http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/sports/2012/03/04/central-ohiossaving-grace.html

There is some talk on another thread, but I figured it deserves its own.

Lets have at it!

It was disappointing that instead of focusing on the accomplishments of the boys who did do well, it focused on the negative. We get so little press from the Dispatch as it is and the day after the best tournament of the year, they choose to write an article about how bad we did. I thought it was a shame.

zambrown;1105015 wrote:It was disappointing that instead of focusing on the accomplishments of the boys who did do well, it focused on the negative. We get so little press from the Dispatch as it is and the day after the best tournament of the year, they choose to write an article about how bad we did. I thought it was a shame.

Agreed! Maybe if they gave some more ink it could help promote wrestling.
As pointed out our D1 district actually outperformed last yr due to the redistricting(no Dayton)
Still not where we need to be tho.
I get sick and tired of being the doormat for the NE!

Lets be honest...there isnt a geographical region in the US that isnt the wrestling doormat for NE Ohio.

ksig489;1105175 wrote:Lets be honest...there isnt a geographical region in the US that isnt the wrestling doormat for NE Ohio.

Yes that is most likely true. But, why would a newspaper that we purchase not be more supportive of our local athletes? Cleveland doesnt have better athletes they have better support from the community which includes their media!! On an off-note thay also have larger schools/suburbs there. Not to mention their pay to play/denomination schools. We are at a disadvantage in Central Ohio and probably always will be.

Sid: are you saying that $400 pay to participate fees are hurting our teams? What makes you think that!? <sarcasm>

Not to mention that i think they consider 14 counties as NE Ohio!

We were up at the Wadsworth tourney this yr and they have this massive gym that is getting torn down along with the school to all be replaced. Medina county passed a tax for the funding of new school buildings and sports complexes.

I think the biggest factor is just fan interest. Wrestling is big there. It isn't here.

Cthelites;1105523 wrote:Not to mention that i think they consider 14 counties as NE Ohio!

....

88 counties 5 regions in the State

14 seems about right for NE Ohio

zambrown;1105015 wrote:It was disappointing that instead of focusing on the accomplishments of the boys who did do well, it focused on the negative. We get so little press from the Dispatch as it is and the day after the best tournament of the year, they choose to write an article about how bad we did. I thought it was a shame.

Sorry Zam,

But I disagree.
By the way congrat to you and Zach

Emphasize the good? Everybody gets an award/ribbon/medal/trophy?

Sometimes tough love is the best.
When put into relative terms ....the Central SUCKED across the board.
Making excuses and coddling our kids will not improve the results.

I think it is a good idea to get a fair evaluation from time to time to show the need for improvement or to praise results gained.

Just have to EARN the praise.

Emphasize the good? Everybody gets an award/ribbon/medal/trophy?

No, that's exactly my point. Everyone doesn't get an award/ribbon/medal/trophy at the State tournament - it's a pretty special accomplishment (and thank you). And while the issue of Central Districts weakness as compared to the NE is certainly a valid topic for discussion, I'm just not sure the day after State was necessarily the time or place to have it.

zambrown;1105586 wrote:No, that's exactly my point. Everyone doesn't get an award/ribbon/medal/trophy at the State tournament - it's a pretty special accomplishment (and thank you). And while the issue of Central Districts weakness as compared to the NE is certainly a valid topic for discussion, I'm just not sure the day after State was necessarily the time or place to have it.

I find myself in a middle ground kind of position. You are correct that getting an award at the state level is a fine accomplishment and should be recognized. OTOH, when fans of the sport call for more coverage, we probably shouldn't get offended when not all of it is positive. It's not the job of the media to act as cheerleader, it's to report.

I have a few responses:

1. Central Ohio as a whole, does not have the long history and tradition of wrestling like the Cleveland area. I think it has been growing very quickly, talent is spread out instead of being concentrated. Imagine if the Olentangy Schools had one team instead of three. That would improve the quality of the wrestling room and raise the bar for the team. The really good kids are not being challenged enough on a daily basis. (Central OH has produced very good wrestlers just not on a consistant basis.)

2. The toughness of the Central Ohio suburban kid can be called into question. I grew up in Erie Pa., A dying blue collar town kind of like Cleveland. Sometimes their is an inherent toughness to the people in areas like that. Central Ohio is filled with a softer brand of parent.

3. Calling the Dispatch a newspaper is insulting to newspapers. That rag does not know what to do with non-OSU stories. I would be great if it supported and covered wrestling on a weekly basis.

mella;1107354 wrote:I have a few responses:

1. Central Ohio as a whole, does not have the long history and tradition of wrestling like the Cleveland area. I think it has been growing very quickly, talent is spread out instead of being concentrated. Imagine if the Olentangy Schools had one team instead of three. That would improve the quality of the wrestling room and raise the bar for the team. The really good kids are not being challenged enough on a daily basis. (Central OH has produced very good wrestlers just not on a consistant basis.)

2. The toughness of the Central Ohio suburban kid can be called into question. I grew up in Erie Pa., A dying blue collar town kind of like Cleveland. Sometimes their is an inherent toughness to the people in areas like that. Central Ohio is filled with a softer brand of parent.

3. Calling the Dispatch a newspaper is insulting to newspapers. That rag does not know what to do with non-OSU stories. I would be great if it supported and covered wrestling on a weekly basis.

+3

No one has any comment on what the article actually says?
on this idea that...

what the district needs is a centralized &#8220;open-mat&#8221;workout. &#8220;You get the best guys together in one spot, then when those kids come in, more kids will come in and everyone is getting better.&#8221;

or who the author (and apparently Coach Andrews) implies is to blame for there not being one.

But for such an idea to work, Columbus-area coaches need to loosen some control over their wrestlers, Andrews said.
&#8220;I&#8217;m probably guilty of this myself, of worrying, &#8216;If I send someone to another place to practice, well, are they going to be scouting him the whole time? Am I going to lose him?&#8217; It seems coaches want to so much work with their own kids and control it, but you have to let go of that a little bit,&#8221; Andrews said.

We say it every year. GM has had open mats around ten years. And the most we've ever had is 30... And that was short lived. Then, last year, for Central Ohio Open mats, we had about 45.

So my question is, what gives!? We open our doors for two hours and around 1% of our wrestling population shows up!? I tell our very own kids to be involved with two open mats a week and at least one tournament a month, but we might see one. That's out of 20!

I think Mella is on to something with our toughness.

As always though - and as Coach Andrews said - maybe I'm the problem. What else or more can I do, which opportunities can I afford to tomorrow's crop of wrestlers.

We'll see...

ps: mella... General McClain would crush Fairview in anything. But McDowell will always reign supreme! Long live WLD Ranch!!!

zambrown;1105586 wrote:No, that's exactly my point. Everyone doesn't get an award/ribbon/medal/trophy at the State tournament - it's a pretty special accomplishment (and thank you). And while the issue of Central Districts weakness as compared to the NE is certainly a valid topic for discussion, I'm just not sure the day after State was necessarily the time or place to have it.

zambrown, 1st a big congrats to Zach... I don't know if the article was in poor timing buttttt...... I think it woke a lot of people up. The day after the tournament articles are probably read by most central Ohio fans and coaches. I hate to admit it but I think it was good timing.

Shoot and Sprawl;1107460 wrote:No one has any comment on what the article actually says?
on this idea that...

what the district needs is a centralized &#8220;open-mat&#8221;workout. &#8220;You get the best guys together in one spot, then when those kids come in, more kids will come in and everyone is getting better.&#8221;


But for such an idea to work, Columbus-area coaches need to loosen some control over their wrestlers, Andrews said.
&#8220;I&#8217;m probably guilty of this myself, of worrying, &#8216;If I send someone to another place to practice, well, are they going to be scouting him the whole time? Am I going to lose him?&#8217; It seems coaches want to so much work with their own kids and control it, but you have to let go of that a little bit,&#8221; Andrews said.

or who the author (and apparently Coach Andrews) implies is to blame for there not being one.

OK, Ill bite:

We opened our room every Monday night for open mat/Ohio Capitals Club at Darby.
I thought it was a great success by the numbers we consistently got(30-40 every week).
BUT...I was hugely disappointed at the local #s we got!
Besides the few consistent kids that came from Marysville, we had little to no OCC support(partly the name for the club-Capitals).
We consistently had kids coming from Newark Catholic coming every week! We saw kids from Circleville, Springfield, Urbanna and a couple regulars from Delaware. We did have a kid here or there that would show up from a Worthingtons Olentangies and Westervilles. Had some City league kids pop in once and CCL now and again.
I guess the most frustrating thing is that we had no other Hilliard kids come(Bradley came once), no Dublin kids, no Grove City kids, UA and on and on!
WHY? Please help me with this!
Everyone that came said they loved it and we were doing a great thing for Cent Oh. We never saw some of them back. Why?
Was $5 too much? I only had one person ever say anything about price.
We start at 6:45 and end at 8 so there was enough time to get there from practice and get back home at a decent time.
We had more support from Newark and Delaware than anyone else so distance cant really be used as an excuse.

With most of the school districts being closed enrollment, where else can you go(recruiting argument...is anyone going to mess around with that with the recent rulings on the Nelson twins and Artem?)?

We will continue to offer our club/open mats off season and in season.
Hopefully there is a more coordinated effort for Cent Oh to give opportunities for kids that are looking to improve
I did hear there are some things in store for the region.

ksig489;1105175 wrote:Lets be honest...there isnt a geographical region in the US that isnt the wrestling doormat for NE Ohio.

It's Lebron's fault.

Cthelites;1107687 wrote:OK, Ill bite:

We opened our room every Monday night for open mat/Ohio Capitals Club at Darby.
I thought it was a great success by the numbers we consistently got(30-40 every week).
BUT...I was hugely disappointed at the local #s we got!
Besides the few consistent kids that came from Marysville, we had little to no OCC support(partly the name for the club-Capitals).
We consistently had kids coming from Newark Catholic coming every week! We saw kids from Circleville, Springfield, Urbanna and a couple regulars from Delaware. We did have a kid here or there that would show up from a Worthingtons Olentangies and Westervilles. Had some City league kids pop in once and CCL now and again.
I guess the most frustrating thing is that we had no other Hilliard kids come(Bradley came once), no Dublin kids, no Grove City kids, UA and on and on!
WHY? Please help me with this!
Everyone that came said they loved it and we were doing a great thing for Cent Oh. We never saw some of them back. Why?
Was $5 too much? I only had one person ever say anything about price.
We start at 6:45 and end at 8 so there was enough time to get there from practice and get back home at a decent time.
We had more support from Newark and Delaware than anyone else so distance cant really be used as an excuse.

With most of the school districts being closed enrollment, where else can you go(recruiting argument...is anyone going to mess around with that with the recent rulings on the Nelson twins and Artem?)?

We will continue to offer our club/open mats off season and in season.
Hopefully there is a more coordinated effort for Cent Oh to give opportunities for kids that are looking to improve
I did hear there are some things in store for the region.

CTL,

I think that you are doing the right thing with your open mats and it got off to a pretty good start. I believe that you didn't get some of the local wrestlers because they were already going to Jordan's on Sunday night. Most wrestlers will probably only go to an open mat one night per week during the season due to the "burn-out" factor.

I think that your numbers will grow if you can get some "talent" to come into the room and spread the word on who is attending. My son went to Jordan's because he could count on wrestling State caliber kids every time, such as: Micah Jordan, Ryan Taylor, Kowal, Kihn, Steiner, McCurdy, etc.

So, if you can get the higher caliber of wrestlers to attend and spread the word, I think that you'll start a new central ohio room that's worth going to. I applaud your efforts and hope that you do start attracting the talent.

PS. Coaches could help this out by encouraging their star wrestlers to go.

Coaches and wrestlers share in the blame. People have to realize is that EVERYBODY trains hard during the season so closing the gap on NE doesn't happen from Nov-March. If we are going to close the gap it needs to be done between March-Nov which is dominated by highly competitive freestyle events (with The Super 32 being the exception).

Look at the link for USA Wrestling Ohio - http://www.usawrestling-ohio.org/

This is the very first year that I can remember a central ohio school/coach stepping up to make a presence on the USA Wrestling qualifying schedule for Cental Ohio. Great job Thomas Worthington! Now our kids and coaches need to support that qualifier and participate in the state tournament at Western Brown in hopes of participating in Fargo. If they make the Fargo team, it keeps kids wrestling at a high level until at least July. Last year, Central Ohio had virtually no presence at the state championships - coaches or kids. I saw Bob Stoll there both days and Brad Harris there on Sunday. How can we expect our kids to improve if we are not pushing and coaching them at events like this? We (coaches and kids) are simply getting outworked in the offseason by our competition and until this changes the results will not. It really is that simple.

mella;1107354 wrote:I have a few responses:

2. The toughness of the Central Ohio suburban kid can be called into question. I grew up in Erie Pa., A dying blue collar town kind of like Cleveland. Sometimes their is an inherent toughness to the people in areas like that. Central Ohio is filled with a softer brand of parent.

DING DING DING!!!!!! We have a winner

Old 118 lbr;1107757 wrote: PS. Coaches could help this out by encouraging their star wrestlers to go.

Names in the room would help, certainly. I also think that the coaches need to encourage other kids as well. My son is not a name wrestler. He's decent/good, one of the top kids on his jh team, placed in all tournaments the school competed in, 19-8 record for the school season, never pinned during the school season, etc. But he was never told about the Darby open mats until I asked around when he decided to try to go to states. Talking to other parents, it was the same for them. There was no information or encouragement to do anything outside. IMO, the HS coaches need to be reaching down into the youth clubs and middle schools and getting this information out. Right now, it is really on the parents. And a lot of parents are new to wrestling and don't know that this stuff is even out there. My son was unsure of the whole open mat thing, but going to Liberty really opened his eyes to what he could learn by practicing with good kids.

hang_loose;1107622 wrote:zambrown, 1st a big congrats to Zach... I don't know if the article was in poor timing buttttt...... I think it woke a lot of people up. The day after the tournament articles are probably read by most central Ohio fans and coaches. I hate to admit it but I think it was good timing.

hang_loose: Thanks very much. You make a good point on the timing and maybe it will nudge some people to step up. We never hesitated to get mat time whether it be at Graham, the annual trek to Solon or occasionally up to Tiffin with Travis Traxler. Off season work really is required in order to compete on a state-wide level. Wrestling has been a year round sport for us since 8th grade with camps, open mats, open tournaments, etc. CTL, we were going to Graham partly because we knew he'd have top notch kids to drill and go live with. He's taking some much deserved time off for awhile, but sooner or later the itch will hit and he'll want to lace 'em up and get on the mat. If your open mats are still going, I'm sure you'll see him up there sometime.