness, but also the more technical/fluidity that comes from diversity of experience, training, coaching, and competition. The larger population centers leads to that diversity that Iowa lacks.
Getting pinned in 20 seconds or less isn't doing anything for anybody, and that's a lot of youth tournaments around here.
Who?
Sebolt has had impressive Freco results but have not translated to NCAA success yet.
would give C DeVos and R Downey good shots to AA at the college level this season. apologies if i am missing anyone else.
This. I guess I didn’t know his club was still active. Who’s from his club has been an AA in recent years? “These guys maybe have a shot” doesn’t cut it.
Were you saying these are Ubassa kids? Blockhus definitely isn’t. He was an Elite Takedown kid which was a bit of a precursor to Immortal.
As I've mentioned, I think iowa is deep in good talent. Sure maybe being ncaa champ/aa seems to be down. However these kids sure seem destined when they leave high school to be very good. For some reason they get blamed for their lack of development, but I've yet to hear blame on the coaching side as well.
One thing I think that does help the east coast kids (but admittedly wouldn't explain the AWA kids), is the massive culture of youth/ms "redshirting" and single sport focus. Iowa as a whole hasn't done a lot of that, but it does seem to be picking up here.
One thing I think that does help the east coast kids (but admittedly wouldn't explain the AWA kids), is the massive culture of youth/ms "redshirting" and single sport focus. Iowa as a whole hasn't done a lot of that, but it does seem to be picking up here.
M McDonough, J Borschel, C Clark, J Slaton, D St John, and I know i've seen R Morningstar in some Ubasa pictures as well, but that might have been a team Iowa dual type of thing.
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