KDunbar wrote:wre157 wrote:
I’m not disagreeing that they have some great wrestlers. They just have no depth. 6 of the champs were from one school, Point Pleasant. It’s easier for teams in weaker regions to qualify more wrestlers than it is for region 1 teams. This is proven by the FACT that region 1 had the most ranked wrestlers and region 1 was the only region with with no wrestlers with a loser record to qualify.
Oak Glen beat Herbert Hoover 57-12. Oak Glen beat Braxton County 42-30. Oak Glen qualified 8 wrestlers while Herbert Hoover and Braxton County both qualified 11. You can’t argue that region 1 isn’t the toughest region.
I believe most people would agree with you that as far as depth, Region 1 AA/A year in and year out has a greater number of quality wrestlers. With that being the case, there are some individual wrestlers who don't get to make the trip to the state tournament that are considerably better than ones from other regions that do. Has always been that way (in a lot of things in sports) and always will be. However, that doesn't mean they would be scoring a lot of points at the tournament. Without placing, the maximum points a wrestler can possibly score is 7. So that's the only statement you can accurately make, "some wrestlers that are better than others don't make it to the tournament". When people start inferring that is the "reason" region 1 teams aren't winning state championships, then that is demeaning to the teams that did win. You also have to seperate whether you are talking AA championships versus A championships. Since one of my admirers on here also likes to deal in facts, I looked some up:
2022 AA #1 Point over #2 Fairmont Senior by 116.5 points
2021 AA #1 Point over #2 Fairmont Senior by 135.7 points
2020 AA #1 Point over #3 Fairmont Senior by 171 points
2019 AA #1 Point over #3 Fairmont Senior by 88.5 points
2018 AA #1 Independence over #2 East Fairmont by 51 points
2017 AA #1 Independence over #2 East Fairmont by 153.5 points
2016 AA # 1 Independence over #2 East Fairmont by 132 points
At this point I grew tired of finding out the same thing year after year. It wasn't the number of wrestlers being qualified, it was the quality. For most of these years you could take the top 2 teams from region 1 and combine them and still not win the State championship. The exception was 2018 where East Fairmont and Madonna combined would have nipped Independence. That was a great State tournament with Independence sending 14 and placing 13 and East Fairmont sending 12 and placing 10 (with 4 champs).
Now in Single A it gets a little trickier. Here I do agree that it is a little tougher to determine the "true" single A champion when the AA schools are thrown in to the mix. However, it's not just a Region 1 thing. For most years it probably isn't an issue, but when the scores are close then having a true single A tournament would be better. But for multiple reasons (cost likely being the major one) that is not likely going to happen and splitting things into 4 classifications wouldn't make this any clearer. Over the same 7 year span as above (2016-2022) in single A, 2017 had a difference of only 10 points between #1 (with 8 wrestlers) and #2 (with 2 wrestlers) and 2021 only 1/2 point between #1 (with 6 wrestlers) and #2 (with 5 wrestlers). The single A challenge may help make things a little clearer if all the top teams will attend every year and may unfortunately be a better measure of these teams on a tournament basis than the state tournament itself. I'm guessing that was the reason it came about. I suggest giving a really big trophy for that tournament. Look at the 2017 results in both tournaments of the top 4 teams in each. But it doesn't appear to have much to do with Region 1 having the most depth on average.
So let's just stick with saying that it's tougher to get to the State tournament as an individual wrestler in Region 1 AA/A than for some of the regions and leave it at that. Then we can have this same discussion all over again next year. But it's enjoyable having a walk down memory lane. I'm sure Gator would have liked it.