New EIWA Dual Meet Championship

[Voice of the Quakers]

https://www.eiwawrestling.org/sports/wrest/2024-25/releases/20241120cwsrxp?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

After the departures of Rutgers, Syracuse, Wilkes, etc., for various reasons, I thought the EIWA had great balance as a combination of the Ivy League and the Patriot League wrestling schools. This new format almost seems to invite the Patriot League teams to follow the Ivy League right out of the EIWA. Note that F&M is the only team in the Independence Division that has been in the EIWA since 2011.

Independence Division	Patriot Division
Binghamton Drexel Franklin & Marshall Hofstra Long Island University Morgan State Sacred Heart	American Army West Point Bucknell  Lehigh Navy

[bracketbuster]

I believe you need at least 6 teams to have a conference AQ for NCAA qualifying. Pac 12 right now has 4 but is in a two year grace period or they will lose their AQ(s). Somebody can correct me if I am wrong on that.

I think this dual championship is just a Patriot vs. Independence Champion thing at the end of the year. I don't think second place wrestles second, third vs. third, etc. So most years I would think it will be Lehigh vs. Independence Champion. Would be cool to potentially see 2v2, etc. as now everybody kind of has to leave an open date on their schedule on the chance they win their division but only 2 out of 12 teams will use that date or weekend for this.

If anything the "Independence" teams should form their own conference as they would be guaranteed 10 qualifying spots with those seven teams. Those 7 schools have won 45 automatic qualifier spots at the conference championships since 2017 (7 years). This is partially skewed because LIU only joined recently and Morgan State has yet to compete in an EIWA Championship.

Also, I was looking at rankings on FloWrestling and I am hesitant to write this because I feel like they take some unnecessary ridicule and maybe I am just adding to it but it is really too much to ask that Flo knows which college teams go in which conference: https://www.flowrestling.org/rankings/12986049-2024-25-eiwa-conference-wrestling-rankings/50979-125-pounds

They apparently missed the memo that Morgan State joined the EIWA during both of their first two ranking periods.