wvmat.com

This suggested alignment showed up in my email box:

AAA
Region I (8)
Brooke, John Marshall, Morgantown, Parkersburg, Parkersburg South, Preston, University, Wheeling
Park

Region II (7)
Hampshire, Hedgesville, Jefferson, Martinsburg, Musselman, Spring Mills, Washington

Region III (7)
Buckhannon-Upshur, Capital, Greenbrier East, Princeton, Ripley, Riverside, Woodrow Wilson

Region IV (7)
Cabell Midland, George Washington, Huntington, Hurricane, South Charleston, Spring Valley, St.
Albans


AA/A

Region I (16)
Berkeley Springs, Bishop Donahue, Cameron, East Fairmont, Fairmont Senior, Frankfort, Keyser,
Madonna, Magnolia, North Marion, Oak Glen, Petersburg, St. Mary's, Tyler Consolidated, Weir,
Wheeling Central

Region II (15)
Braxton County, Bridgeport, Clay County, Clay-Battelle, Elkins, Grafton, Lewis County, Liberty, Lincoln, Moorefield, Nicholas County, Philip Barbour, Roane County, Robert C Byrd, South Harrison

Region III (15)
Bluefield, Fayetteville, Greenbrier West, Herbert Hoover, Independence, Liberty (R), Meadow Bridge,
Midland Trail, Oak Hill, Pike View, Richwood, River View, Shady Spring, Webster County, Wyoming
East

Region IV (16)
Buffalo, Calhoun County, Lincoln County, Logan, Mingo Central, Parkersburg Catholic, Point Pleasant, Nitro, Poca, Ravenswood, Sissonville, St. Joseph, Wahama, Williamstown, Winfield, Wirt

Region 1 A/AA is unbelievable!!!! That is all I can say....

Looks like they forgot Ritchie County and Doddridge County.

Looks like folks with little information made an ill-informed decision. There will probably be returning state placewinners next year in region 1 AA that won't make it back to states.

And how are (2) teams completely left out? I could understand if it were perhaps Bishop Donahue, Wheeling Central, or Parkersburg Catholic - schools which have not fielded teams for a few years now. But Doddridge and Ritchie??? C'mon, man!

They'll probably place both in region 1

Missed 3 schools
East Hardy now has a wrestling team.

Make that 4 schools - Notre Dame

soon to be five I hear tolsia will field a team next year

I think the WVSSAC needs to do it on a per sport basis or have one classification for dual and individual sports(which would include wrestling even though it is a team), and one for team sports.

AA/A Region 1 makes no geographical sense, combining the two distant panhandles.

The distance between Berkeley Springs HS and Oak Glen HS is almost 200 miles.

Since when does Geography mean anything....Currently, Princeton and Ripley are in the same region in AAA, they are 150 miles apart.However half of Kanawha County including St. Albans and Nitro are much closer than Ripley but they are not in that region. Ripley's (region 3) closest AAA neighbors are Parkersburg, Parkersburg South, (both Region 1) and Point Pleasant ( Region 4) which are in two different regions. There are 60 miles separating the furthest distance from any of those schools.

If this is the new alignment, wrestling coaches need to express their feelings on how awful this format is by flooding calls to the WVSSAC office. I know I will. This alignment makes 0 sense.

Regionals in wrestling have never made sense. Not sure why you guys act like this is so much different than past years. I am still a proponent o having one class and a 32 man bracket. And yes I agree region 1 aa/a is loaded with top 10 teams.

Btw, anyone find out where Ritchie, Norte dame, Doddridge, and east hardy have been placed.

It's all about opinion but the majority of the states that have high school wrestling has at least 2 or more classes. There is a total of 6 that have one division that I have seen. Most of the power states that produce NCAA wrestlers have more than one division, the exception would be California, New Jersey, and Indiana. But the point here is if WV is going to have regional tournaments, at least get it right with dividing the powers to be evenly so our state tournament will be getting the best wrestlers throughout the state.

The "powers" seem to change too much. A few programs reload while the vast majority rebuilds.

One crazy idea would be to INCREASE the amount of regions and then decrease the number of state tournament qualifiers to 3.

Or have the regionals a week earlier or the states a week later and the week in between the regionals and states have a last chance qualifier so at the regionals you take top three then the top four from the last. Chance qualifier and as for the realignment looks to me they are try to even up the regions so that there is more competition in each region. Rather than the vast majority in region 1 and 4 who always has 3 or 4 teams in the top ten then usually 2 from region 3 and 1 from region 2 or I might have those two backwards well ind. And greenbrier west's region those two are always in the top ten

Based on the first set of individual rankings, here is what a few region 1 AA weight classes would look like:

AA 160 Region 1:
#2 Shaw, Mad
#3 Horner, Key
#4 Arnett, NM
#5 Kincell, EF
#6 Clark, BS
#8 Moomaw, Pet
#9 Chadwick, OG
(7 of the top 10 in one region)

AA 182 Region 1:
#1 Rodeheaver, Key
#5 Stewart, EF
#6 Long, FS
#7 Riddle, Ritchie
#9 Lewis, NM
#10 Tarallo, BS
(6 of the top 10 in one region)

AA 285 Region 1:
#2 Stewart, Key
#5 Martin, Mad
#7 Cummings, NM
#8 Ledbetter, BS
#9 Willey, EF
#10 Kranis, OG
(6 of the top 10 in one region)

Several other weights would feature 4-5 ranked wrestlers. Hopefully the powers that be get this straightened out before next season.

I'm with aacoach22. AA/A region 1 is loaded to the hilt.

WVU, your analysis is something that supports the old problem of too many ranked wrestlers in the same weight class and within the same region.

If somebody does a similar analysis in the two more southern regions, they need to go ahead and add in this year's ranked wrestlers from Point, Winfield, Nitro and all of the other AAA teams that are going AA/A next season.

The new region plan for next season will have even MORE top wrestlers in AA/A staying home from the state tournament. In AAA, we will have more lower tiered wrestlers qualifying.

The decreasing population of WV is changing how everybody and everything has to continue to do business. It doesn't matter if you are the City of Charleston, Tudors or the WVSSAC.

It might be time to redefine the populations that cut off between AAA and AA and then again between AA and A.

Also, go with three different state tournaments. This would help the region problem by having AAA, AA and A regions. Also, it might make some A schools feel better about starting a team...........which helps the sport.

Leaving everything how it has been is not going to work in the best interests of the sport. We need wrestlers to have a sport.

Bearhugger wrote:It might be time to redefine the populations that cut off between AAA and AA and then again between AA and A.

Also, go with three different state tournaments. This would help the region problem by having AAA, AA and A regions. Also, it might make some A schools feel better about starting a team...........which helps the sport.

Leaving everything how it has been is not going to work in the best interests of the sport. We need wrestlers to have a sport.

Three different state tournaments is insane. There are already vacant spots in A/AA. They need to work on a fairer region alignment but three state tournaments is not the solution. With population going down, one state tournament with 8 placers would be better than watering down who becomes state placers and state qualifiers.

The way this all sets up the AA/A will have some talented wrestlers not making it to the state tournament due to the size of the regions. Maybe it is time for the expansion to a AAAA class with all high school 1,000 or over to be positioned in that class. I know it will increase the size of the state tournament which could just wrestle more matches on Thursday to get it down to the same number of matches for Friday. The semi's and finals will have more matches, but that seems better than 18 teams in one region for AA/A.
The only other fair way to do it would be have one true state champion in each weight class. This would take an expansion of the regional format, but I am sure the single A teams would not want this to happen. It does seem to be a problem either way. I wonder if as usually the WVSSAC will just over look the other sports in favor of the main revenue sports.

what would solve the situation is WV going to a 4 class system. I understand that we dont have a huge amount of schools in WV....but, we do have a huge population difference among those schools. But, for wrestling, once the 4 classes were determined, then you divide wrestling into 2 divisions once again....a AAAA/AAA division and a AA/A division.

Based on the first set of individual rankings,12 ranked wrestlers from region 1 would be staying home this year.
Thats not good for wrestling.

The irony in all of this is that the AAA (bigger schools' division) will become easier for state tournament qualification.

The single A schools now have more bigger schools to compete with (Point, Nitro, Winfield, etc)

Its all about football

I agree with aaacoach11. I think we need to go to one 32 man bracket and divide the state into 8 regions.

I too would love to see a 32 man bracket, all schools in one bracket.

Then, award team championships to both the A/AA and AAA team who scores the most points, or even the A, AA and AAA teams.