JV Conference meet

[Asst. Coach]

Thanks to Racine Horlick for once again hosting the JV SEC Conference Meet, it was well run but participation seems to have dwindled the past few years.  We need to do all we can to keep this going for the kids and to bring it back up to what it used to be even a few years ago.  Any thoughts?

[imnofish]

How many kids total?  How many weight classes?  How many wrestlers in each weight class?  Team scores kept?  How well-attended is it?  When and where is it held?  What awards are given?  What is done to promote the tournament to the public?

[crossface21]

Not sure on the number of kids, but it used to have 30+ brackets. In recent years, that has fallen. It's a 4 man round robin. It's JV, how well is any JV even attended by the schools in the SEC or any JV tournament?  It's held the weekend before the SEC varsity conference every year. The awards are a medal to the 1st place wrestler. Not much is done to promote it-it's a JV tournament.

Listen, it's the JV conference. What do you expect? Would it be great to have 120 wrestlers? Of course!! But the fact is that there are only 7 teams and by this time of the year, injuries, grades, kids quitting, etc.  have taken their toll on teams.  Some guys are held out because they aren't allowed to wrestle in the varsity SEC Tournament next weekend if they wrestle in the JV tournament. Tremper has never attended so now it's down to 7 teams.  Most of the schools in SEC don't send many more than 10-12 kids. We've lost teams like Burlington and Muskego in recent years which usually had 20+ JV kids. We've also lost South Milwaukee. It's a nice end of the year rap up for most of the kids. Some of the kids will get tossed in a Regionals to fill weights. If you want the tournament to get better, the best answer may be to combine with another conference for a joint conference tournament. Otherwise, I don't see much changing at this point in the next couple of years.

And on the note of combining the JV Conference Tournament, with 7 of the 8 SEC teams in the Regional and all of them in the same Sectional, that may not be such a bad idea for the varsity conference tournament either.

[imnofish]

Been there; done that.  Run your JV tournament on the same day as your varsity tournament.  Just start early enough to accommodate your varsity start time, or schedule varsity an hour later if you think it will be needed (with prior approval from all coaches).  Promote the JV tournament as the precursor to the Varsity event.  Give medals for at least 1st and 2nd.  Charts for the champs, too.  Make it a class act, because it's important to the kids and their families.  Other fans will show up early to watch, too.  Many of your varsity kids will want to watch at least some of the action, as well.  This will all help kids stay involved and motivated, plus they will save a bus trip, so it should be an easy sell to the other coaches.

[crossface21]

I don't think that's a bad idea. Horlick has held that "JV Conference" tournament for at least 20 years. They may have something to say about combining it with varsity SEC because they wouldn't be able to host every year. Also, space may be an issue at some of the schools because you would need more mats. I don't know if it's important to the families-many of them don't show up now as it is unfortunately. The ones that do show up are going to show up for Varsity, imo. I do like that all the teams would have their entire teams there supporting each other and saving on travel costs is a good point. I believe in the future wrestling will hold many more V/JV tournaments because of that aspect and tightening budgets for schools.

[imnofish]

I don't think that's a bad idea. Horlick has held that "JV Conference" tournament for at least 20 years. They may have something to say about combining it with varsity SEC because they wouldn't be able to host every year. Also, space may be an issue at some of the schools because you would need more mats. I don't know if it's important to the families-many of them don't show up now as it is unfortunately. The ones that do show up are going to show up for Varsity, imo. I do like that all the teams would have their entire teams there supporting each other and saving on travel costs is a good point. I believe in the future wrestling will hold many more V/JV tournaments because of that aspect and tightening budgets for schools.

Horlick can host the event, regardless of location.  It's all about who's willing to organize and do the work.  Personally, I think it would benefit any conference to have every program committed to building their JV experience.  Our experience was that more parents showed up, when they felt their kids' participation was valued.  Providing a quality JV tournament experience within the context of conference competition demonstrates to them that this is the case.  One problem in our conference was that I was the only one willing to make the JV conference tournament happen; when I quit coaching at the high school, nobody continued it.  JV participation dropped pretty quickly after that and I believe the loss of this tournament contributed to that problem.

[crossface21]

I think any coach that is committed to building a program knows that one of the keys to success is having a strong JV program. That's especially true here in Racine where we don't have middle school wrestling. But look at it this way, if this tournament only has 7 teams and not a lot of wrestlers, why keep having the tournament? There are other tournaments that we could go to and not wrestle kids we've already seen this year. Tremper doesn't come to the tournament. Maybe because they go to another tournament where it may have more kids and they will wrestle kids they haven't seen this year. Plus, they don't have to worry about holding kids out of it because they may wrestle at the varsity tournament the next weekend. And in our experience, the parent's don't show up because they don't feel their child's participation is valued. I think it's great watching our kids compete, especially the ones that have stuck it out all year.  They don't show up because a lot of our parents don't value their children.

Maybe moving from a round robin format to an actual bracket tournament for the #1 kid on JV for each schools at each weight class and then a round robin tournament for the rest. It could add more value to the tournament, imo.