84Coach Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Our school is really lacking MS wrestling numbers. I started a youth program 3 years ago and it is going great with 50+ youth wrestlers (which is a lot for our small school). We have the numbers from 4th grade down. Varsity numbers are good for a few years, we have a lot of freshman this year. But we are really lacking numbers in between. Any ideas or tips on how to gain interest in the MS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
backtothemat Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 If you have a coach who teaches at the MS that is huge because he can recruit. Secondarily, you need the MS wrestlers you do have recruit their buddies. Castle South Middle School had a call out meeting last fall and had 20 first year wrestlers turn out. It is a word of mouth thin, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fabio Jr. Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Even getting someone on the MS football staff can help increase numbers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
84Coach Posted January 20, 2015 Author Share Posted January 20, 2015 My assistant teaches at the HS and has visited kids during lunch a few times. Definitely looking to improve our MS recruiting techniques. Our DARE officer is a a wrestling guy as well so he has been pushing for us. Was thinking about getting the Varsity boys to go over during lunch hours to talk to kids. I was able to get a lot of first year kids from the HS football team this year, but for some reason there just isn't a lot of interest coming from the MS. Definitely need to get creative if we are going to have consistent numbers until the youth program kids start coming up. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super_Fan Posted January 20, 2015 Share Posted January 20, 2015 Maybe on a night the high school gym is packed for a meet. (Senior Night or something of the like) You could offer free admission to kids in middle school and show them the enviroment that comes with high school wrestling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fourboyzdad44 Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 I agree with all of the above. you might also look at holding a wrestling camp at the end of the wrestling season. The best way to get more enthusiasm is to have your high schoolers help run the camp. You can run something like this right after school, and offer a T-shirt (this will let the kids be recognized as having been a part of this group). Show some technique, and have the high school guys demonstrate. Hold a little "meet" at weeks end, and have the parents that can come and root them on. If you carefully match up the participants everyone should get a good match, if there are odd numbers, or someone is ultra talented compared to the others have the high school guys wrestle them, at a level that makes the kid work hard but not frustrate them. Good Luck BeastMode#31 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
84Coach Posted January 22, 2015 Author Share Posted January 22, 2015 All great ideas....Thanks guys! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fearless fly Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 I've mentioned this before and think its a great way to get exposure... our school and another school had 2 days in the season where we would have a meet at 1:00 pm in front of the student body at each school. It was just 2 hrs that each school sacrificed to help expose it. I was a fun environment and we always had a few students come out for team because of it. Keep in mind that this was eons ago so dont know if its even possible today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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