Freestyle/Greco State~at DUTCH FORK

I saw on the SCUSA site that the location had changed from Spring Valley to Dutch Fork.
Anyone going?

Michael will be going if he does not qualify for state in pole vaulting tomorrow.

Good.
I hope to see him there. Great kid. Fun to watch. He and Wolfe had a good match at the Ironman. In those weights between 125-140 there could be some good matches. Is He going to SE Regionals?

Michael did not advance in pole vault. He tied for eigth but lost due to having more scratches. They take the top eight. We will probably come to state and se regionals is still up in the air.

Any results from this weekend? How many wrestlers were there?

It was a poor turnout for freestyle/greco state. I do not know the exact numbers but I would say around 75 people. I understand that wrestling in the off season can get expensive and money is very tight for most people these days. I applaud everyone that makes the effort to get to these tournaments all over the place sometimes driving 3-5 hours. You, your programs, and your kids will all be better for it.
I am still surprised that more coaches, schools, and programs do not participate more. I guess a lot of people here just don't like to come out of their comfort zone and are afraid to take on new challenges. SC as a state will never compete nationally so long as the majority of the wrestling community hides in folkstyle and is afraid to sack up and throw down in freestyle and greco. If you are offended, do something about it. Seek out competition in the off season in the international styles that ALLOW you to actually wrestle instead of play the line and run out of bounds everytime you get in an uncomfortable position. Some of you don't go to the freestyle/greco tournaments because you are afraid of not knowing EXCACTLY who you are wrestling or heaven forbid, they group weights together......You know who you are.
If you want to get better and wrestle for legitmately competitive colleges, wrestle freestyle and greco. Most Div I schools expect you to wrestle freestyle/greco and expect you to do so while you are there. Go to SouthEast Regionals. Go to Fargo. Fargo is the number one tournament in the country and that is where the best schools go to scout. They want to see how you stack up against true national competition. Not picking and choosing tournaments in SC and hiding behind faux records against sub par competition. Cutting or jumping weights to avoid the tough guys is limp. If you are going to camps, go places where the best competitiors and coaches will be. Go to a camp at a school where you want to compete is. Go somewhere where you actually admire the way they wrestle. Go somewhere that actually is successful.

Anyways, just thought I had been too nice of late on here. Congrats to everyone who went to freestyle/greco state.

I don't know all of the matchups and unfortunately can only keep up with my guys.
Notable matches I can remember:
-Geiges walked through the South Point kid that was a finalist at 103. He and Derek were both at 119. Scores were 7-1, pin in the 1st match, 6-0, pin in the second match for greco and a 10 second pin in their lone freestyle match. The other two kids in his weight in freestyle forfeited for whatever reason.
-At 125 Patrick Mestrez beat state finalist Jake Mitchell 7-1, 6-0 in their greco match. Then came back to beat him in freestyle 2-6, 6-1, 7-2 in freestyle. Mitchell was huge.
-Wolfe had no one at 135 so he bumped up to 145 for greco. He lost to Tashawn Takael from Berkeley 2-6, 2-7. Tashawn was just bigger and stronger and they practice together. Wolfe then lost to a much bigger Ben Willard 0-3, 0-1 is a travesty of rules applications. Nothing against Willard. Tashawn then teched Willard badly in Greco with a series of throws and reverse lifts.
Wolfe had freestyle kids and teched them. I know one was a Fort Mill kid, but who??? Tashawn lost a freestyle match to Ben Willard at this weight.
-Cody Hancock did not have any significant competiton and never had to wrestle past the first period at cadet 130.
-Jonathon Johnson wrestled cadet 98 and had a couple of decent matches, but won them all handily.
-Nic thompson lost to the same kid in oth greco/freestyle that was a beast for cadet 189. Nic abused the other kids he wrestled though.

Soory about not being more specific. I don't recognize a lot of the kids as they are not regulars.

Lex - I agree that Free/Greco styles make for better folkstyle wrestlers, but I think the problem is more of a logistics and organization issue than just kids and clubs being scared to wrestle the styles. The Folkstyle season for clubs generally starts around late October and ends in late April, with all of the National tournaments. Folkstyle camps are mostly run in June and July, with some National tournaments in the summer as well as the outdoor tournament in July. Football from Pee-wee leagues to HS generally run August-November.
That doesn't leave much room for the Free/GR season, not to mention the spring sports that it has to compete with, like baseball, soccer, and golf. Having competing organizations also doesn't help, so I hope those leaders will work together in the future to improve SC wrestling. Team Palmetto has done good things to get kids to both AAU and USA regional and national tournaments, so if they can work with the guys now running SCUSAW, maybe it will be better promoted and more kids will get involved.

Valid points.

My post was geered towards the benefits of Freestyle and Greco. My tone towards people being afraid to try something new and go after competition was not necessarily aimed at the upstate people who other than you guys and West Oak, rarely compete in freestyle, but towards a lot of the kids in the programs I coach who have every excuse not to compete. These are the same ones that come up to me at the beginning and end of each regular season and ask "Coach, I want to be a state Champion and wrestle in college. What can do do to get there?"

those that put in the work, get there. Look at Geiges. Poster boy for hardwork.

The definition of insanity is when you keep doing the same ole thing over and over and expect different results. USA in SC will not grow unless they do something different. There are enough kids in SC to have 300 kids participating in spring wrestling. It has to be a product that people want to buy. The product right now is not appealing. With a plan and goal in place USA can be a growing sport in SC.

Points well taken Lex - you guys are definitely trying to steer the ship in the right direction - not trying to take away from that. Guru also makes a good point in that there needs to be some better run tournaments to attract the wrestlers. Have you guys ever thought of running a beach tournament down there on the coast? My wife and kids really love the beach and Jennings ears perk up whenever he hears me mention trying to organize one here. We haven't been abe to quite put together the logistics of where we would dump that much sand without having the task of hauling it away when we finished. You guys might also be able to attract a good number of GA wrestlers to one down there.

HEY - we hijacked this thread - but back to the original question:
ARE THERE ANY POSTED RESULTS FROM THE SCUSAW Freestyle and Greco Championships?

Posted results anywhere?????
I do not think so. Another issue.......

There are a lot of problems. The main issue is probably that there are not enough people (qualified) to get involved and help. The people who are, probably do their best. I think they are few though. Most of us have to make a living. That in and of itself limits who volunteers their time and to what degree. As such the following areas suffer:
-Website/information being made available
-Promotion of events
-Running tournaments
-Pre tournament clinics
-Coordination of national events
-Results
-Training in these styles
-Coaches training

The people who are helping, do so because they enjoy the sport. Unfortunately, loving the sport does not always translate into being technologically capable or having the business acumen to manage things. That being said, personally, I do not have the time either to volunteer or break into that cluster of individuals and right the ship. I'm nudging and trying here and there though. I enjoy coaching first and foremost, so what spare time I have goes into that. Sometimes "they" get irritated when I take my crew to other states and events for competition, but the kids have to come first. I'll continue that next year. Greenwood is always on our list, then we try to fit in a date to host, then what tournaments are solid/close in FL, GA, NC, then w fill in the blanks until the thing gets better.

I think this year suffered a lot from the economy. Things are tight for people and it is expensive travelling and wrestling every weekend.

I want to do some fun things when we host a tournament at Hanahan next year. I do not know a thing about beach wrestling as a style. I'm afraid our ref's don't either. That would be a problem. I also am not sure about the logistics of holding a tournament at the beach.

Last season Coach Sawyer wanted to do a grappling/submission demo at Boiling springs and wanted grappling added to the day's events. People were excited. Apparently no one knew how to ref it and "they" shut it down.

By the way,
It is always good to see you guys at the events regardless of how small. Looking forward to taking the Ironman Trophy home next year. Go ahead and print "Pitbull Wrestling Club" on it. The gauntlet has been thrown down.

not so fast my friend!

TCTC will return in full force to the Ironman next season with some fury. We won last year without many of our studs.

As long as it does not fall on SAT weekend I will be load up every gun I have and have them there. I might even pull out the ole rusty guns from a couple years back and enter them into the OPEN division. We'll pull some Noah's Ark on everyone and dominate two-by-two if I bring two Burrs, two Alley's, two Harper's, two Hannah's, two Curtis's, two Crowley's, a Moore, Maltby, and little kid named Stumpy then trust me you will have brought a knife to a gun fight.

That would be the TCTC way to win right?

Bring people and enter them into weight classes without any competition. That is bold. There were how many open guys this year?

LSO,
I think you are a little full of yourself after your BULLS*** win on American Idol last night. You know in your heart that Adam Lambert was the superior singer. You even admitted as much when YOUR idol, Ryan Seacrest announced you had won. Just like you stack the deck for your Chesterfield kids, you managed to sneek the victory on Idol. so Congratulations LSO, or should I say CHRIS ALLEN!

How about this.....
We hold a side bet based on head to head matchups. And your kids HALF to wrestle greco and freestyle. Hell I may get to give you the crappy folkstyle matches and will still probably win. Then I can leave Saturday afternoon per the norm.

Score one for the bad guy!

Whoa - Country Kids and Ware Shoals might want some of that fight. CK lost by a point and we had to check the results twice and even pull bout sheets to verify the challenge matches. If some of their HS guys chosen to show up on Sunday - it may have been a different story on who won. Coach Emily and some of the other teams were eyeing the trophy as well.

Keep in mind that we don't give team points if there is nobody in the bracket to wrestle. Might even expand that rule to say you have to have at least 2 opponents in your bracket to score - which would put the competition more in the hands of the MS and HS teams - where the significant brackets are. Most everybody that came had at least 2 opponents - because we made sure everybody that came got moved if they didn't. One of the GA ES parents took the time to ask me and his kid ended up wrestling in 3 different brackets.

Based on the numbers - we might just go ahead and run Folkstyle Saturday night to finish it up all on the same day. We likely could have finished before 10PM this year if we ran it that way.

I feel very comfortable making that bet.

As far as the Open division goes. I was the first to say that it is too easy to score points using Open wrestlers and they should not be used but if it is within the limits of the tournament then all is fair. You know the Chesterfield motto is "borderline illegal."

Oh yeah, Lex, remember if you are gonna call me out using a BOLD word make sure you pick the right one. I will make sure my kids will HAVE to do greco.

Score two for the worse guys!!!!!

Darn,
My stubbornness to proof read my own posts haunts me again.

Chris Allen,
Your kids HAVE to compete in freestyle and greco against REAL people.
No hiding behind 3 year olds and 20 something's without matches. No bumping Dalton or Trey to 163 and 211 to get those empty medals Bub!

LSO, Are you going to try to host an outside nite tournament this fall?

if i can get the big whigs to agree on it.

How is yours looking?