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Food for thought...
According to the current rankings compiled by forum members, I have compiled a table comparing each region to the others according to the number of ranked wrestlers in each region.

This leaves the regions with the following standing, when ranked in accordance to their individual toughness.

1. Region IV
2. Region I
3. Region III
4. Region II

With only 9 ranked wrestlers in region II, it ranks as the weakest region, with region IV appearing to easily be the most competitive.

greencrush wrote:Food for thought...
According to the current rankings compiled by forum members, I have compiled a table comparing each region to the others according to the number of ranked wrestlers in each region.

This leaves the regions with the following standing, when ranked in accordance to their individual toughness.

1. Region IV
2. Region I
3. Region III
4. Region II

With only 9 ranked wrestlers in region II, it ranks as the weakest region, with region IV appearing to easily be the most competitive.AAA regions.PNG

Your analysis reveals the same thing that last season's analysis revealed. Region 4 is the toughest and region 2 is the weakest.

Call the stall, call the fall, the regional alignment needs an overhaul.

This is also the same issue that Region 1 had for the better part of 30 years or more. This is nothing new. There will always be a region that is tougher than others and there will always be kids that are good enough to possibly place that don't make it, not just in WV, but in all states. In OHIO and PA it is much worse, simply because of the number of teams and wrestlers. I would like to see the schools equally divided into 2 divisions based on size. I hate the AAA has under 30 teams and AA/A has over 40. I apologize for not knowing the exact numbers, but in AAA you might as well just invite everyone to the state tournament.

WP1992 wrote:This is also the same issue that Region 1 had for the better part of 30 years or more. This is nothing new. There will always be a region that is tougher than others and there will always be kids that are good enough to possibly place that don't make it, not just in WV, but in all states. In OHIO and PA it is much worse, simply because of the number of teams and wrestlers. I would like to see the schools equally divided into 2 divisions based on size. I hate the AAA has under 30 teams and AA/A has over 40. I apologize for not knowing the exact numbers, but in AAA you might as well just invite everyone to the state tournament.

We could do away with divisions in wrestling and just have a single champion. Determine your divisional team titles the same way the OVAC tournament does.

WP1992 wrote:This is also the same issue that Region 1 had for the better part of 30 years or more. This is nothing new. There will always be a region that is tougher than others and there will always be kids that are good enough to possibly place that don't make it, not just in WV, but in all states. In OHIO and PA it is much worse, simply because of the number of teams and wrestlers. I would like to see the schools equally divided into 2 divisions based on size. I hate the AAA has under 30 teams and AA/A has over 40. I apologize for not knowing the exact numbers, but in AAA you might as well just invite everyone to the state tournament.

29 AAA teams, 68 AA/A teams.

Gator wrote:

WP1992 wrote:This is also the same issue that Region 1 had for the better part of 30 years or more. This is nothing new. There will always be a region that is tougher than others and there will always be kids that are good enough to possibly place that don't make it, not just in WV, but in all states. In OHIO and PA it is much worse, simply because of the number of teams and wrestlers. I would like to see the schools equally divided into 2 divisions based on size. I hate the AAA has under 30 teams and AA/A has over 40. I apologize for not knowing the exact numbers, but in AAA you might as well just invite everyone to the state tournament.

29 AAA teams, 68 AA/A teams.

And I will wager that 30+ of those AA/A teams put no more than 8 wrestlers on the mat. Just looking at the raw numbers of how many schools are in AAA vs AA/A is deceptive.

Look at the top of the AA list. Lincoln is the largest and has 7 or 8 wrestlers. RCB is the 7th largest AA school and they have one wrestler. How many wrestlers does Logan (13th largest AA), Nitro (11th largest AA), or Elkins (5th largest AA) have? Do you think teams with 3 or 4 wrestlers makes AAA better? Moving teams into AAA just for the sake of making AAA bigger doesn't change much as far as who is ranked or what teams are at the top of the list at states.

Your point is valid. However, School like East Fairmont, Point, Independence, and Oak glen would also be added to AAA.

The desparity between divisions in terms of number of teams is even great than I thought. I wanted to say 60 Aa/A teams, but this seemed like way to many!

coach_williams wrote:

Gator wrote:

WP1992 wrote:This is also the same issue that Region 1 had for the better part of 30 years or more. This is nothing new. There will always be a region that is tougher than others and there will always be kids that are good enough to possibly place that don't make it, not just in WV, but in all states. In OHIO and PA it is much worse, simply because of the number of teams and wrestlers. I would like to see the schools equally divided into 2 divisions based on size. I hate the AAA has under 30 teams and AA/A has over 40. I apologize for not knowing the exact numbers, but in AAA you might as well just invite everyone to the state tournament.

29 AAA teams, 68 AA/A teams.

And I will wager that 30+ of those AA/A teams put no more than 8 wrestlers on the mat. Just looking at the raw numbers of how many schools are in AAA vs AA/A is deceptive.

Look at the top of the AA list. Lincoln is the largest and has 7 or 8 wrestlers. RCB is the 7th largest AA school and they have one wrestler. How many wrestlers does Logan (13th largest AA), Nitro (11th largest AA), or Elkins (5th largest AA) have? Do you think teams with 3 or 4 wrestlers makes AAA better? Moving teams into AAA just for the sake of making AAA bigger doesn't change much as far as who is ranked or what teams are at the top of the list at states.

My only comment is that it is much easier to get to the state tournament in AAA than AA/A. In an 8 team region, if my weight class is full I have a 50% chance at worst.
In an 18 team region, it drops to 22.2%.

There are plenty of AA/A kids who will sit home when a AAA wrestler they have beat makes the tournament in the same way in some regions there will be talented wrestlers sitting home because they are in a “tough” region while someone they have beaten qualifies from another region.

In an attempt to make things equitable, all perspectives should be examined.

NhsMom wrote:

coach_williams wrote:

Gator wrote:

29 AAA teams, 68 AA/A teams.

And I will wager that 30+ of those AA/A teams put no more than 8 wrestlers on the mat. Just looking at the raw numbers of how many schools are in AAA vs AA/A is deceptive.

Look at the top of the AA list. Lincoln is the largest and has 7 or 8 wrestlers. RCB is the 7th largest AA school and they have one wrestler. How many wrestlers does Logan (13th largest AA), Nitro (11th largest AA), or Elkins (5th largest AA) have? Do you think teams with 3 or 4 wrestlers makes AAA better? Moving teams into AAA just for the sake of making AAA bigger doesn't change much as far as who is ranked or what teams are at the top of the list at states.

My only comment is that it is much easier to get to the state tournament in AAA than AA/A. In an 8 team region, if my weight class is full I have a 50% chance at worst.
In an 18 team region, it drops to 22.2%.

There are plenty of AA/A kids who will sit home when a AAA wrestler they have beat makes the tournament in the same way in some regions there will be talented wrestlers sitting home because they are in a “tough” region while someone they have beaten qualifies from another region.

In an attempt to make things equitable, all perspectives should be examined.

Like I said before. Have 1 state championship for all divisions. Have 1 regional for all divisions and take top 8 to states. Now you have a 32 man bracket. There are a couple more consolation matches and you can still have divisional team champions and it will still take 3 days. Only difference is now you have 2 day regionals which happens in A/AA now anyway. You will also get more really good match ups at regionals and the state tournament would be a lot tougher.

mike.carman wrote:

NhsMom wrote:

coach_williams wrote:
And I will wager that 30+ of those AA/A teams put no more than 8 wrestlers on the mat. Just looking at the raw numbers of how many schools are in AAA vs AA/A is deceptive.

Look at the top of the AA list. Lincoln is the largest and has 7 or 8 wrestlers. RCB is the 7th largest AA school and they have one wrestler. How many wrestlers does Logan (13th largest AA), Nitro (11th largest AA), or Elkins (5th largest AA) have? Do you think teams with 3 or 4 wrestlers makes AAA better? Moving teams into AAA just for the sake of making AAA bigger doesn't change much as far as who is ranked or what teams are at the top of the list at states.

My only comment is that it is much easier to get to the state tournament in AAA than AA/A. In an 8 team region, if my weight class is full I have a 50% chance at worst.
In an 18 team region, it drops to 22.2%.

There are plenty of AA/A kids who will sit home when a AAA wrestler they have beat makes the tournament in the same way in some regions there will be talented wrestlers sitting home because they are in a “tough” region while someone they have beaten qualifies from another region.

In an attempt to make things equitable, all perspectives should be examined.

Like I said before. Have 1 state championship for all divisions. Have 1 regional for all divisions and take top 8 to states. Now you have a 32 man bracket. There are a couple more consolation matches and you can still have divisional team champions and it will still take 3 days. Only difference is now you have 2 day regionals which happens in A/AA now anyway. You will also get more really good match ups at regionals and the state tournament would be a lot tougher.

I could not agree more!

I myself have always been in favor of a single class state tournament. As stated previously, take 8 from a region and fill a 32 man bracket.. Place top 8 at states instead of 6.
Then you hand out your A, AA, & AAA team champions based off the top 3 scorers.
The overall quality wrestling at the state tournament would be much higher and the whos better individually/ team wise AA/A vs AAA debate comes to an end with an undisputed individual champion and team titles being handed out.
On top of that, I would also like to see a dual team state championship held as well.

Watch out for the ringworm !!

ringworm14 wrote:I myself have always been in favor of a single class state tournament. As stated previously, take 8 from a region and fill a 32 man bracket.. Place top 8 at states instead of 6.
Then you hand out your A, AA, & AAA team champions based off the top 3 scorers.
The overall quality wrestling at the state tournament would be much higher and the whos better individually/ team wise AA/A vs AAA debate comes to an end with an undisputed individual champion and team titles being handed out.
On top of that, I would also like to see a dual team state championship held as well.

Watch out for the ringworm !!

Not picking on your response specifically, because I have seen others suggest this same thing, but I don't get this logic. The wrestlers are to compete in one pool with no AA/AA/A consideration, but the schools get credit for the wrestler's accomplishments and get recognized based on being a AA/AA/A school? Why? Just do away with school recognition altogether. We all know it will be PS #1 year after year. Why waste time recognizing a school for finishing 20th in A or 33rd in AA if the wrestlers are all competing in the same pool?

In essence, this plan sees to it that the school gets credit for being a smaller school with less resources and funding, but the wrestlers have to compete against wrestlers from top schools with well-paid coaching staffs and get zero credit for coming from a small, poorly-funded, poorly-supported wrestling program. In my mind, I have always seen the AA/AA/A classification as being about leveling the playing field for the athletes, not school recognition.

coach_williams wrote:

ringworm14 wrote:I myself have always been in favor of a single class state tournament. As stated previously, take 8 from a region and fill a 32 man bracket.. Place top 8 at states instead of 6.
Then you hand out your A, AA, & AAA team champions based off the top 3 scorers.
The overall quality wrestling at the state tournament would be much higher and the whos better individually/ team wise AA/A vs AAA debate comes to an end with an undisputed individual champion and team titles being handed out.
On top of that, I would also like to see a dual team state championship held as well.

Watch out for the ringworm !!

Not picking on your response specifically, because I have seen others suggest this same thing, but I don't get this logic. The wrestlers are to compete in one pool with no AA/AA/A consideration, but the schools get credit for the wrestler's accomplishments and get recognized based on being a AA/AA/A school? Why? Just do away with school recognition altogether. We all know it will be PS #1 year after year. Why waste time recognizing a school for finishing 20th in A or 33rd in AA if the wrestlers are all competing in the same pool?

In essence, this plan sees to it that the school gets credit for being a smaller school with less resources and funding, but the wrestlers have to compete against wrestlers from top schools with well-paid coaching staffs and get zero credit for coming from a small, poorly-funded, poorly-supported wrestling program. In my mind, I have always seen the AA/AA/A classification as being about leveling the playing field for the athletes, not school recognition.

I agree pretty much . The two things I would change in our state tournament is 32 man brackets to justify stretching it out for 3 day and then a bracket for each AAA,AA,A . Why should AA and A even have to wrestle together. Just my opinion.

NhsMom wrote:

coach_williams wrote:

Gator wrote:

29 AAA teams, 68 AA/A teams.

And I will wager that 30+ of those AA/A teams put no more than 8 wrestlers on the mat. Just looking at the raw numbers of how many schools are in AAA vs AA/A is deceptive.

Look at the top of the AA list. Lincoln is the largest and has 7 or 8 wrestlers. RCB is the 7th largest AA school and they have one wrestler. How many wrestlers does Logan (13th largest AA), Nitro (11th largest AA), or Elkins (5th largest AA) have? Do you think teams with 3 or 4 wrestlers makes AAA better? Moving teams into AAA just for the sake of making AAA bigger doesn't change much as far as who is ranked or what teams are at the top of the list at states.

My only comment is that it is much easier to get to the state tournament in AAA than AA/A. In an 8 team region, if my weight class is full I have a 50% chance at worst.
In an 18 team region, it drops to 22.2%.

There are plenty of AA/A kids who will sit home when a AAA wrestler they have beat makes the tournament in the same way in some regions there will be talented wrestlers sitting home because they are in a “tough” region while someone they have beaten qualifies from another region.

In an attempt to make things equitable, all perspectives should be examined.

It’s not much easier. Sure if one focuses on the weakest AAA region they could say many AA kids would have qualified. But the same is true for the weaker AA regions. I glanced through last years AA Region 1 results and AAA Region 4 results and saw multiple instances where the wrestler who placed 4th in AAA Region 4 had during the season beat the AA Region 1 champ. I don’t think there is a meaningful difference in the difficulty in making the state tournament in AA and AAA. If a kid can make it in one he likely will make it in the other (overall, obviously certain regions are more difficult).

looking at the numbers if phs/south are in the same region that region becomes the toughest by the numbers. with them combined for 20 ranked wrestlers they alone out due regions 1,2,3 leaving 25 left in region 4. if you put them in region 2 they now have 29 and look like a powerhouse region by the numbers.


the smaller schools in the ovac i think like the way they handle the team trophies and dont complain about there kid wrestling a big school wrestler. the only people i see complaining is the teams that would get beat by a team with 3-5 studs compared to their 8-10 average guys that wont score as much points as the 3-5 because of the level of competition. that brings me to suggest that if i was looking to change the tournament series i would run the individual just like the ovac with 32 man bracket but than introduce a dual state series that was done by classification.


i dont know if wv allows but i know ohio, florida along with other states allows a team to petition up a class if someone thinks its easier to qualify from a 8 team instead of a 18 team im sure region 4 would accept anyone join them lol.

also 9 out of the 20 for the parkersburgs squads are top ranked so on paper they make a huge difference to how numbers look. if added to the weakest region region 2 would have 10 1st, 7 2nd, 2 3rd, 2 4th, 5 5th, 3 6th. on paper and in general anyone that has to deal with phs/south is going to complain about how much tougher their region is.

region 1 schools are probably all laughing because they have had to deal with them for so long and now they are someone elses regional problem. i remember when some of the schools complaining now were also complaining that region one only had 8/9 schools while everyone else had almost 15. saying that was unfair, but no one was willing to switch into that region. the fairest way would be to put them into different regions but regionals wouldnt have the same feel without the other.

csmith11 wrote:also 9 out of the 20 for the parkersburgs squads are top ranked so on paper they make a huge difference to how numbers look. if added to the weakest region region 2 would have 10 1st, 7 2nd, 2 3rd, 2 4th, 5 5th, 3 6th. on paper and in general anyone that has to deal with phs/south is going to complain about how much tougher their region is.

region 1 schools are probably all laughing because they have had to deal with them for so long and now they are someone elses regional problem. i remember when some of the schools complaining now were also complaining that region one only had 8/9 schools while everyone else had almost 15. saying that was unfair, but no one was willing to switch into that region. the fairest way would be to put them into different regions but regionals wouldnt have the same feel without the other.

That being said, I’ve also seen some potential state placers from the Parkersburg schools not make it out of the regional tournament. So there is at least a smidge of talent there other than the Parkersburg schools.

guard that is true. the old region 1 was tough and still very tough as they have 3 of the top 10 schools right now and 2 in the top 5. and the region they are in now has some very tough teams. i wasn't trying to talk down the other teams in their regions. thats why you will see 4 seeds from those regions knock off 1 at state.

I don't think any plan that cuts the number of people coming to Huntington will be looked at kindly, for obvious reasons.

As far as team scores. you have to keep in mind that the bigger you make the tournament and the bigger the brackets then this puts more emphasis on the the team with the more "elite" wrestlers that can make it quite far in the brackets. For example, with South at the Powerade versus the recent Brooke tournament, the outcome between South and Erie Cathedral Prep was reversed. "Part" of the explanation was as an example Braxton Amos scored about 36 points at Powerade and only about 28 at Brooke. The 220 lb wrestler from ECP didn't place at Powerade and scored only about 9 points. However, at Brooke he came in second and scored 20 points. You would probably get somewhat different results with the smaller schools lumped in with the AAA. In other words, the A team with one champion would outplace the A team who in a A only tournament would win (if that champion wrestler was on another team). Just another problem when trying to "level things out". One scenario is always more favorable to one team than another.

On another note, the number that demonstrates even more the regionalal disparity (which could be called the Parkersburg disparity) is if you weighted the totals for rankings in each region (as in ranked 1st counted as 6 points and ranked 6th as 1 point). Then you get the following numbers:

Region 1 total = 61
Region 2 total = 32
region 3 total = 43
Region 4 total = 158
Of course these are just theoretical, as in being ranked and where you finish can be up to just how hard one wrestles.

Dunbar very good points about tournament toughness effect on team scores. I've seen south get beat by teams at the ironman that only brought 2/3 wrestlers. With the small numbers in wv tho it's hard to justify being more than one individual and definitely shouldn't go to 3 division. I think getting a state duals series started should be the first step wv needs to go in. It can be done in just two weekends have a regional and take the top 2 from regionals as 1 and 2 seeds and run it just like individual with 1 wrestling a 2 from another region and so on. 8 teams make it to state per division with 24 total one of the armories would be a good place to host it.

So if South and PHS were in region 1 in the past and region 4 now, why not send them to different regions? The distance would be about the same either way. Put South in region 1 with where they probably belong anyway along with their OVAC conference mates and PHS in region 4 along with the MSAC conference teams. Did PHS commit to the MSAC long term? I know a couple years ago they were discussing leaving the conference.

mscoach4 wrote:So if South and PHS were in region 1 in the past and region 4 now, why not send them to different regions? The distance would be about the same either way. Put South in region 1 with where they probably belong anyway along with their OVAC conference mates and PHS in region 4 along with the MSAC conference teams. Did PHS commit to the MSAC long term? I know a couple years ago they were discussing leaving the conference.

This makes some sense on the surface. However, although you don't necessarily want to face the same competition over and over, South and PHS now only usually meet during the regular season at the annual dual. You don't get tired of good competition. Taking away the annual match-up at the regionals would take away a lot from both teams, wrestlers, and fans. Often time the rubber match is in the State finals. It may sound good on paper, but I think would be bad for the sport in the long run. The way it is now for South is that they actually get to see the Region one teams once, twice, or (in the case of Brooke) three times during the regular season. Other than that, PHS and South don't care where you put them. They'll drive to the eastern panhandle if they have to (well, that would actually be a nuisance unless it was for the State tournament).