I grew up in Iowa and each week a different high school would host practices. Each week, hundreds of kids from all over the state would show up to workout together and learn from different coaches. There was no ego or fear of working out with the competition. I also understand that Iowa is a small state, (you can get pretty much anywhere in a couple hours) and it’s a little more difficult to get kids from Spokane to come train in Seattle.
Something I noticed this past weekend was how few kids are showing up to wrestle freestyle. At Decatur, there were multiple brackets with only 2-3 kids.
If you look at freco tourneys in the Midwest and out East, they are having way more kids show up every weekend to get better.
If coaches AND kids aren't going to put the time into summer wrestling opportunities, WA wrestling is going to make a splash on the national scene at any level, let alone NCAA D1.
On the NCAA qualifying, I think it needs to be noted on where WA D1 kids are going to school. There aren’t that many going to the B1G or other conferences with a lot of tourney allotments. When you are going to a school in a conference with fewer bids, it makes it that much harder to earn a qualifying spot.
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