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Expansion won’t make tournament better

3 min read

A ruse is being perpetrated on the wrestling fans of Pennsylvania.

The perpetrator is the PIAA and the victims, if you want to call them that, are happy to be in that position.

At it’s March meeting in 2014, the PIAA wrestling steering committee unanimously approved the expansion of the PIAA Individual Championship brackets from 16 to 20 competitors. The PIAA adopted the measure at its May meeting.

And all because of Jake Reigel, a 106-pounder from Bethlehem Catholic.

Don’t know who Reigel is? Well, he is the poster boy, the main exhibit in the argument by the PIAA and others as to why the brackets should be expanded. Reigel began last year’s state tournament as the fifth-place finisher in the Southeast Region and had a 25-7 record. When the tournament was completed, he added four more victories and a PIAA gold medal to that total.

The PIAA, which handed this golden opportunity to use Reigel to make the case for expansion, pushed that agenda.

Actually, push might be too harsh a word. The PIAA didn’t have to try that hard because most coaches and wrestlers welcomed an expanded opportunity to reach the state tournament. And maybe, just maybe, one of them might turn out to be Reigel.

Except that is almost never the case.

Since the 2007-08 season, the PIAA handed out 196 gold medals. Want to take a guess as to how many of them went to wrestlers such as Reigel? Or even to wrestlers who did not finish in either first or second place in their respective region?

Five.

So 191 gold medals went to either regional champions or runners-up.

Why?

Because in most cases, those are the better wrestlers. They train harder, longer and with better workout partners. They belong to clubs, travel in the offseason and make wrestling a full-time commitment, not a seasonal sport. And they are blessed with certain God-given talents many other wrestlers simply do not possess.

But just think of the benefits the expanded brackets will have on the PIAA. The organization has the opportunity now to sell more tickets, t-shirts, sweatshirts and Dippin’ Dots Ice Cream. The PIAA can still present a tournament that normally has a runtime of 9 a.m. to about 11 p.m. for each of the three days and still include the extra 112 wrestlers.

More people will come to Hershey, where hotel rates easily top $100 per night – even at the musty ones – and restaurants are packed during fans’ downtime.

All this will happen because the PIAA is a ribbon-intensive operation with a mantra of “everyone-gets-a-prize because no one is ever a loser.” How else do you explain the decision two years ago to run the state finals at the same time as the consolation finals? The fight for seventh place is just as important as it is for first.

Except, of course, that it’s not to most wrestling fans.

The offshoot of this perspective is the tournaments leading up to this one have had all the excitement sapped from them. Some wrestlers who qualified from the regional tournaments in Class AA did so on the first of the two-day event because the regions received extra qualifiers, too.

The PIAA will tell you more wrestlers have a chance than last year to be a champion, and that would be accurate. It’s just not necessarily true.

Assistant sports editor Joe Tuscano can be reached at jtuscano@observer-reporter.com

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