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Oddest Venue Ever Wrestled In?
That is a great story. Thank you for sharing!
I never heard of Popular Grove. Where is that located?
Blubaugh was a great guy. I went to a 3 day clinic he did in the 1970s at John Glenn HS. What a character!
The topic about Justice Roberts got me thinking. What is the oddest venue you have ever wrestled in? I wrestled twice at La Lumiere Academy (near LaPorte) in '83 & '85 for in a dual meet. We beat them 72-0 in '83 and 78-0 in '85; they were terrible. However, the one thing I've never forgotten is the La Lumiere wrestling venue: a barn. Yes, you read that correctly, we wrestled against them in a barn on the La Lumiere campus. There were literally horses in the stalls and hay on the floor and it was cold as the devil. As a coach, I laugh about that now. I could not imagine the lawsuits awaiting me if I were to schedule a match in a barn. Manure in the stalls stinking, pitchforks against the wall, snow blowing through the cracks in the boards. There was only one bench about six feet long that La Lumiere put out for our entire team of 30 guys. And there was no seating for spectators. My dad stood there shivering and until he decided to sit on the edge of a horse stall which he promptly fell backwards into. I've never let him live that down. In the past, I have heard gentlemen much older than me, talk about wrestling in the 'olden days.' Wink. And some crazy locations they competed in.
Chief Justice Roberts= Regional Champ?
La Lumiere (near LaPorte) had wrestling until around 1987-ish. Their coach left and I think the program just ended with a whimper and no one said anything. I remember going there in the 70s to watch my older brother wrestle. I wrestled twice at La Lumiere in '83 & '85 against them in a dual meet. We beat them 72-0 in '83 and 78-0 in '85; they were terrible. I can't say anything about Justice Roberts and his wrestling. However, if he was a regional champ then he would have qualified for state under the old, old format. And yet he is not in any state book I have seen.
We are both better & worse. Indiana has become balkanized on two levels: style & talent. Style wise, the state has divided into off-season folkstyle in the north and fs/gr in the central & south. HYWAY has 'unbalanced' the state by increasing northern folk tournaments. That is not a bad thing, just a fact. Consequently, many northern Indiana wrestlers concentrate on off-season folk far more than they did even just 5 years ago. From the talent side, Indiana is much better at the top. However, the average kid nowadays looks quite poor in comparison to top guys. We see this in not just wrestling, but baseball, tennis, swimming. Lots of families (not just kids, but entire families) specializing in one sport & doing it year around. Of course, imop the burn out rate is higher than ever for wrestling, too.
HYWAY needs to fix up their web site. HYWAY cannot grow without an improvement in communication. The vids, etc., are nice. But HYWAY needs to put its tournament schedule and Indiana specific data in their web site spotlight. ISWA placed their schedule out early as heck this year. And good for the ISWA for doing that; it probably was in response to the positive competition that HYWAY has brought into the marketplace. For example, HYWAY's home page says Whitko Tournament is January 23, but HYWAY's tournament page says Whitko is January 17. Also, I keep hearing talk about additional HYWAY tournaments, but rarely does anything new get posted on the HYWAY web site. And still nothing about individual state or individual nationals. Such inaccurate or missing data will hurt HYWAY. Clubs make plans months out. HYWAY is a great idea, but people won't show up if such inaccurate information continues. People will draw their own conclusions and think maybe HYWAY is defunct because their is rarely any new info on their web site. HYWAY does great things. Their tournaments run faster and more efficiently than ISWA. And HYWAYs online registration is a snap. Plus the online registration makes tournament management and the start-end times much better. And I like the fact they are a positive challenge to ISWA. However, one cannot simply say "HYWAY is a young organization" forever. Being a novice organization has little to do with updating the web site and publish important data for people who want to attend HYWAY-NUWAY tournaments in a timely manner.
I agree with many of the comments about "checking the oil" being a dirty & classless move. Sometimes one's view of dirty vs. clean has to with the region you live in. For instances, in Illinois they go crazy about the neck-wrench in a really bad way. You have a kid run a neck-wrench in Illinois and the ref might DQ him. The crowd will boo and the opposition will act like your wrestler punched a guy or something. It's just ingrained into their Illinois wrestling culture neckwrench=murder. Yet, in Indiana we let guys neck-wrench like there is no tomorrow. I've never seen a ref call anything on a neck-wrench in over 10 years of coaching in Indiana. And nobody in Indiana views the neck-wrench as "dirty."
Back to the topic at hand... which is the date of HYWAY State... I would respectfully ask that HYWAY State be scheduled on Sunday, March 27th. That removes any conflict with FS/GR tournaments the day prior. And it removes any conflict with iswa state.
This makes absolutely no sense. "It all comes from freestyle"??? That is one of the most uneducated opinions I've ever read this site.
March 6th seems like a good date to me. I would bring the kids from our club. Any there would be no need to return any money.
Ah, I understand your logic now. Thank you.
Please explain what your comment has to do with HYWAY State? I don't agree or disagree. Just trying to figure out the linkage of your post to HYWAY State.