Iowa/USAW Board of Directors and Head Coaches,

Spring is flying by, before you know it we will be seeing each other at the State Tournaments on May 7th and 8th at Southeast Polk. I'd like to welcome our newly appointed Head Coaches to my updates (this is the fourth) and I apologize in advance for their length. Hopefully you can find a speck of useful information.

I'd also like to welcome Michael Doyle and Mark Rial into their new positions for Iowa/USA as Coaches Director and Secretary.  Michael was our former Secretary and Mark was our Head Greco-Roman Coach.  The board unanimously approved these appointments - with no opposition, as your Chair, I'd like to thank you for your support.

Old Business:

Nearly all of the feedback I've received is to keep our Spring Meeting the same. We will meet at SE Polk High School at the conclusion of the boy's state freestyle competition on May 7th (around 6:00pm) in multi-purpose room S140 near the SE end of the commons. If you have any agenda items please get them to me well in advance. Directors can send your reports and I will share with the rest of the board to save some time at the meeting.  Per our bylaws we must give our membership a minimum of ten days notice for a general meeting of the board.

The Silver Coaches College is coming up on May 19-20, 2022 (Thu & Fri full days) in Coralville, Iowa. Any questions should be directed to NCEP Coordinator Mike Clayton mclayton@usawrestling.org cost is $350.  Classes will be at the Staybridge Suites which is connected to Extreme Arena.

Our membership is currently: 2863 Athletes up 11%; 730 Wrestling Leaders up 8%, 71 Clubs up 20%, and 21 Sanctioned Events up 17% from last year at this time. Encourage your club administration, boards, athletes and coaches to purchase their memberships not only now, but to renew right away in September instead of waiting for Spring.  

Our Cadet and Junior Directors have been working hard to put qualifying information, sign ups and team selection criteria on the website. The Women's page currently hosts a wealth of information regarding each upcoming event. I've also added some other information to our site and to some of your pages.  Give them a look!

New Business:

1. Tournament hosts need to make sure to sanction their events. This is a requirement. Here is a link to the page: https://www.usawmembership.com/events

2. I have applied to have our State Tournament recognized as a Regional Tournament which will allow officials to be upgraded from M3 to M2.  This upgrade is needed to work College Women's events amongst others. This will also provide an OEP (Officials Education Program) clinic opportunity on Friday after 4PM, the night before. If accepted, there will be more details to come, hopefully soon!

3. SafeSport LMS Migration began on Wednesday April 6th. Challenges have been a lag of up to 10 minutes from course completion to acknowledgement on the membership system. Information, which used to update every second, is now at ten minutes. The restart button wipes away all records of course completion - be patient for at least 10 minutes. Email info@usawrestling.org and let them know if you are having issues. I This is not a user problem, it is a SafeSport / Absorb (the platform) problem.

4. On Wednesday, April 20th, there will be a SafeSport outage. Let anyone who is working on completion know to get this training done by Monday April 18th. The entire course record will be wiped, if not finished.

5. USAW is encouraging all to use the membership system for event registration, for athletes, coach passes and admissions.  Weigh-ins - can be imported and exported, satellite weigh-ins with instant updates to weight classes make it easy for event directors to address any issues. Weights are sent immediately to athletes and parents so they can know exactly what the athlete weighed and brackets can be built much faster. This ensures membership and payment, both great safeguards. Event Directors can also print coaches credentials so that host sites don't have to rely on volunteers to check I.D's or membership.

6. April 15th is the deadline to get signed up for the Coach Credential at $40 for Vegas. If you sign up after, it is $100. The credentials are available in the Membership System - Event Registration.

7. Junior Duals in Oklahoma will likely have Junior and 14U Women's Greco. Do we have interest? Do we have any clubs teaching Greco? Teaching Greco to girls?

8.  Data is revealing the Showcase is best attended by State Champs from Idaho -17, Kansas -13, Arizona -10, Montana-10, Utah -10, Illinois -9, Colorado-9 etc. Iowa only had 7 state champions enter the Showcase.

9. Officials online OEP is Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. This is something I didn't realize was happening. I'm not sure I'm receiving every email that I should be at this point?  If you find information that would be helpful to our board or membership, please pass it on. Same goes for any information included here. Please pass on to those who may find it useful.

10. NCSA = National Collegiate Student Athlete is a corporate partnership with USAW (recruiting service.)  The women's recruiting space is really taking off, many scholarships are available. This goal is to connect student-athletes with prospective schools that are the best "fits." Check out their website: https://www.ncsasports.org/

11.  Heartland Duals are this weekend in Council Bluffs. Good luck to our teams.

My Brags:

Iowa crowned five National Champions at the Showcase:  Hunter Garvin (IC West,) Tate Naaktgeboren (Linn-Mar) and Wyatt Voelker (West Delaware) from Big Game WC and Max Magayna (Waterloo Columbus) and Jared Thiry (Don Bosco,) representing Immortal Athletics.  Iowa had other champions and All-Americans at the event, but this division was the pinnacle of the tournament. We have to find a way to get Iowa's best to wrestle. The kids won't forget how to folkstyle if we move on to FS/GR after the high school season ends, they've been doing it most of their lives. Moving forward, let's encourage our athletes to "defend our turf." Congratulations to those who did just that and "thank you" to their club coaches who encouraged their participation in the event as well. 

Earlier, I mentioned the work our Directors, Brent Jennings and Dustin Roland have done with their pages at iowawrestling,org. Due to the sheer volume of kids and families involved, providing this information to our membership saves each of us from answering phone calls, emails and messages regarding the 5 W questions: who, what, where, when, why and often how?  The Biographies also provide families with some basic information like: Who is my child traveling with and who is responsible for their well-being? I appreciate your efforts, if anyone needs my help getting something up on your page, George Bailey or I can help.

Steve Mickelson has been very busy this Spring. Most states have a Treasurer, a Membership Director, an Awards Director, etc. We have Steve. He does all of those things for Iowa/USA Wrestling and more.  If you don't get an immediate response from Steve, I can assure you it's not because he's sitting around doing nothing, it's because he's doing the job of 3-4 people. In his spare time he also created the flyer for the state tournament, set up track wrestling, approved tournament sanctions, represented our organization at Folkstyle Nationals and so on. Next time you see Steve, give him a pat on the back. Thank you for your numerous years of service and all that you currently do. You are appreciated.

P.S. Steve is also working on a Venmo account and the ability to take credit cards instead of checks and cash for deposits and payments for duals and Fargo. If any changes in price are needed we need to get those things ironed out quickly.

I think that is all for now, have a great rest of your week.

Best Regards,

Jason