Suggestion for Expansion of District IX

I hope this letter can be posted on the D-9 site for the coaches and
indivduals within District 9 to review and provide their comment.

I composed this letter after attending the District 9 seeding meeting in
Brockway on Tuesday night. My involvement with Ridgway's wrestling program
spans more than 30 years and I have become the custodian of our program's
wrestling history, so hopefully I have a small amount of credibility.

With that said, I believe it is time we address the situation of having
only thirteen (at the most) schools involved in the District Tournament. As
I sat through the meeting Tuesday night, I was amazed at the lack of
wrestlers in almost every weight class beginning with 103 & 112 that have
only eight wrestlers.I make this comment about these two weights not
because Dave Predko and Bruno Iorfido are in those weights but because I
want our overall District to continue to develop a stronger wrestling
reputation, and with only eight to ten wrestlers in many classes, our
tournament with the exception of a couple of weight classes, looks terribly
weak.
 
(ed note: 189 was also an 8-man bracket)

Our neighbor District and Northwest Regional partner, District 10, has
twenty nine Class AA schools, three of which were part of District 9 in the
past. Yes, I know the argument will probably be that Warren county is by
PIAA geographic standards is in District 10 (Clearfield County is actually
in District 6) but there is precedent to my argument. Youngsville,
Sheffield and Eisenhower wrestled in District 9 for many years and would be
a nice additional to help fill in some of the byes we presently see.

It is my understanding that these three schools petitioned the PIAA for
inclusion in District 10 because under our old system only two wrestlers
qualified from District 9 to the Northwest Regional Tournament. Since we
now have three qualifiers (District 10 gets 5), I think their concern about
qualifiers has been addressed. 

The loss of three teams would leave District 10 with 26 Class AA schools,
which would still require them to run sectional qualification tournaments
to determine their District 10 contestants.

I make these comments only in the hope of making the District 9 Tournament
a stronger, more complete tournament. I hope this letter will be "food for
thought" so we as a district can discuss this problem and hopefully come to
some conclusion.

I can be reached by e-mail at bwi@ncentral.com

Thanks for reading my comments,

Bob Imhof
Ridgway Wrestling

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