COLUMN: State wrestling recap

     It may seem a little odd for me to be writing about the state wrestling meet having not attended any of the sessions this year but I followed it closely online and watched both the semis and finals on television this year. It is my favorite sporting event.

     First off, congratulations to Chase Luensman on taking home a fifth place medal. That is a great accomplishment and set him up well to do even bigger and better things next year.

     Every wrestler who dreams about making it to the state tournament needs to take a page out of Chase’s book, a book known as hard work. I drove by Chase this summer on a very hot day and he was out running up main hill. That’s what it takes to be better than everyone else.

     Nelson Brands. About a week before State I read an interesting article about Nelson Brands, an Iowa City West wrestler who hails from the famous Brands family. Nelson’s dad is Hawkeye associate head coach Terry Brands and his uncle is Iowa head coach Tom Brands.

     I learned that Nelson didn’t start wrestling until he was in sixth grade and that he was never pushed into the sport, which to me was a surprise. His parents wanted him to find the sport on his own terms, not on the coattails of his famous father.

     Eventually he decided he wanted to wrestle and his dad did everything to let others teach his son the sport. Now if that isn’t a 180 of how most of us dads do the coaching thing.

     Personally, I have stepped back and evaluated everything I have done as a parent when it comes to sports, school, discipline, etc. with my kids. A long time ago I came to the conclusion that I messed up almost all of that period in their lives.

     What is done is done but I would approach the coaching part in many different ways. Would I have stayed away from coaching my kids? Not a chance. Many of those circumstances came about because no one else stepped up.

     I surely would change the amount of time we spent traveling to wrestling meets and baseball tournaments. I would have made it more about having fun and learning their respective sports. I’m just not convinced that throwing your 5-6 year old son into a competitive atmosphere is the best thing for them.

     And I would have given them a say into what we were participating in. Don’t get me wrong, I know not many kids can jump into wrestling as a sixth grader and end up a 2x state champ with the possibility of winning a third one. Nelson Brands does have some high-powered DNA running through his veins.

     Television broadcast. This year the boys’ athletic association worked an agreement for the television rights to the state tournament that eventually were sold to the Iowa High School Sports Network, which showed the tournament through Comcast Sports out of Chicago.

     No longer would the entire state have an opportunity to watch this great event unless you subscribed to Direct TV or the Dish Network. There has been quite an uproar about it and sports journalists were rumored to be most affected from some of the new rules that were enacted, most notably shooting photos from behind a barrier as opposed to being matside.

     As soon as Pete got to Des Moines he let me know the barriers were not going to be a problem. Now the interview room, which probably favored the bigger newspapers, was moved away from the action. That probably caused some issues.

     The good part of the new system was the expansion of live coverage included the semifinals, a reported first for any high school wrestling event in the entire country.