Y2CJ41 Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 With everyone using TrackWrestling I was able to do some nice calculations, here they are https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nxe-jTfTxHGlr4Btu8kERBYGZ9FgoDThy-E0n9WClx8/edit?usp=sharing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littlevito Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 And technically these stats could change come Saturday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Y2CJ41 Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 And technically these stats could change come Saturday. They will definitely change, but I would feel these are a better reflection as we all know there are a multitude of reasons kids are "eliminated" before weigh-ins. hook and half 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coach Peck Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 That is some great work Joe. I think it could be valuable information in the future. I know you have tried to keep track of this information....how do these numbers compare to past years? Do you have anything from 4-5 years ago? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrestler60160 Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Looking at Techs sectional forfeits. There are 24 more this year compared to last year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Y2CJ41 Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Looking at Techs sectional forfeits. There are 24 more this year compared to last year. I "added" 13 of them for Shortridge who only had one entry. Nine teams out of 14 in that sectional have seven or more forfeits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carseller0822 Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 You are a Googledocs whiz. Impressive stats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrestling Scholar Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 If you look at the data, you see a predictable bell curve, with 138 being the most populated and 145 the second most. Looks like 106 and 113 are hardest weights to fill. I wonder what overall participation levels are at compared to prior years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coach Brobst Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Looking at Techs sectional forfeits. There are 24 more this year compared to last year. I noticed this as well. Last year, when I coached in IPS, the IPSAC tournament had 19 first round matches, whereas there were only 7 this year when I went to watch my old wrestlers compete last Friday (It's an 8-man bracket with 9 teams). The numbers across the conference were way down though. Tech still fielded a full team, but nobody else had more than 8 registered wrestlers and only 182, 220, and 285 had more than 5 wrestlers. That's probably why they feel there should be 14 teams in this sectional, because there will only be around the same number of wrestlers as an 8-10 team field, maybe even less. I also noticed numbers at the private city schools are down, Ritter, Scecina, and Chatard (not in this sectional, but still relevant) all have seen full teams from just a couple seasons ago turn into much smaller rosters. Ritter went from having just two forfeits two years ago to 7 this year and Scecina went from 3 to 8 in that two year time period. There's definitely a dip in the participation in the city, across the board. The question is: Why won't more of these kids come out and wrestle. The athletes are there in the schools, I just wonder why they won't wrestle. I believe the problem is 3-fold (probably many more issues, but I want to keep this concise): 1. There is a large lack of youth exposure to wrestling in the city. Other than CYO (of which most of the best wrestlers end up at Cathedral), these kids aren't being exposed to our sport at an early age and believe, even when they are only 5'3" that they will go pro in the NBA because of their love of basketball. This, combined with the lack of exposure for the student body due to the fact that hardly any of the matches are at home for any of the teams (in my case, we literally didn't have mats due to the take-over process at Howe) make it a hard sell. 2. There's difficulty in finding coaches. Not necessarily Head Coaches, I worked as a Head Coach there for 2 years and have nothing but great things to say about my colleagues in the city. They know their stuff, but now that I work at a school outside of town with a staff of 10 coaches, I see that me and my one paid assistant who showed up every other day and my 2 volunteer coaches who could only make it a few times all season were vastly behind in the amount of knowledge we could give to our wrestlers in a 2.5 hour practice. There was no money in our budget to hire anyone else and despite posting on this site and calling every buddy I have within an hour's drive, I could get no takers to come and help. 3. There seems to be a social stigma among the students I worked with at least that if you wrestled, you liked men. Even more so than with the kids outside the city. Many great athletes at Howe that helped their football team find success wouldn't come near the wrestling room because they were afraid of what their buddies would say about them. I do think that there are many other reasons, but these stuck out to me. Jon H, carseller0822, rdrodd1 and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coach King Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 I don't disagree with you coach. I am currently at Ritter and there are a couple of reasons for the lack of numbers. The two biggest are numbers at the youth level and support by other coaches. For the youth level, the CYO is dying a slow, painful death in wrestling. We have tried to bolster the teams as much as possible in the last 3 years, but we have only added about 15% in numbers to our teams. It is near impossible for me to get into other feeder grade schools and get the kids to come out and try the sport. Kids just don't seem to be tough enough to try the sport in high school and stick it out. The numbers for attrition are much higher for non experienced high school wrestlers versus kids that have experience prior in grade school. The other major reason is coaches pushing their kids to only play one sport. They want them to "work out" and focus on one sport. This is a complete joke and now you are seeing all of the literature and professional coaches coming out and speaking against specialization. I hope to see this change, but ultimately you need different coaches with friendlier philosophies in pushing for multisport athletes. Again, I can't speak for other schools, but I can speak from mine. This is what I have seen. I am working on changing both for sure, but it is a long term solution of building youth up and waiting for them to get to high school. King Coach Brobst and rdrodd1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chixfryer Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 CYO is killing wrestling in the 4 Catholic schools. Several years ago, they paired boys volleyball the same time as wrestling. Ed Tinder hates dealing with wrestling. I knew that 4 schools would suffer and expressed concern. That is why my time and donations have ceased. Cathedral doesn't need CYO. Last year they had 3 ex-CYO wrestlers on varsity. This year that number is larger but they are not as strong. Melloh is the only Quality ex-CYO wrestler on that team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coach Brobst Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Hopefully these new articles about multi-sport athletes being recruited more often and some about the scientific benefits of changing up the muscle movements will help to sway some athletes from just one sport. I think they have a fear of being "passed up" because others will be in the gym all off-season working out and if they've never wrestled, they don't realize the amount of work that is put into wrestling. There's also a big concern over "cutting weight". A lot of kids shy away because they think they have to do it. I always just try to tell them that the only thing we want anyone to lose is fat, which will only help them in other sports. And even then if they don't want to burn the fat, they don't have to. They all hear these horror stories of not eating for a day or running in the boiler room from older generations and think that they would have to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corncar Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Great topic and conversation! Can someone educate me on this - Is there any active marketing steam within or behind the IHSWCA to brand the sport across the state? Does any sort of marketing plan exist with the objective of increasing participation and increasing visibility to the state's athletes from next-level programs? From everything I read on here there seems to be an at-odds relationship with the IHSAA to some (or large) extent. But does the IHSAA have any marketing muscle that they are willing to devote to the sport? I grew up wrestling here, so I can assume the answer is, "No - all energy goes toward basketball." But I am truly curious if there is a bridge to be built there or even on the back of the IHSWCA itself. Lack of buy-in from AD's, coaching colleagues (including football programs), student body, and communities seems to be the norm these days. I remember vast disparity between community support of basketball and wrestling nearly 25 years ago, and the gap seems greater now than ever. I have not looked closely, but perhaps someone with solid ties to USAWrestling would know if a marketing template exists that can be applied for a more community-based (or even state-based) approach. I'm specifically thinking about the "Keep Olympic Wrestling" campaign. Is there something that we can take from that as an example and apply to our own local communities? Data are now evident not only among coaching academia but also from the athletic training and sports medicine and orthopedic sciences as well as to the negative impact of specializing. Back in the day the term "cross-training" was huge! But today, that sounds like a Webster's fad word of the 80s or 90s. I have a 4th grade daughter who is already 3 years committed to year-round travel soccer, and it drives me nuts! On the other hand, I have a 1st grade son who has been wrestling (a little more than casually) for a few years now, among other sports, and I am being very cautious not to force our sport upon him... and it seems to be paying off. He is suddenly proactive and excitedly asking me about when his next wrestling practice or meet is, while my daughter is quickly growing sour on the nothing-but-soccer mentality. And you know what? If my son decides wrestling's not for him after all, I will be sad, but I'll be ok with that ultimately. My son has a wrestling Press Secretary here at home, always advocating for the sport and trying to get him fired up about it. But in the bigger picture it is frustrating to see what almost amounts to an "active disengagement" from wrestling by our communities and school leadership at large. Obviously there are still communities where this is not the case, but they are the exception. I am not personally convinced that a move away from singlets as the standard wrestling "uniform" (as has recently been announced by "FILA") - nor that changing the name from "FILA" - are the magic bullet that's going to suddenly increase the fan base or participation. But in the spirit of the "Adapt or Die" principle I believe that any organization must look at its market and understand its customers' needs and desires. Is anyone addressing how the sport is being "messaged" to the community and considering how to adapt that message to the challenges that exist locally (i.e., Title IX, funding, liability, the specialization movement, or any number of other reasons)? Has anyone thoroughly explored the common denominators among the most and least successful programs in the state and identified the secret ingredient(s)? No doubt everyone has an opinion on that question, but who is leading the effort to translate that summary into an actionable plan? Does anyone have a playbook that a coach or other local champion for the sport can tailor to their specific community based on that community's size, current interest vs. potential interest, and available resources? There are so many modern cultural and technological factors that would seem to be in favor of the growth of the sport, but what are we doing to capitalize on them? For example, while I am not a huge MMA fan personally, I did watch it in Prime Time the other night on the Fox network, where at every commercial break I heard the NFL commercial break bumper theme music. Pretty cool, and pretty main stream, I'd say. So, if you're a kid, and MMA is your generation's WWF (not that I was ever into that either - just sayin'), how else are you gonna get there but to get out on the mat and first learn about the sport of ground wrestling? Additionally, we seem to have this adversarial relationship set up with our coaching colleagues in other sports: "They're not supporting us." "Every kid in Indiana wants to play in the NBA." Wrestling might consider tearing down that adversarial wall between the sport of basketball and building a bridge to the basketball staff, since the vast majority of athletes in our state still want to dribble the rock and be prom king. But clearly only one kid is going to fulfill his dream of being the starting point guard and have a shot at cutting down the nets at the end of the season. So why not try to build a relationship with the basketball coach as well as the football coach (Wow, it pains me to say that, but maybe I've grown wiser and more tolerant of basketball with age!) and the rest of the coaching staff. I think most of us would love nothing more than to take a basketball coach's reject and turn him into a real athlete... nay, a real man! Right? (Ok, that was a gratuitous cheap shot, but hopefully you get the drift.) I'll bet you could interview the coaches at the state team duals tournament, or the coaches at Bankers Life in a few weeks about their respective programs and get some really valuable information - much of it we probably all know anecdotally or from personal experience; but there would probably be some solid nuggets in there too around which some best practices could be implemented on a local level and ultimately developed into a game plan that could be applied across a broader audience. Does any of this resonate? If so, what do we do about it? Wrestling Scholar 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rookies03 Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 I understand the concern that Football coaches are not supporting kids going out for wrestling but how many wrestlers do wrestling coaches encourage to play other sports? I ask because if we are only concerned that 3 kids out of 70 from the football team are wrestling and not that 3 kids out of 35 from the wrestling team are playing football then we are no better than the football coaches. And I would bet that if more wrestlers were multi-sport athletes we would see an increase in participation because those wrestlers could start to recruit kids from other sports. rdrodd1, Coach Brobst, Galagore and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XCard Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Technically the schools with 3 or less are not forfeits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
decbell1 Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Technically the schools with 3 or less are not forfeits. Sort of, kind of true. But i think Y2 wanted those teams included for the purpose of analyzing participation overall Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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