What valuable lesson are we teaching the Wrestlers of De Pere High School?

[padre]

Best quote on this so far.

"All the kids did was show up and make weight"

THE WIAA HAS LOST ITS WAY!!

Listen WIAA -- it's about the kids.
I hope these family's have good attorneys because this is a "reliance lawsuit" case if I ever saw one.
I hope someone has reached out to the national media to put the WIAA back in the spot light like they were a year ago.

They've definitely opened themselves to litigation.

I'm just saying...send an email all....lots of post season traffic on here....may help.

[CLC FAN]

Just hit send on this email:

Mr Labecki,
You certainly don't need my opinion about the De Pere wrestling situation, but I wanted to share it with you anyway.

I would stand behind the WIAA allowing the full team to compete at sectionals.

The intent of the rule is a level playing field.  I believe the De Pere wrestlers being in the sectional tournament comes the closest to providing that.  If some of the De Pere athletes  advance at the expense of athletes whose program was not in violation, that is not 100% fair, but at least the advancement was decided by a wrestling match, not in a board room.

De Pere self reported (according to news sources).  That is the right thing to do and shows that an honest mistake was made.  The competitive advantage these athletes gained by representing their school in one too many events is negligible compared to the advantage every other athlete will receive if the De Pere wrestlers are replaced by 5th placed finishers - or not replaced at all.

I don't envy you your decision.  Perhaps involve the coaches advisory committee or at least ask for their recommendation?  If they are overwhelmingly in favor of one action or the other, that might show how the member schools as a group would want this handled.

Thank you for the job you do.  It certainly can't be fun on days like today.

Respectfully,
John Hatfield
Random Lake High School
Head Wrestling Coach

Sent from my iPhone

[littleguy301]

Best quote on this so far.

"All the kids did was show up and make weight"

THE WIAA HAS LOST ITS WAY!!

Listen WIAA -- it's about the kids.
I hope these family's have good attorneys because this is a "reliance lawsuit" case if I ever saw one.
I hope someone has reached out to the national media to put the WIAA back in the spot light like they were a year ago.

I first want to say sorry to good people like Woody that busts his hind end doing the right thing and along with several other people involved in high school sports.

now on to what I believe, the WIAA does not have the kids best interest in mind. In the past several years it is all about making money and I have heard that from WIAA people.

Getyours, I am not ripping on you by quoting your post, I more or less wanted to state what I believe about the WIAA.

also, Mr Labecki taught and coached in my district for about 25 years. I had him as a teacher/coach and then partner in adult beverage games. He is going to make the black and white choice 99% of the time and in this case the rules were broken and punishment will be had.

It is a terrible thing for the kids because like someone said all they did is show up and make weight. Look what they get.

I cannt heave all the blame on the coaches either. Sure some places the coaches make the schedule but their is checks and balances in place to make sure a coach has made the right choice. That ulitmate choice falls on the shoulders of the AD. The AD is in charge of ALL programs and he should have double checked what the schedule was and followed up on this.

Yep, we can talk about not cutting weights, giving more chances to kids, expanding the matches at state but in one over look all those problems go out the window with a simple over sights and bam the kids dont even get a chance to do squat!!!!!!!!

This decsion should have been done before regionals, how about the kids that lost first round to those that cannt go? not only are their 10 West De Pere wrestlers out of the mix, there is another 10 kids that wrestling career hangs in the balance. When you include the school of all thses kids and the parents and families, the WIAA failed to make a proper choice for all high school aged kids and thats the bottom line because the littleguy said so!!!!!!!!!!

[bigG]

Been a weird "snow-day" kinda year. I could see me making this mistake.

[MNbadger]

Why should the wrestlers be punished, including incoming high schoolers who weren't even there during the infraction.  This is not like the NCAA with big revenue and such.

What would be so wrong with taking away dual meets/tournaments next year or the next few years.  This way the kids can still wrestle this tournament out, yet their program can suffer the consequences in the future.   Just a possible punishment below

2018 3 less tournaments
2019 2 less tournaments
2020 1 less tournament

[Badgermax]

Thank you to all who have been supporting DePere wrestling.  The support, from not only the community, but from the competing coaches and parents has been overwhelming.

Life is about learning.... lesson learned.....let them wrestle.

To the coaches/parents that have made the complaint, what lesson have you taught your wrestler?  You still have time to call WIAA.

[DocWrestling]

The WIAA is in a tough spot here.  It seems they have a tough choice and I am sure they are getting counsel from lawyers which always seem to make things worse with threats.  A lawsuit could come from either side of their decision.

1) Declare the wrestlers ineligible and follow the rule to the letter of the law.  This would be the easiest to defend in court if sued.
2) Allow the wrestlers to compete as it is most definitely in the best interest of those kids but then have to deal with the ramifications.  If this is chosen, they will have to basically get rid of the 7-7 rule immediately because it will never be enforceable again.  If they did keep the rule, they would just be sued next time something happened and they tried to enforce it.

OPTION 3!   There has to be another option like many have said whether it is ramifications to the coach and AD which I am sure would gladly take the punishment over the kids or reduce the events for next year.   No these individuals should not lose their jobs.  This is not a blatant mistake.

The problem I see is the precedent that was set prior with Westosha volleyball team.  My problem with all this is that the legal system and the threat of lawsuits ends up driving these decisions rather than some honest common sense on a case by case basis.

[DocWrestling]

So why do we have the 7/7 rule?  What if we let coaches and AD's schedule as many events as they want in all sports?

Is it a safety issue for the student athletes?  Is it a fairness issue?  I know in other sports many teams don't even come close to the maximum number of contests?

Why don't we let a school decide how best they want to prepare their team for the postseason or how busy of a schedule they want to run that excites the kids but does not cross the line of burning them out?

WIAA would be better served to get out of so many rules and regulations because they just get more complicated each year.  Time for the WIAA to simplify

[Ghetto]

It's not going to change IMO. Precedent has been set, and it was this year.

I'm with Doc on this one. If they change it, the rule just goes away. The WIAA sets itself up for future mess if they change the ruling.

If the DePere kids wrestle and qualify for state, no one thinks that the kid who could have been to state has beef? That kid did follow the rules.

It's a mess. That's for sure.

[MARSHDOC]

It's a terrible thing that happened. But don't just blame the AD, I'll be kind and say only some of that is on the coach. The way our program is run, this mistake would be totally on the coach. I don't know of one coach that doesn't know the limits on the what the kids can wrestle. In addition, I think most coaches schedule what tournaments they want to be in so they should know how many they have. It's a tremendous breakdown by the AD and the coach and the kids are being punished for it. It's too bad there isn't some other type of sanction that can be placed on the program like a loss of 2 tournaments or something for next season rather than punish the kids that have worked hard to get to this point of the year. 

This is the most reasonable solution in my opinion.  To not let the kids wrestle in the most important tournaments of the season is a travesty.  This is not the NCAA where an athletic program can make a great deal of money for a University or College, therefore that athletic program should be punished for violations in the athletic code (recruitment violations etc...).  This is high school for goodness sake!   

[MARSHDOC]

It's not going to change IMO. Precedent has been set, and it was this year.

I'm with Doc on this one. If they change it, the rule just goes away. The WIAA sets itself up for future mess if they change the ruling.

If the DePere kids wrestle and qualify for state, no one thinks that the kid who could have been to state has beef? That kid did follow the rules.

It's a mess. That's for sure.

The kid who in theory loses to a DePere kid has a legitimate beef?  Give me a break.  Why?  Because the Depere kid might have wrestled a few more matches this season?   There are plenty of schools that wrestle more matches than other schools in the state.  There are also schools fortunate enough to wrestle against great competition during the season, arguably making them better prepared for this part of the season (Stoughton, Kaukauna...).  Should a wrestler that loses in sectionals to a wrestler from one of these programs (there will be many that do) have an equal amount of 'beef'? 

[Boot]

This whole situation really sucks and I'm afraid it's not going to turn out well for the kids.  The WIAA has already set a precedence with this very same ruling against the Westosha volleyball team, just 4 months ago.  If they let De Pere wrestle, which I'm all for, they are setting themselves up for a potential lawsuit from the Westosha program. 

This is a compete and utter mess, and In my opinion, at the end of the day the AD needs to take the final blame.  The AD signs off on the schedule, He/She clearly didn't even give it a second look.

http://www.tmj4.com/sports/high-school/westosha-central-volleyball-team-appealing-postseason-ban

[onwisconsin]

The forfeit rule posted by Cedarboy should change things. I only looked at Trevor Turriff, but he received a forfeit against Manitowoc and Sheboygan South.  That would put him under the 14 competitions.  I would guess the same would be true for other kids, but since I am working I don't have time to check all the De Pere kids.

[DocWrestling]

The forfeit rule posted by Cedarboy should change things. I only looked at Trevor Turriff, but he received a forfeit against Manitowoc and Sheboygan South.  That would put him under the 14 competitions.  I would guess the same would be true for other kids, but since I am working I don't have time to check all the De Pere kids.

This seems to be true and hopefully is a technicality to allow the great majority of kids to wrestle but again what another silly complicated WIAA rule.  A forfeit in a dual counts as a weigh-in, counts as a win, but does not count as a competition?

[Preparewrestlingcoach]

Time to re-write the 7-7 rule to be more specific...

-Topics that need to be covered better...what is considered a dual vs tourney (tri vs quad)
-How can a school deem a varsity tournament varsity reserve for there schedule?

*I also put forth the idea that all teams should be allowed 8 tournaments and that the 7 tournaments allowed per individual. This will allow...
1- Teams to be able to send their "studs" to tournaments like the cheesehead, bi-state, OTW ect well not having to have their sub 500's go to such a tournament just to go 0-2...this would allow high level wrestlers to get their high quality competitioin without sacrificing 3 matches for the rest of the team.
2- It would also allow for flexibility for kids to miss a tournament to Take the ACT
3- Allow for one more chance for a wrestler who was injured to get his tournaments.

Make us coaches fill out a spreadsheet with our kids and what tournaments they competed in (most of us already do this to make sure they have not wrestled to many because of JV) Then make us submit that to the WIAA...

Also, Pay me a salary and I'll check every wrestling schedule in the state to ensure this doesn't happen again!