From Craig Hellwege - General Manager

As you can see I'm still around but purely as an adviser. I see myself as the head coach of this operation now instead of a player/coach position I held in the past. The transition was a good one for me. The first 15 years I kept a fair degree of involvement in almost all areas of the tournament.  With that I took on all the worry and stress that things would come off well. I didn't do that that last year as I let others make things work and things came off well. I enjoyed the meet far more than I did in the past and see myself doing even less with Huskerland 17.  Huskerland 17 has been set for April 13-14 at UNO's Sapp Field House in Omaha. We had hoped to get the site for April 6-7 but couldn't get another event moved. We clearly want to get back on our normal first weekend in April date and already trying to get UNO booked for April 5-6, 2003. Aiming to go back to Kearney in 2004 at UNK's Cushing Coliseum on April 9-10. Doug Denson will again serve as site director and Fred Hall will be tournament director again.

The two day format was a huge success last year and we plan to stay with it. This year the first two sessions on Saturday will be Grades 7-8. The last session on Saturday will be the light half of Grades 5-6. We will start off Sunday's session with the other half of Grades 5-6 and the last two sessions will be Grades 3-4. We have done this to have our long day on Saturday since Grades 7-8 have the 90 second periods. The good news is we have lower the entry fee to $15 with special rates for western Nebraska clubs. The bad news is that we will have gate fees. All entry fees and gate fees can be found here. The board felt the high entry fee with no gate fee was one of the reasons our numbers fell off last year.  We are also planning to have a free clinic during the meet in the UNO wrestling room given by the UNO coaching staff. We hope a large number of your wrestlers take advantage of this situation.

New for 2002 is that we will be requiring all wrestlers and coaches to hold current $5 Team Camp insurance camps for both Huskerland 17 and the Huskerland Duals. The $300 minimum fee has been eliminated as well as the one day policy fee. We realize we made a mistake not requiring the card last year. We clearly want all clubs to obtain cards for all their wrestlers and coaches plus sanction their tournament with Camp Team. Club fees and tournament sanction fees are each $25. More information on Camp Team can be found here. Lyle Miller will be the person to call with any of your Camp Team questions. His home number is (402) 488-1373.

Time to get your dues in! Renewal forms are here.  Please note that the $40 rate is good till just 12-31-01 and goes to $60 after that. Forms need to be mailed to Linda Hill this year and not Roxy.  Roxy and Ken have stepped down after giving 14 years to the cause. They did a great deal for Huskerland, so much so that we are splitting their duties between four people. Linda Hill will keep track of club dues, Fred and Bobbi Hall will handle the state entries, and Darrell Jennings will take over the checkbook duties. Roxy had knee replacement surgery on her right knee this fall and recovery has been going slower than normal. It also has not been a good time for her travel business due to the events of 9-11. She would be happy to help you with any travel plans you have. Her business phone is (402) 826-5018.

We are going to five classes for club scoring this year. The classes will be AA, A, B, C, and D. They will be based on the number of state meet entries. The 10 clubs that send the most wrestlers to state will be in Class AA. The next 15 will be in Class A. The next 20 will be in Class B.  The next 25 will be in Class C and the rest in Class D. The top two teams in each class will earn plaques. To qualify for club scoring a club must pay Huskerland dues and be sanctioned with Camp Team. This system will be easy to administrate and we feel will create some great team races. Clubs won't know what class they will be in till they get to Omaha. To get an idea how this will work I have attached how teams would have been classified in 2001 if this system had been in place and the clubs who would have been awarded plaques. Click here to see the classification.  Overall the board felt this was the fairest way to go.

We are instituting some new awards for 2002 called the TTT Plaques. The TTT stands for the Top Tributary Team. These plaques will be given to the four clubs that bring the most wrestlers to state out of their school system for each of the four traditional classes. We want to recognize those clubs that do the best job of supporting their high school programs. For an example I am going to use Fremont who has established its self as the strongest club in Huskerland the past three years. They sent 39 wrestlers to the state meet last year but a large number of those wrestlers attend schools outside of Fremont or attend Catholic schools in Fremont. I'm guessing that when those numbers are removed from the 39 that they won't bring home the Class A TTT Plaque. I am going to have wrestlers list the school they are attending on the entry form plus have a place on the master sheet for clubs to put their adjusted state entry numbers. We plan to award plaques right before the 3rd session on Saturday.

The Huskerland Duals will be held at Lexington High on Sunday, March 10th.  This will be the fourth edition and will again be headed up by Darrell Jennings. Fred Maloley will aid Darrell by being the site director. This event will be run with 8 mats in two gyms. Entry information can be found here. Fred Maloley will also be director for the Huskerland Freestyle Classic to be held on March 9th at Lexington High for Grades 9-12.  Note the Dick Brown (Lexington) Kids Tournament is set for March 9th. We would like to encourage dual clubs to come a day early and get two meets for one trip. Entry information for the Huskerland Freestyle Classic will be placed on our web site at a later date. Note for those wanting to make a long weekend of wrestling the Cozad Tournament is Friday night, March 8th.

We are working on creating an additional feature on our web site called frequently asked questions. The FAQ is designed to better inform club directors, coaches, and parents while reducing our time on the phone. We are starting to get club tournament date and meet info on our web site. If you know your date just go on the web site and put it on. Please do the same for club director information changes, corrections, and additions. I have attached a revised list of Huskerland managers and staff FYI. Note overtime rules have been adjusted some for choice and length for high school matches. We will use the same rules for the state meet and duals except that a fall can only occur if it is a defensive fall in the tiebreaker period.

You will see a few new names already and we will be adding more. The board is actively recruiting more people who want to help Huskerland in providing more services. If you would like to get involved give one of the managers a call. Some of the things we are working include: Establishing a Huskerland Hall of Fame to honor deserving coaches and past board members who are not members of the NSWCA Hall of Fame. We plan to post a form on our web site where you can nominate individuals that you feel should be honored. We would like to select 5 individuals to be inducted during the state meet at UNO. Inductees will be given plaques and their bio's put on our web site.

We want to send a team made up of Champion of Champions to the National Middle School Duals held in Iowa the weekend of April 6-7. We will be putting a form on the web site for interested Champion of Champions to fill out and forward to the team leader. We would also like to bring back the Young Officials program. If we do it we will have official's clinics along with a closed book test. We are still looking at doing it for the 2002 season but likely won't get it going till 2003. We are also looking for someone in the Omaha area to sell program ads. This is an area we feel that we have not been doing a good job at. We will also be looking for someone who would like to take charge of doing the printed state meet program.

Linda Hill wants to stay on the board and work the state meet but doesn't have the time to do the program anymore.  We will be taking bids for state meet venders till the first of the year. Let me know if you have someone who would like bid on selling shirts, awards, wrestling gear, or pictures. We are looking at updating brackets and printing bout sheets with a specially designed computer program that will also keep track of team scores. The board feels that we can cut the table works from 4 to 3 workers. We are putting an ad in the NWI to promote our events plus to give support to Mike Carnes and his web publication.  Mike wants to expand his publication to include club meet results. He is also selling ad spots where you can advertise your club tournament. Mike's web site can be found at www.nwimag.com. If you haven't checked out his publication yet you need to do so.

Things are falling into place for my son, Marcus. It appears he will be the 149 pounder for SDSU this season. The Jacks return 5 All-Americans from a team that was one win away from winning the D-II Nationals. He has one very proud dad! Just hope he doesn't get called up as he is a member of the South Dakota National Guard. Maybe see you at a Husker dual, they host Oregon St. on Dec. 14 and Missoui on Dec. 15.