** Editors Note - I am editing this post with the permission of the orignal submitter. The message below was copied here by Jeremy and it was originally posted on the Section 4 wrestling discussion board. It was directed to Mike Mangan of the Press & Sun-Bulletin - Mike C. ***


sorry mike, i know it's not you fault but this is tough for wrestling fans to swallow. most of the space is devoted to division by division basketball coverage.

when are your editors gonna get the message, wrestling is where it's at around here. To call Forks victory a State Championship is a farce. They don't have to play any teams out of their classification, and the system doesn't even include Catholic schools, Buffalo and NYC publics, or anyone from Long Island. Not a player on any of those Froks teams will even sniff a major D1 football field. The kid from Oxford gets a huge write up because he made 1 catch in a 1AA game - he's the best player to come out of Sec 4 for years and he doesn't even start at Colgate.

Same goes for roundball. Lazor, Gelatt, Lawanna King and C. Allen were all major flops in D1 competition, and they were heads and shoulders above the rest in this area. Exactly 150 people actually bothered to vote in your own papers BU basketball poll. Basketball heroes in our area school would be bench warmers if they lived just about anywhere else, just like football. Meanwhile, Sec 4 wrestlers prove year in and year out that they are among the elite in the country at the D1 nationals and athigh school event is Fargo and Pittsburg.

again, not directed at you Mike. Just a little pissy that I woke up early on a Sunday to read you articles

Thats not fair to rant about the football teams success... its not at the expense of the other sports. Our community cheers on Troy when we learn he wrestled to a new State/National recognition or title, he gets front page billing individually, because really thats what wrestling is all about.

Football and Wrestling are totally different... one is a team game, where the players play side-by-side and count directly on one-another to succeed; the other, is a team sport where they face down the opposition one at a time, setting up individual champions.

Appreciate wrestling opportunities, for example Section 4 doesn't even officially sponsor the area's high school hockey programs. Each school's players must pay for everything... ice time, equipment, transportation. That hasn't stopped Forks Fans from helping rebuild CF hockey and restore a long successful program and hopefully add to the team's past league championships!

Just remember its sports at its unspoiled finest and I've yet to find a community that supports its high school athletes overall quite as well as we do...