JVStateChamp

Former App State 133 Ethan Oakley signed with North Carolina.

McGonagle to Vtech. Posted on his instagram this morning. Good pick up for the Hokies

Good pickup for NC State. This may be bigger news for USA wrestling, there has been a lot of turnover for the freestyle development coach in recent years.

I agree with that this year the PIAA wanted to spotlight the Girls wrestling tournament by putting them on the center mats for both finals and semi-finals. I think this year was a trial run for scheduling as well as how they could format the tournament to make it both efficient and enjoyable from a viewer standpoint. As for the schedule, I would consider it a fail, consi-semi round did not start until 9 PM, and then the wrestlers had to be up and at the arena for 8:00 weigh-ins the following morning. The quarter-final round for AAA also began 30 minutes behind the scheduled time. But it will certainly be interesting to see how the PIAA manages these flaws going forward, there were rumbles around the Giant Center that they may be considering moving the boys back to 16-man brackets, whether that is true I am not sure. I imagine as girls wrestling grows which it undoubtedly will, they will get their own governing committee that will organize and coordinate postseason. This will separate them from the boys but also allow them to have some autonomy on how they will begin their own traditions without being compared to the boys.

They do force you to pay online, I was at PA States this year and you could purchase all-session tickets for $50/person, this may seem steep but considering it covers girls, AA, and AAA it is not terrible. Online tickets are a pain in the butt and come with extra fees but its just the way things go now. I also agree that a spotlight final or something better than girls, AA, AAA finals is a necessary change for next year. The state finalists and state champions were given a disservice, the parade of champions was a joke and did not recognize any of the athletes competing in the finals. PIAA needs to figure out how to handle adding girls wrestling to the tournament as the schedule was a mess and fans missed the first two weight classes for the semi-finals Friday night due to lines outside the Giant Center.

How hard is it to enter the correct wrestler at the designated time? If there is a late entry should the tournament even accept it? I believe the idea is that the conference wants to get the names of the entries in so that they can begin the seeding procedures and release brackets/seeds in a timely manner. The thought is that the late entry automatically gets the last seed which they are more likely to take a first-round loss. If they allow late entries and reseed the whole weight class brackets would be changing more frequently causing even more confusion over how wrestler "C" got seeded over wrestler "A" and so on

Mike Macchiavello comes to mind when discussing wrestlers that "overachieved". He was a one-time state champ from North Carolina which is not exactly known as the toughest state. I believe I remember in an article that he had a negative record as a freshman in college. Either way, it was an impressive progression from HS to College.

I do not mind the idea of home and away singlets, I think this could be easily accomplished where there are specific base colors that count towards home and others that are away. Some teams have tried to implement shorts and a shirt for competitions like ASU or Mizzu but it just has not seemed to get any traction. I personally think the singlet is better but I would be all for shorts and a shirt if it correlated to a spike in participation.

1 allocation is probably accurate as Palmer's best win this season is Blaze. Palmer also has two losses to in conference opponent from App State.

Idaho is looking to get an NIL deal out of this draft. The winner does get ultimate bragging rights for the year.

Count me in. Been training all year for a better performance than last.

Like I said in a previous post let PCN cover the PIAA state tournament so we can watch the finals. I would love to see how they handle AA, AAA, and girls finals all happening simultaneously. I am sure PCNs version would be much better. I am not saying that Flo is perfect but it is hard to argue that PCN did a better job covering states.

I think we're arguing about two separate topics. You have a gripe with Flo. In my opinion, since Flo started streaming the PIAA tournament it has received more viewers and allowed people from all over the country to follow some of the best wrestlers in the country. Flo even will promote the tournament by posting ads on their social media pages and headlining it on their website. Seems like this is holding back the growth of wrestling. If you do not like Flo, I can see that argument but to say PCN was better for the PIAA wrestling tournament is a fallacy.

Then let's put it back on PCN so our seniors in the state of Pennsylvania can watch 26 matches out of the whole tournament, while they pay for their cable bill to enjoy their PCN. But if they have a dish network like DirectTv they should figure out how to stream it because dish networks do not provide PCN.

If you are a grandparent of someone that is in the 3rd/4th match, or 5th/6th match you're all out of luck because PCN will not show any of their matches. PCN did a disservice to the amount of talent and depth that the PIAA championships have by only showing the finals. Going back in time before states seeded the top four district champions, PCN would miss matches like Sasso/Pletcher or Kemmerer/Hidlay which happened in the quarters. So seniors were missing a lot of superstars because PCN did not provide proper coverage.

Flo is a business, if PCN wanted to maintain the streaming rights they could have purchased them instead of Flo. PCN did the bare minimum to show just the state finals. PCN also is only free with a cable provider, if not then a viewer could sign up for a PCN Select subscription. Paying for a Flo membership for Grandparents, Family, or friends is a heck of a lot easier and cheaper than going to Hershey paying for food, tickets, and hotels. Love it or hate it, Flo provides the ability for people from all over the country to stream any match they choose to watch, PCN only streamed the championship finals.

Good or bad depending on how you look at it, Flo now streams every match wrestled at the PIAA championships including state duals. This has shown to have impacted the attendance numbers for the tournament itself. Still, I would put a good amount of money into that the overall viewership is much higher than it was when PCN only showed the finals and was only available to Pennsylvania natives.

I agree it is not easy to seed these brackets, but PIAA changed to seed the top four district champions in the individual brackets in 2017. I wonder if this would be a successful method for the state dual format. It is hard to say if CRS was an overrated team, with them more than likely beating Central Mountain and Connellsville if Mutarelli had been eligible (that is a different argument that has been beaten like a dead horse). Either way, the brackets worked themselves out as they normally do and there were some fun match-ups along the way.

One person who has not been mentioned yet that comes to mind is James Green who has had a long storied career for Team USA. Green is one of the more under-appreciated members of this group of the "Golden Age" of USA Wrestling.

While the bracket of the two best teams worked out in AA, AAA brackets are somewhat of a mess. The #1 and #2 ranked teams in the state will meet in the quarter-finals. Will the PIAA ever seed the dual brackets? I remember not so long ago they had placement for the individual brackets as well. Seems like a disservice to the teams that work all year for a chance to capture a medal.

I do not believe that anyone is arguing that PSU would not run away with a dual championship but the thought of having a bracketed dual meet tournament composed of the best teams from different conferences is exciting for the sport. Besides NCAAs the most exciting events in the season are great duals like NC State/V-Tech, Ohio State/V-tech, Iowa/Iowa State. This allows fans of a particular school to have two hours that they can actively cheer or follow their team consecutively. It's hard to grow a fanbase in an individual tournament when the team you are following may not have a guy on the mat for 45 min at a time, it doesn't engage the people who are not following wrestling to the degree as people on this forum. This is nothing new that has not been discussed before and it has not gained any traction in the minds of the decision makers so I digress.

The point of the match minimum is to reward those who step on the line during the season. Whether you think the F&M open is good competition or not is beside the fact, those who go to the tournament are still wrestling D1 level competition.

This is such a difficult position for the wrestlers and coaches, when two teammates wrestle each other it is quite often that coaches and the athletes have an idea of who the superior wrestler is. I think as a coach in the corner the best thing to do is sit there and be more of a figure than a supporter. Both wrestlers most likely don't have the same fire to compete against each other as they would against someone from a different team. Tough for all involved, especially the referee if they're wearing the same singlet lol

I am not sure that there is a correlation between the two, I could be wrong but in interviews that I have heard with Pat Pop or Beasley faith has never been mentioned. Implementing a dry program cannot be an easy task, I think what a majority of programs do is use the preseason and season as times when no alcohol is permitted.

IMO coaches are taking a different approach to the season and do not see matches as valuable as they once did. The old thought was to give their athletes competitions and tournaments as close to an NCAA simulation as possible. Now they believe that those peaks and valleys of a season can be accomplished in the practice room rather than traveling and competing in 30+ matches which also limits the amount of times their athletes have to weigh in. This makes for a lesser product throughout the season, we have seen tournaments like the Scuffle and Midlands have a huge decline because of the lack of importance of in-season matches. This may be a case where two things are true at once, 1. the wrestlers may be more healthy and more fresh come March because of the lack of weigh-ins and travel from Nov. to March, 2. This makes it hard to promote a product is trying to become more and more relevant.