Thoughts from opening night.

• The combination of football playoffs overlapping with the start of the wrestling season and December duals with wrestlers not at their postseason weights is a recipe for forfeits.  Needs to be corrected.  Football playoffs should be completed before the wrestling season starts. And there should only be 1 weight throughout the season. No need for December weights and +2 come the Holidays as the system was designed for a growth allowance and is and always has been used to allow a wrestler to wrestle at a lower weight class as the season goes on, thus being counterproductive to its intentions. While we are at it we probably should eliminate morning weigh-ins.
• It’s great to sit in a high school gym and see new talent blossoming.  There are some unranked guys who with slight adjustments can make a big impact this year.
• So many points can be eliminated with a great stance. A great defense is the first step to winning championships. A great stance is a foundation for a great defense. You can see a wrestler make an adjustment to his stance mid-match and see how impactful it is to the outcome of the match.
• You can tell a wrestler’s confidence level by watching their first step of the match. Almost every wrestler’s first step is slightly back. Subconsciously it’s a sign of a lack of confidence. Actually, that is the wrong wording as I believe confidence is acquired, thus it is a sign that confidence has not been acquired as of yet. A wrestler on a mission to a championship season almost always has a first step forward with an attack.
• There is a different intensity when brothers cheer for each other Matside. Sayville has 3 Lopresti brothers in their lineup. Fun to watch them root for each other.
• High school should incorporate college back points. Not only would it change the game but it would also make it consistent between levels and prepare HS wrestlers for the next level.
• Getting out from the bottom within 10 seconds is an indicator of postseason success and is vital to being an elite wrestler.
  
• Attacking and getting takedowns within 10 seconds of each whistle win matches going away.
  
• 80% of this sport is mental. The other 20% is loving to compete, and you can’t teach that. You can teach a competitor how to wrestle, it is much harder, if not impossible to teach a person how to compete. That’s inbred and when a wrestler has a competitive spirit their upside is far greater than a more fundamentally sound wrestler without a competitive spirit. When you have a guy who loves to fight, you have something that will be much greater in the future than he is today. I call these types of wrestlers dough wrestlers, given time, they continue to rise. The technique can be taught, a competitive spirit can not. 
• Great to have the season starting up again.
  

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