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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Ryan Peters added to this discussion on December 22, 2009
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I have spoken to many coaches the past few years and it seems like our HS teams are getting smaller and smaller. It is getting harder to get kids out for wrestling and keep them out. Is wrestling a dying sport? If so, what can we do as a wrestling community to keep it alive?
Do we need to go back to the traditional dual meets and do fewer tournaments?
How do we draw the fans back to the sport?
How do we keep the second tier wrestler in the sport?
Has the information age ruined wrestling?
I would love to hear your comments.
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Bill Splete added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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I like the question, my thoughts are that with the tournament style of the programs today it leaves the community out of the support position other that to look in the newspaper or travel to a tournament and sit for hours to see a local kid wrestle. I thought of basketball and how we get parents that have no kids at the school but come out for the games, because its local and they love the sport.
I believe more dual meets with a combination of tournaments, but this won't work for everyone, but it would for a lot. We have the state duals coming up Jan 10. at wadsworth and there will be some great ohio teams there. This is an event to market and get people to and that starts with school to school marketing.
This is the only website I would ever post on, but I do go on others, but this seems like a great place to begin the talk about how do we get the people who love wrestling out to our sport, and help people to understand that these kids are the toughest of the tough and need your support.
Is there a marketing guy out there that can help us find a low cost way to advertise and ask for support. It seems i have more questions than answers, but like the crazy Irishmen in Braveheart said, it looks like I have come to the right place.
Let's start with the ironman, is it just the competition that draws the interest or are there things they do that we all can implemant in programs around the state to get the word out.
My father always says it is better to be thougt a fool then open one's mouth and remove all doubt. I hope this is not one of these times, because I remeber packed duals.
Best to all during the holidays,
To Rex, I'm serious about the book, write it. Here is a title to think of " it's not physical a wrestlers journey to find himself
It may be cheesy but it is were we find and test ourselves, and we all know it's not all physical.
This place is a pleasure to contribute to. Thanks for the voice!
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Bill Splete added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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I like the question, my thoughts are that with the tournament style of the programs today it leaves the community out of the support position other that to look in the newspaper or travel to a tournament and sit for hours to see a local kid wrestle. I thought of basketball and how we get parents that have no kids at the school but come out for the games, because its local and they love the sport.
I believe more dual meets with a combination of tournaments, but this won't work for everyone, but it would for a lot. We have the state duals coming up Jan 10. at wadsworth and there will be some great ohio teams there. This is an event to market and get people to and that starts with school to school marketing.
This is the only website I would ever post on, but I do go on others, but this seems like a great place to begin the talk about how do we get the people who love wrestling out to our sport, and help people to understand that these kids are the toughest of the tough and need your support.
Is there a marketing guy out there that can help us find a low cost way to advertise and ask for support. It seems i have more questions than answers, but like the crazy Irishmen in Braveheart said, it looks like I have come to the right place.
Let's start with the ironman, is it just the competition that draws the interest or are there things they do that we all can implemant in programs around the state to get the word out.
My father always says it is better to be thougt a fool then open one's mouth and remove all doubt. I hope this is not one of these times, because I remeber packed duals.
Best to all during the holidays,
To Rex, I'm serious about the book, write it. Here is a title to think of " it's not physical a wrestlers journey to find himself
It may be cheesy but it is were we find and test ourselves, and we all know it's not all physical.
This place is a pleasure to contribute to. Thanks for the voice!
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Roe Fox added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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This is a great topic for this forum.
My personal feeling (and I bet Gary will agree with this) is that today's student isn't interested in the commitment necessary to compete in a sport like wrestling. Nintendo, Playstation, the internet are pretty much the after-school entertainment choices of kids. I of course am speaking in generalities but those who have wrestled, successfully or otherwise, know the mental and physical toll the sport takes on you. I have routinely encounteres this problem through my job (and 16 year old relative).
It also isn't a glamour sport like football, basketball or baseball, which will always draw players to some degree because of their popularity.
I'm not sure I have a solution. It is difficult to tell a kid that something is good for you in the long run, like wrestling, even if you don't win a state title (or even qualify).
I am one of the apparently few people who do not like MMA. However, it gives a lot of lipservice to the various specialties that are involved, like traditional wrestling, grappling, jiu jitsu (sp?), boxing, etc. I know a lot of young kids like watching it and it is gaining in popularity, for now.
Clearly wrestling is the only organized high school sport that could give a student one of these talents that could lead to an MMA career. Maybe that is a selling point?
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Tom Dickson added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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The sport needs a lot of help from the media. In northern Ohio, wrestling gets very little help from our largest newspaper, The Plain Dealer. The Chronicle Telegram does a pretty good job with their coverage, but we need more help. Mike Trivasanno has his yearly wrestling show just before the state tournament, but that's too late. If the local sports talk shows (Tony Rizzo and the Really Big Show) would help out by inviting wrestlers, coaches, and refs 3 or 4 times before and during the season to talk about the sport and some of the athletes it would be a great promotion.
At the school level, the administration and athletic dept. could help out more by using the morning annoucements with results and upcoming events. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are many ways to get the word out, but unfortunately us talking about it here, we are preaching to the choir.
I will go on another tangent here, the social aspect of our sport. Without good coverage of wrestling we will still have too many people out there saying that it's just 2 sweaty guys rolling around on the mat and that it's gay. These people need to be enlightened about how much hard work the kids put in to get where they are and the benefits of all that labor.
Wrestling fans are great and educated fans, but they need to educate the non-fans.
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Jim Behrens added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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Ryan,
A great topic and one for which there is no easy answer. I come at this from a different perspective than many posters, that of an official.
When I started officiating, there were dual meets everywhere. Today? I can't remember the last actual dual I officiated. They just don't exist because of the point structure the OHSAA assigns to them. After all, if you get 1 point for a dual or 1 point for a tri, which is a coach going to choose? To carry it farther, a couple of years ago the OHSAA started allowing for four teams to contest a meet and call it a tri. Of course everyone could not wrestle everyone else but it still makes for a long event and still only one point on the schedule. Is this the best way to attract fans? I seriously doubt it.
The real killer, IMO, are the pool tournaments. I first became aware of them a number of years ago when wrestlers from Sandusky SMCC (through their coaches) showed up in Columbus with 54-0 records. How was this possible given the point structure? Well, coaches figured a way around the "rule". Sure a kid gets lots of mat time but at the end of the day some kids go home 0-4 or 0-5. Is that helping anyone? On top of that, the parents (because there are very few "fans" at events like this) have to sit in the bleachers all day for the few matches that really matter to them. Sure they hope for the best for the other wrestlers on their son's team but that is not the reason they are there.
I sure don't claim to have the "answer" but I think a good combination of duals and tournaments is needed. Get rid of the 20 point limit (or whatever it is today) and say that a wrestler can have 30 matches (or 35 or 40 or 50, the actual number can be discussed). If you step foot on the mat, it is a point. Maybe 2 or 3 tournaments per season should be the limit?
Another thought, although people don't want to hear this, is that there are too many weight classes. Many, if not most, schools can not fill out the current 14 classes. The more well known programs do not have this problem but virtually all small schools do. What good does it do to have 14 weights when a school can only fill 11 of them? Not much fan interest there. One thought might be to have 14 classes for the D1 schools but only say 11 (or whatever) for D3. Again, just a thought.
I do feel something needs to be done and it needs to be done soon.
Thanks,
Jim
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Mike Leedy added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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My kids all attend/attended a D1 urban area school in NW that does not promote wrestling at all and they haven't been able to field a full squad in years. I like the idea of having more duals and feel maybe there should be zero points charged for them. Also, when you do not field a full team,
no one invites you to tournaments that are dual meet format and so you're stuck going to bracket style double elimination contests that will limit the number of matches. My youngest son wrestled 70 matches in the off season but, will be lucky to get 35 matches in this regular season.
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Ken Ramsey Sr. added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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I have said for a long time that there are way too many weight classes in HS and it is detrimental to wrestling. With fewer weights and larger differences between the weights, we could gain another positive for wrestling, less weight cutting. Unless you were close to the next weight class, you would not consider going lower. 10 lbs. difference in the lower weights, 12 lbs. in the middle weights, 15 lbs in the upper weights and a maximum of 10 weight classes would be a good change.
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Dan Cosimi added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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I don't remember when I looked this stuff up but the last time I checked (which wasn't too long ago), the sport of wrestling had the sixth-most high school male participants of any sport. That is very good!
What can we do to increase population?
This is outside-of-the-box thinking and I don't know how much support these ideas would ever get, but here are some of my thoughts.
1. It would be awesome if there was some way to emphasize competing in a single dual but there doesn't seem to be an easy answer for how to do that unless you buy into the philosophy that wrestling in a dual will give your wrestlers the same quality (or more) experience as wrestling in a tournament would.
2. Eliminate weight classes from dual meets. Pair the best athletes against each other. This way Graham v. St. Edward would regularly feature a David Taylor v. Collin Palmer, Monroeville v. Troy Christian would feature Chris Phillips v. Alex Utley, etc.
3. Eliminate the 20-point system. I don't see why it is a good thing at all.
4. Follow the central district's lead and seed teams within all district tournaments to balance out the sectionals. This sounds like common sense to me. And, yes, it will help some teams (like the ones at the brutal Medina sectional in Division 1 or the Northwestern sectional in Division 3) and would hurt other teams but it would level the playing field considerably and that's more important for our sport as a whole.
5. Allow teams to enter as many individuals as they want into the sectional tournament until a weight class is filled (with sixteen entrants). So, say you have a sectional with twelve teams. Instead of having four byes, let four junior varsity kids have a chance at the big show. How would we determine which teams get to enter their wrestler? Random draw from the teams that have a wrestler eligible to wrestle there. Would this mess up the team scores? Somewhat, yes. The team would only have one point-scorer per weight class, however, the non-point scorer could certainly take points away from an opposing scorer... but that's the nature of competition.
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Mike Leedy added to this discussion on December 23, 2009
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Repeal Title IX, less post high school opportunities equals less interest at the high school level. Sounds easy doesn't it?
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Mark Niemann added to this discussion on December 24, 2009
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Isn't there an essay or poem out there: Don't weep for me; I am wrestling!
I think someone hit close to the head of the nail with the word committment. I think that that is a major issue with anything in life. It used to be the parents were involved enough to say, "if you started something, you'll finish it." Now, it just seems like if a kid wants to quit, the parent is the one that feel the burden lifted.
I don't know. Throw this post into the pile for lack of interest. Or throw it out completely because it could just be me.
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Mike Leedy added to this discussion on December 24, 2009
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We are at Toledo Public and wrestling is nearly dead in this school system, 2 sq last year, 1 this year, 0 next season and none in sight for years to come.
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Gary Sommers added to this discussion on December 24, 2009
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Quote from Mark Niemann's post:
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"Isn't there an essay or poem out there: Don't weep for me; I am wrestling!
I think someone hit close to the head of the nail with the word committment. I think that that is a major issue with anything in life. It used to be the parents were involved enough to say, "if you started something, you'll finish it." Now, it just seems like if a kid wants to quit, the parent is the one that feel the burden lifted.
I don't know. Throw this post into the pile for lack of interest. Or throw it out completely because it could just be me."
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If the parents ever even took on the "burden". So many parents today are so disinterested in their kids in many cases I have yet to figure out why they even had them.
In our program my wife and I are the only parents to have attended all five events thus far. I don't think anyone else has even been to three of them.
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Harry Lester added to this discussion on December 24, 2009
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This is a great topic! I was just talking to a guy about this after one of my workouts. I had a great workout wrestling with two guys, one training to wrestle at the Scuffle and another in a open tournament in Florida. We were wrestling in a place called the Cooler in Alpharetta, GA. The place is mainly used for hockey training and games. Most of the people that walked past the wrestling mats were people there to watch their kids play hockey. As we were working, and when I would take my break and suck as much air as I could at the time, I noticed more and more people stopping by and watching what we were doing. I don't believe they were just watching us because we were wrestling, but they were watching us because of how we were wrestling. We were focused on being offensive and getting after each other. I've personally noticed that I find it so hard to watch wrestling when wrestlers are super defensive. I think that is one of the major contributors to why our sport doesn't gain much interest from regular people. If I had my way in changing our sport to make it more popular, I would:
1. Change the rules to force wrestlers to be more offensive
Ex. Smith v Sergei Two of the best ever putting up points on each other
2. Make it more fan friendly
Ex. Dual meets
3. Better marketing
Ex. Combine duals with other sporting events
Ex My senior year of high school, my coaches got an approval from the school to have a preview/dual during the last period of the school hour. All students were required to come and watch.
4. Weight class change
I think reducing weight classes will bring better competition in the room and in duals/tournaments.
Ex. Fargo now compared to Fargo pre 2000s
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Discussion Topic: How can we save the sport of wrestling?
Jeremy Craft added to this discussion on December 24, 2009
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The wrestling community I am sure will hate my take on this but it helps keep my son having fun. I tell him put on a show. I tell him, you see how Ray Lewis gets pumped up before a game and before a play, I tell him to get fired up and show some excitement.
I think the seriousness and what not will burn the kids/parents/ and fans out. Everyone wants these kids not to show emotions. I say, bring out the excitement.
We need a Dennis Rodman, a Ray Lewis, etc. of college wrestling. Much like the UFC. I'd rather watch a showman like BJ Penn who trash talks and entertains than a Kenny Florian who is a great fighter but who is as bland as white bread.
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