3A 2019-2020 PreSeason

I don't think Buhl had a very good state tournament this past year. They are starting to bring in some studs so I see them finishing a bit higher. Also, I know Fruitland graduated a lot, but I think they'll still be pretty dang competitive. I see Kimberly finishing below Buhl, I know Kimberly still has Bacon and Cunningham, but they also lost Hallett, McCoy, and O'berg, that scored them quite a few points. I see Teton struggling again next year. They seem to be having a hard time putting things together. Teton has tough kids, but getting them to all perform at state is sometimes difficult. I think American Falls continues to move up. Their new coach is building things back up there after Gulio left things in shambles. Just my 2 cents.

What weights will Miller and follini be this year. And I agree with Evan's I think he wins wherever he goes

I would agree that Timberlake has a chance to make a real run at a trophy this year. They have a loaded senior class that should be hungry after some disappointment at state last year. Evans is a legit stud who should get it done wherever he goes. I see him back at 126 but it would be interesting if he grows and ends up around Gillette or Richardson. Miller had a rough state tournament but 152 pretty much cleared out so if he stays there or goes up one he should be a contender for sure. Follini is a stud athlete and big into football so I wouldn't be surprised to see him at 195. As long as he avoids Hobbs he is a contender. Although Gissel did get him last year as well.

Palestra and little fish. In 3A district 1 has 4 teams, district 3 has 5 teams, district 4 4 teams, district 5 and 6 3 teams a piece.i dont see anything wrong with them having more automatic qualifiers than other districts. Next year McCall-Donelly will be in district 3 bringing it to 6 where they will have 2-3 more teams in there league than any other district. Theres only 19 teams in all of 3A, if they're bringing kids that aren't earning points then they're giving points to other teams. I remember when the sugar and snake river teams would bring 20 plus kids a piece and fir everyone else it was a race for third.

Board of the supports and all games is made with the help of the senior of the games. It is opened for the use of the essayoneday for all assumed items for the games in the lives of the athletes and players for the goodness of the games.

DMTwrestler. Usually when a team from the 6 district in 3A brings a lot of kids it is because they are super good. Sugar, South Fremont, Teton, and until recently Shelley have had long standing good programs. Snake has some tougher years with AF and Marsh Valley and some weaker ones. However, the next few years for district 5 should be a good battle. I think that the reason most people have issue with district 3 qualifying so many wrestlers is that there are usually only 2 good teams. The best wrestling schools have been pretty consistent. And the top 5 have moved up and down for a few years. However, the top ten hardly changes out teams at all. Sure they move from 2nd to 7th in the top 10 but consistency is there. What I am trying to say is that the quality of the last automatic qualifier from district 3 is not the same quality as a kid that gets bumped from state in district 6. That is an opinion, and I agree to the exceptions to the rule. I don't mean to offend. But the reason we see so many kids with losing records in the state tourney is because of these types of decisions. If the goal is to pick up easy wins everyone would be fine with the current system. But most of the best kids never see those easy wins. Those kids wind up on the back side of the bracket pretty quick. If the goal is to get the 16 best kids to the state tourney (which is my way of thinking), I think that Palestra's idea of more at large bids and less auto qualifiers is a good starting point of the discussion. Just my two cent on the topic. Sands shift all the time and maybe, just maybe some of the underperforming wrestling programs from the 3 district can compete for the auto qualifiers spots. Because right now they are just handing them to Wieser. I don't mean for it to be harsh. But it is the reality right now. Getting the best kids to state insures a better representation of awarding the best teams the trophies on Saturday night. And Weiser could be the best team next year. I just think in fairness that they would like to win without the controversy.

Leverage, everyone's entitled to there opinion on it, I'm just pointing out the numbers per district. 19 teams total in the 3A. If you want better competition then the teams need to be distributed better across the classifications. When Idaho went from A1, A2, A3 to the current classification 3A lost teams from the top and bottom going from around 30 plus to the current 19. Sure in certain years somebody's number 2 would do better than someone else's but that's subjective to who's making the call. Voting for at large bids only works if there's common opponents to rate against or RPI ranking system like they use in college. I dont see anyone dedicated enough to make that happen here and it gets tricky to do with JV matches etc. Now another option not that I like much from California but they make allocations for their sections/regions for state by the previous years state placers and matches won at state and reallocate every year accordingly. Seems fair and works for a huge state like California I just dont think it makes as much sense for Idaho. Sure the majority of state championships won since 1990 have been by Snake and Sugar 9 a piece, along with AF 5, Weiser 4, Fruitland, Shelley, Buhl 1 a piece. Snake and Sugar are good programs and I believe state should mean something but Idaho's classification system has watered it down for wrestling theres too many divisions and I have this debate every year but I dont see it changing.

I am for an expanded at large system.

I could get on board with an expanded at large system as well. I think if the goal is to reward good wrestling instead of a geolocational preference, then getting the best kids to state would be in everyones best interest.

Everyone is always talking about being for an at large system but i would like to hear your comments on how you would actually do it. We can't even have a consistent site that ranks our wrestlers and teams let alone a group to put together at large state bids. The Idaho Wrestler worked his **** off but it would take a huge effort. Track has some great features but I still think there are a lot of teams who don't accurately enter there seasons and/or wait until the very end. I think the at large is a good idea in theory in regards to getting the best kids to state but is it feasible? How would you personally do it? As far as competition wise I think it is a bigger issue in 4a and 5a with the larger teams than it is in 3a. Sure some kids get in to the tournament who wouldn't in other districts but I don't think it is that off balance year in and year out.

Wrestler125, that's point I was trying to make earlier. You folks wanting to make it better, yet no solutions or a check to if its feasible. I'm not sure in 3a that it's completely off balance. My question to the proponents of this idea is who's going to do the leg work and what is it buying us? Theres 19 teams, it's a 16 man bracket, if every team had 2 in a weight that's 38 max total competing for 16 spots. That's a pretty big cut already and as I said before if you had more teams in this division maybe it would make sense, but who's going to do the work. If you want better competition then realignment is the answer not at large bids for 3A.

And most of us have a subscription to rankwrestlers.com. It does a pretty good job starting at about week 3 of ranking the weights. If you haven't seen it, it is worth looking at. I like the math behind it. Is it 100% no. But it gathers data that makes it easier for assessment.

Far fetched, in the big scheme of things I dont think it will make that much of a difference. If you go off of last years placers and compare to the automatic allocations(14) excluding the two at large, the breakdown is this. District 1:21% of the allocations to 18% state placers, District 3:28% of allocations to 24% state placers, D4:21% of allocations to 14% state placers, D5:14% of allocations to 22% state placers, D6:14% of allocations to 21% state placers. I didnt look at the 2 at large per weight or use that for numbers. Sure you could shift 1 or 2 more auto qualifiers to at large bids but that's not going to make that much difference competitively. You said it yourself it's not 100% so how much difference will it make from the ways it's done now? If there were twice as many schools in the division I might agree with you.

Here is a quote I like:

"Lies, **** Lies, and Statistics"

Can we all not see that 14% participating is producing a 22% return is awesome?

Or that having Double the participations at 28% and producing 24% is an advantage?

No argument here just clarifying, When I was said it wasn't 100% I was talking about rank wrestlers. Careful when quoting words, even more than statistics.

You say "... so how much difference will it make...?"

I for one think the difference would be a huge step in getting better kids to state.

I think why this is bothering me so much is that District 3 is the weakest they have ever been as far a conference. Most have Weiser at 4-6 rankings and most don't have Fruitland in the top 10. So where are 28% of the qualifiers coming from? It looks like 28% from Weiser this year. District 6 has the top two teams in the State or at least the Top 2 of 3. And Teton is always a good team. All three teams are very good duel teams with rare forfeits and usually have at least 2 deep rosters. And District 6 has 2 auto qualifiers. Do the math there. One of the these good teams is leaving high quality Varsity wrestlers home. Mean while District 3 Weiser is going to be wrestling their JV kids in the district finals. No disrespect to Weiser it is not their fault. Just because there are more schools in the district, doesn't mean that the level of toughness to get to state is greater. And it doesn't mean the best kids are at state.

District 5 is in the same mess here. Snake is a top three team and Marsh Valley 5ish and American Falls 7 ish makes for a rough road through districts to get there.

My opinion is the wrestling should reward the good wrestlers. And just because you have # of schools it doesn't mean that you get more kids through.

My solution to the disparities are to: Qualify the district champs and the true seconds to the state tourney . Everyone else should be at large.

So in the case of expanding the at large system... "how much difference will it make...?" All the difference is my opinion.

Far Fetched,

I pulled these numbers from last years tournament. Not sure where that fits in as "lies". You pick out district 3 but overlook district 4 who had 21% of the allocations and 14% placing. Teton took 11 kids to state last year with 3 placers and you consider that a good team. 18 out of the 19 teams had at least 1 state placer, the one that didn't was Payette out of district 3. The whole division is weak, particularly when 42% or more of the wrestlers in the division qualify for state.(that number assumes each of the 19 teams has 2 wrestlers per weight i.e. 38 wrestlers, 16 man bracket divided by that, just wanted to clarify where I came up with the numbers). We all know that not every team has two per weight so that percentage is higher but for the sake of argument let's stick with 42%. You want to make a big difference at state, well you need more teams because numbers do mean something at some point. The SRV is down I don't disagree with you there. Weiser does take a lot of their JV kids because they're better than those other teams varsity kids at times and could be better than some of the d5 and d6 varsity kids that get left at home contrary to your opinion on those teams. At the end of the day with your scenario shifting a couple more at large births for kids that won't be seeded more than likely, I'm not convinced that will make a big difference except for the district or districts you're passionate about and having more representation for those districts potentially at state. I don't see Idaho changing their system of allocations anytime soon, but I could be wrong. If I were king for a day I'd combine 3a and 2a and leave it at a 16 man bracket or you could do a 32man bracket, it would still be better than what 3a has now. It will never happen but it's nice to think about.

It is easy to say when your district has the upper hand of qualifiers. While I am using the weakness of district 3 this year, this is a larger issue over the whole state. I agree that the best wrestlers are not getting in because of some poor wrestling districts have a kid weigh in and he qualifies for state. My solution although not perfect would at least address the issue of getting better kids to state. Your solution to leave it, just protects your interest.

Your stats are so cause and effect. Anyone who looks at them can see that the way the data is selected is skewing the results. Meaning how each district qualifies state participants. The disperity of the medals per district makes it pretty obvious. Anyone looking at this to predict probabilities would select more participants from district 5 and 6 as the chances for more medals would increase with more participants. Your attack on Teton which would most likely be the number 2 team in your district is a joke. Did Teton flop at state. Yes, have they proven themselves as a high quality team year in and year out. Absolutely.

As as a side note, I talked to one of the dads at sugar last year that helps coach the team. He said more than the state title he was most proud that every kid they brought to state scored team points for their title. I thought that was telling.

As as a side note. How many kids did Weiser take that went 2 and a barbecue. Better said, how many of those forth qualify spots from district 3 went 2 and out?

3A freshman class is the best freshmen class in the state with Craig and Hobbs leading it. The work put in by the club teams (DTA, ACES) these boys have been chasing national tournaments for years and I believe they are as ready as any freshman class we have seen in recent years. I am excited to see how it all works out

I too think that this will be one of the better freshman classes in awhile especially in 3A. I thought there were a lot of great kids in the last group graduating seniors. I am excited to see what is to come of class of 2023.