Every Tuesday we go takedowns with recent topics of interest in the Michigan wrestling scene. The author Tony Greathouse is the owner of Michigan Grappler and the Associated Wrestling Press new-sites. He wrestled collegiately at Michigan State and prepped at Mason High School. He is now the Head Wrestling Coach at Brighton High School.
There has been a ton of action going on the last couple weeks, and with my two-week hiatus from the Tuesday Morning Takedowns, I have a few events to touch on.
The biggest national event of the last few weeks was definitely the Cadet Duals in Florida with a good majority of the best 15-16 year olds in the country competing. Team Michigan did very well, especially considering that they were missing a few key guys of that age level, most notably Jelani Embree who is still recovering from his season ending injury back at Super 32s. Embree is an absolute beast, I had the opportunity to watch him at the GFC last year and was blown away with him. It is really unfortunate that he is not able to compete this summer because I think he would have legit shot at making the Fargo finals in both styles as a 2nd year Cadet.
Among the guys who carried the Cadet Team were the usual suspects like Ben Freeman, Kanen Storr, and Dominic Lajoie. "Break out" type performances were turned in by a few guys, most notable for me were Brandon Whitman, Dresden Simon, and Luke Ready. Whitman suffered an injury that cut his freestyle competetion short, and unfortunately it looks like he may not be back for Fargo, which is too bad because he has a shot at placing very high as a first year Cadet.
The Schoolboy Duals went down a few weeks ago as well, and while the Michigan teams failed to reach the top 8 in both styles, I got to watch a lot of the action on the Flo live feeds and they were competing really well. The biggest plus for was the number of kids competing, they had a great turnout at the Schoolboy level, which will inevitably help our Cadet performance in the next couple years.
There have been some big in-state events over the last few weeks such as the Northern Exposure Duals in St Ignace, the Olivet Duals, and the Meijer State Games in Grandville. This is where we see organizations like MYWAY and Border Wars creating awesome opportunities for our kids to compete in the off season without having to travel far. 15 years ago when I was coming up, those opportunites did not exist, so I hope the kids in our state appreciate how good they have it!
What are the options for older wrestlers not wrestling in college to compete? Seems like there isn't much, unless you are wrestling at a world class level. Do most local USA wrestling tourneys still have an open division? Developing that some more could do alot to help grow wrestlings popularity. Other combat sports/martial arts seem to cater more to adults than wrestling. Why do you think this is? And trust me I know wrestling is the hardest and most physically demanding of these. - Greg
This is a good question. I have clear memories from when I was young coming up through USA events and you are spot on - there used to be a good number of adults competing in the Open division, and it was cool to see some guys that were studs in their day getting after it. A lot of high school coaches used to bring their kids and compete with them as well. To answer the question, I think that the reason we don't see the opportunities is geared around a decrease of interest. The Midwest Grand Challenge, for example, has a college open division and you just don't see a whole lot of people come out to compete. Those do compete are generally college wrestlers looking for some mat time, not really graduated adults looking to compete. Also, the drop in USA wrestling freestyle/greco numbers probably has a lot to do with it as there are less local events and less coaches bringing their kids to those events.
The best approach to getting the adult/open scene back and running would probably be to convince MYWAY to institute those age divisions at the State Meet. The issue I would see with this is that the MYWAY State Meet is already and insanely huge event that takes a lot of careful planning and organizational distribution of personel to make it run smoothly. If you are there for the whole weekend, you will see that they literally have no down time, with the exception of 10-15 minutes of break between different age divisions. With that being said, it would be a struggle to squeeze in time for the Open Division to compete. If they could swing it though, I do think there would be enough interest to run a Open Division state tournament, and address the issue.
In regards to the MMA/Combat Sports comparison, I think that the explosion of popularity of MMA worldwide has more to do with that then a lack of wrestling opportunity. You are seeing a lot of people with no background in MMA starting to pick it up recreationally. I would bet that we will not see a whole lot of adults who have no wrestling background jumping into the Open Wrestling scene on a whim, so I think it is an apples to oranges comparison of sorts.
Where is the coverage of Northern Exposure, Olivet Duals, and Meijer State Games? We have great events right here in Michigan and you guys only cover the big out-of-state events, why? - Ken
I am really glad that this came up, because this is something that we get beat up with all the time, and have been since the beginning. The answer is very simple, and it is a two-pronged response.
First, we cannot really cover events in which we do not have complete results. I emphasize complete results, because sometimes we will get an email or a piece of information that summarizes how one team did, or an aspect of the event. In order for us to give any kind of true reflection of the event, we need detailed results. Team and individual. A lot of the smaller events have smaller budgets and they cannot or do not wish to spring for Track Wrestling or an online results system. Therefore, we cannot cover the results we do not have. If an event is on Track, and there is a lot of Michigan kids there, then odds are we will cover it, unless there is an outside set of circumstances, such as our writers being out of town or unavailable at the time.
2nd part of the response - some events have full results on TrackWrestling, however, the lack of overall depth of the tournament makes it hard to give a real deep recap of what went down. I could copy/paste the results in an article so it is available to read on Michigan Grappler, however, I am thinking that most people who desire those results are in-tune enough to go to TrackWrestling on their own and skim the results. If we are going to take the time to provide a recap, we need something of interest to focus on. It is hard to highlight events that have such a wide array of kids because it is hard to single out a few points of interest to really breakdown in the recap.
We put a lot of effort into providing well-rounded coverage of all age levels and all events, and that is really the primary goal of Michigan Grappler and all the AWP news sites. We want wrestling to be main-stream, we want to give wrestlers the exposure they deserve because this is the toughest sport in the world, no doubt about it. Local news outlets are dropping coverage of wrestling year by year and in some communities, it is non-existent. Therefore, Michigan Grappler tries to fill the void so our athletes can get top-notch coverage and exposure. I know we miss things, but we it is not personal and it is not because we dont care about those events. If there is ever an event that you are not seeing coverage for, or you want to help us out, please email us associatedwrestlingpress@gmail.com or michgrappler@gmail.com and let us know what is going on. We will always do our best to give kids the coverage they deserve!
What do you think of FloWrestling's recent podcast ripping apart college coaches that need to be fired? Do you guys ever think about addressing this issue and evaluating college programs more critically? - Brian
Let me start by saying that I think FloWrestling has been amazing for our sport. I know people like to beat them up for making consumers pay for coverages, but at the end of the day you are paying for something that was not available 10 years ago. They continue to expand and offer a ton of really cool different coverages.
I have to admit I was a little surprised with how bold they were in their approach to the coaches that need to be fired, however, I am pretty sure it is not the first time they have done a feature of this sort, analyzing the programs that could use new leadership. If you look at other sports news stations such as ESPN, it is very common for coaches to get criticized and really the news media is where the coaches "hot seat" is established. Therefore, I do think there is some value and need in these types of features for the sake of our sport.
With that being said, it is my personal stance for Michigan Grappler that we make a strong attempt to focus on the postive news in our sport, in our state. I have made an attempt to stear clear of covering controversial news and/or anything that could shed negative light on our sport in our state. In terms of college coaches and programs specifically, I somewhat addressed this a few TMT's ago when I discussed the University of Michigan and Pritzlaff leaving. While I think I have a lot of knowledge about wrestling, I do not feel comfortable critizing coaches who have way more knowledge and experience in the sport than I do, and who devote a ton of time trying to make their programs successfull. I will say this - if you throw the results out the window for a second, I boldy believe that we have great people running our college programs in Michigan. D1, D3, JUCO, and NCWA programs in our state are filled with class-act coaches who I have a lot of respect for.
I would love to see all of our programs be the most successfull in the country, but I will not ruin relationships with people who I have so much respect for in order to do so. If they are not doing their job, it is on the university administration to make those decisions. Those administrators get paid a lot of money to make those decisions, and they have way more invested than do I, so I will leave those decisions up to them.
For our AdvoCare spotlight this week, I am going to focus on a product that is very relevant to this time of the year. Most wrestlers who are not in a competetion training cycle right now preparing for Fargo, Disney, or the Grand River Rumble, are likely trying to add strength and many are probably trying to add size.
If you are looking to get the most out of your strength training programs, then creatine based products are a good way to go. Creatine is found naturally in the body with about 95% of it found in your skeletal muscle. Large amounts of creatine are lost during intense workouts, so in order to build mass and get stronger, it is essential that you replace creatine to do so, and supplementation is really the only way to fill this gap.
There are a lot of creatine products on the market, however, what separates Mass Impact apart is that it is not just creatine. It also contains sustamine, which is a powerful ingredient that supports rehydration, energy replacement, and muscle recovery. Mass Impact also has an array of other amino acids in it that help promote muscle lean-ness, muscle repair, and rehydration.
Most importantly, Mass Impact, like most other AdvoCare products, is certified safe by the Informed Choice alliance. Informed Choice puts these products through the most strict testing for banned substance in the world to guarantee that any product you take through AdvoCare is safe and legal. I have heard horror stories about college and professional athletes who have tested positive for banned substances from over-the-counter products that they had no idea contained banned substances. With AdvoCare, and Mass Impact, you do not have to worry about this.
Major events are on the horizon with the Junior Duals kicking off this week in Oklahoma and the Disney Duals getting underway shortly after in Florida. As has been the norm in the past, Michigan will have a stacked squad competing at the Junior Duals, as well as a handful of extremely competetive teams in action at the Disney Duals.
We will be providing coverage of the Junior Duals, which get underway tomorrow, and you can also follow the results like on TrackWrestling and the live video coverage on FloWrestling.
We will do our best to cover the Disney Duals, however, if they are not providing results throughout on TrackWrestling, it may be a challenge. In the past we have been unable to locate results and provide real in-depth covereage, which is a shame considering the insane level of competetion at the event. Hopefully, they do a better job this year of making results accesible and we will be able to give some good in-depth coverage.
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Tony, I really appreciate your response to the "coverage" question. I hassled you a bit with the exact same last week. Bottom line I'm a spoiled fan of Michigan high school wrestling.... but I'm a fan now and not a coach anymore so I'm allowed to be a jerk if my coffee isn't sweet enough. No but, the work you guys do is greatly appreciated. Michigan as well as the rest of the country needs to do what you guys are doing for high school wrestling. I'm just a spoiled fan hungry for more!
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