Wrestling Blogs - Martin Floreani
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California the 34rd toughest HS State?
March 16, 2009
So taking a look at the high school qualifiers from California this year I noticed California was 6th place with 19 qualifiers. You might think not bad, but you have to look at it from a different angle. California's population has 34 million people in it! If you analyze how they rank qualifier per population you will see they are 34th with one qualifier per 1.9 million people. NOTE: California also has a rich history of wrestling unlike some states like Texas or Florida which are both still developing. They are just below Florida (33rd) which does not have one division 1 program in the whole state, (California has 4), and has 1/2 of California's population. Furthermore we all know that Florida's population is full of old people so this fact hurts Florida's rank. (Old people arent a very strong demographic for participants at the NCAA tournament.)
Idaho (7 qualifiers) had the highest rank with a qualifier for every 209,405 people, Iowa (13) came in second with a qualifier for every 229,391 people and PA (49) came in 3rd with 253,890. I dont expect California to get 174 Qualifers for the NCAA tournament, (Thats what they would have to get to beat Idaho's ratio), but 19 is unacceptable for a state with such great wrestling. So the next question is why does this happen in a state that has arguably one of the hardest state tournaments in the nation?
The Answer: Because the size of the California state tournament makes it extremely difficult for college coaches to recruit with one state tournament. Kids get swallowed up and buried with one state tournament. NJ can get away with it because it is less than 1/4 of California's population. I know a lot of high school athletes that arent superstars coming out of high school but have All American potential, just ask Mo Lawal. Mo Lawal started wrestling in Texas his freshman or sophomore year. If he wrested in California he probably would not even made it to California State. But because he was a Texas state champ he got offers to wrestle in college. He became a multiple DII National Champ, D1 All American (3rd) and a World Team member.
If you ask any Division 1 college coach the California humongus state tournament sounds nice but it hurts wrestling in the state long run. When athletes wrestle in college they often go home and coach at their high schools. I know some wrestlers with great potential never get that chance in California probably because they never made it out of one of their 3 or 4 straight Qualifing tournaments. Those wrestlers are less likely to go back to their hometown and bring the new techniques that are happening on the college level to the young kids in the sport.
California is one of the toughest and deep wrestling states in the nation but right now I think its own mammoth size is unhealthy for the long term growth of California wrestling. It is time to break the state tournament up into at least 2 maybe 3 or 4 classes.
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