Work Ethic/Attitudes of today's high school wrestler

[sasquatch]

I love this sport and the kids that participate. I assist a team in an urban area. It has become increasingling more difficult to get kids to come out and stay out. For many the complaint is it is just too hard. They can walk from the wrestling room to the basketball floor and find a completely different regimen. I am the "old guy" in the room and old school. The head coach and I are challenged about how we can make it more fun yet still prepare them properly for the battles they will face. I try to articulate to the kids that once they leave that employers etc. are not going to "create" environments where they can't expect the school or employer to diminish the hard work that is required to succeed. After all I believe our higher calling is to help mold better men, college students, husbands, fathers, employee's and future business owners. On the other hand we are confident if we can keep an athlete out that by his junior year we have a really good chance to make a highly competitive wrestler out of him.

 

Just venting some and asking how others are striking a reasonable balance of preparing young men properly and keeping them engaged.

 

[CoachM]

Honestly the answer depends upon the kid, look at the elite level wrestlers most of them work harder or at least as hard as anyone has ever worked. The sociology of it is that kids today have more opportunities to socialize than ever before and it is an easier road so more are going to take it, it is human nature to take the easy path. Successful people have always been willing to take the harder path in order to obtain better results. Kids rarely think past the weekend and it is a Herculean task to get them to do otherwise, they will find out that life is significantly harder than school, wrestling, or anything the generally complain about. Most of what we can do is try to provide real work examples, here is a an article you can have them read : http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevecooper/2012/07/31/why-wrestlers-make-the-best-employees/

This gives all the reasons why good athletes, especially wrestlers, make high quality employees. Video tape practice so kids can see where they are slacking off, video never lies. Try to emphasize those who are working hard and reward those wrestlers for it, kids today generally respond to extrinsic rewards as opposed to intrinsic rewards because they want immediate gratification.

[kevinl]

My current son is the youngest of three boys.  His older brothers and sisters (youngest of six over all) set the bar very high.  Yet he is still going easier than the older five but could be the best of the three.

 

The oldest was part of a team and strived to support his teammates.

 

The second oldest had a few kids on his team that could work with him for the first year or two.

 

But the youngest struggled to find a teammate that can push him to improve as a freshman.  This year he will struggle to find anyone in the room to push him as a sophomore.  Sadly much of the season will be all about him.  The coaches are doing there best to keep it from going to his head, but I am struggling even more as a dad.

 

He is a great kid but he sees the other kids taking it easy and could fall short because he does not have anyone in the room to push him to get better other than the coaches.

 

I think it is getting harder and harder to find 14 kids who are committed to putting in the effort to wrestle at the highest level at last in smaller schools.  Fortunately this is also an individual sport and kids can rise above the limits of the class that they wrestle and still stand on the podium with the kids from the bigger schools.