New Iowa girls highschool wrestling classifications
- Thread starter Seth53
- Start date
Fryowa
Administrator
I don't know the inner workings of IGHSAU as intimately as I do the boys side but I still vehemently disagree with a private company running things. It leads to cronyism (rampant in the IHSAA and IHSSN) and they make decisions based on what gouges parents and fans for the most money, not what's best for the athletes and sports. They and their defenders scream from the rooftops that they're non-profits, but it's total bullshit. The only way that they can increase their salaries (who on earth doesn't want to increase his or her salary?) is to raise prices and add events that charge for attendance. That is their driver no matter how they want to twist and spin it.
The extra round of FB playoffs is the absolute most ridiculous thing in Iowa HS history (no 1 seed is ever going to come close to getting beat), and they did it for no other reason than to boost revenue. The tiny staff they have currently there's no possible way they can adequately serve the state of Iowa, either. They leave all but the very most serious things up to self-governance and that is to the detriment of teams/athletes, in my opinion.
I was at our 2A district track meet a couple weeks ago, and was standing right down at the start/finish line for the 800m run. The gun went off but the timing system didn't start, and the runners had gone almost 200 meters before they got them all stopped and walking back to the start. There was the biggest clusterf*ck you've ever seen because coaches were pissed and wanted 15 minutes rest (at district track in Iowa you are also racing against times for 8 at large spots, not just 1/2 finishers at the given meet), the starter said 5 minutes, and the meet director (school's AD) had no idea what to do to make a ruling. To add to it, the AD had 2 very fast runners from their school in the race. So for about 10 minutes this AD is on a cell phone trying to get hold of someone from the state to answer and say what they were supposed to do, no one's answering, finally got a hold of someone and they said 10 minutes. Was that from the time of the malfunction? Was that from the time the race got stopped (already passed...)? Was that from the time they hung up the phone? No one there knew. Giant, giant cluster. Bottom line is there were 32 district meets in Iowa on May 9th, there should have been a representative at each one. Maybe not a fulltime employee, but someone impartial there to make a call if it comes up. But instead it's a total poop show and the right hand doesn't know what the left one is doing. The IHSAA has a grand total of 14 employees, and that's counting administrative staff. There is zero possibility they can provide a good service to thousands of athletes. I'd much rather $5 of my taxes each month goes to employing high-quality, athlete-focused people who aren't in it do scrimp on labor.
I will say in the experience I have, I do think IGHSAU does some nicer things for girls athletes that I think the IHSAA should do for boys. One example off the top of my head is that they celebrate state qualifying and district/post season performances more. For instance at district track and XC meets, when girls qualify they get some pretty cool stuff like a "ticket punched" sign and medals from the state right there, boys just get the school meet medal and a qualifier one sent to them later on. In other words the IGHSAU makes a bigger deal out of successes and achievements on the whole. I like that and I think the boys should do that as well. But, it costs money and Chizek, Tharpe, et al don't wanna have that making their paychecks smaller.
