Coach Noah’s Prediction

January 4th, 2010 – The coaching staff in both the middle school and the high school are posed with a very difficult question this week. On Saturday we have a very tough Middle School tournament at home and we also have an extremely difficult ninth grade tournament at Eastview.  Both are team tournaments. The problem lies that four wrestlers on our ninth grade team are middle schoolers (Don’t forget about the hole we have at 189 lbs). So our options are:

A: Let the middle schoolers wrestle at the middle school tournament. Positives: Middle schoolers win their tournament. Negatives: The ninth grade goes into the toughest tournament of the year with 5 holes in their line up ( That is starting every match at -30 points).

B: Let the middle schoolers wrestle in the ninth grade tournament. Positives: Gives the ninth grade team a fighting chance to take 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Negatives : The middle school team might not win their tournament and might take 2nd, 3rd, or 4th.

It is tough call for any coach. My prediction is that we will go with option A. Reason being, a first place finish for the middle schoolers will excite them about the sport of wrestling and hopefully get them to come out again next year. As the ninth head coach I think being seated poorly in the regional tournament will make a better head line in the paper, “#6 seed Coon Rapids comes out of nowhere to win the ninth grade state tournament”. I don’t know about you but that has a pretty good ring to it.

Coach Noah