The Fine Print Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 I'm relatively new to the high school wrestling scene, so I don't have a good feel for what it takes to really succeed at this level. I would assume that most of our state finals wrestlers are committed to the sport year around - summer camps and tournaments, etc. I would also assume that a kid who wrestles only during wrestling season would have to be exceptionally talented to make the finals, and probably doesn't happen a lot. But these are just guesses. So my question is, how far along in the tournament can a seasonal wrestler expect to advance? At what level do the year around wrestlers really begin to take over? Regional? Semi-state? Of course there are many variables, but what do you guys see out there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maligned Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 It's been pretty consistent data for a lot of years that about 90% of kids at the state finals participate in freestyle or other out-of-season wrestling. The majority of the ones that do not are in the upper weights where good athleticism, strength, and balance and the mastery of a couple effective moves can get you pretty far at the high school level. I don't know the data for semi-state and regional, but I'd guess the numbers at semi-state aren't much lower (maybe 75-80% do off-season work???). Wrestling isn't much different from most sports and skills in life. Although there are exceptions, you can see a clear correlation between the amount of hours you put into it and the results you see. Mattyb 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frigginhurts Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 I think you can play football and still be an excellent wrestler. Blake Maurer was a 4x state champ and 2x all state in football I believe. The more important issue is the summer time. Probably need to focus this part of the year on working out -for football and wrestling - and then going to camps and summer competitions. Unless you are a QB, I think you can get by with putting a little less summer time into football. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maligned Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 Lots of wrestlers do other sports and do them successfully--even high-level wrestlers. But doing other sports doesn't mean they're not still doing off-season wrestling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fine Print Posted February 4, 2015 Author Share Posted February 4, 2015 Lots of wrestlers do other sports and do them successfully--even high-level wrestlers. But doing other sports doesn't mean they're not still doing off-season wrestling. Yes, I was assuming this as well. Wrestlers are great athletes and SHOULD be participating in other things, especially at smaller schools. I'm more curious about the kid who does no off-season wrestling and what he can consider to be a highly successful season given his in-season-only commitment to the sport. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maligned Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 Yes, I was assuming this as well. Wrestlers are great athletes and SHOULD be participating in other things, especially at smaller schools. I'm more curious about the kid who does no off-season wrestling and what he can consider to be a highly successful season given his in-season-only commitment to the sport. The Rochester regional is one of the strongest in the state. I would say any kid doing season-only wrestling that can get into semi-state going through your state tournament path has done something significant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alias Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 Fine Print I really enjoyed your small school 'journal' if you will of the season On the grid. Welcome to the mat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmills Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 The Rochester regional is one of the deepest in the state. Other than Penn i'm not so sure. Maybe Riley and a few single kids from South bend. Mishawaka is really down. Plymouth Sectional - 2 small schools Triton and Bremen did well. Culver community has a few. The 3 NLC schools did not do well. Plymouth who finished 2nd in the NLC was behind Rochester, Bremen and only one point ahead of Triton. PHS forfeited 2 weights classes. Major Ursula 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fine Print Posted February 4, 2015 Author Share Posted February 4, 2015 Fine Print I really enjoyed your small school 'journal' if you will of the season On the grid. Welcome to the mat! Thank you Alias! I enjoyed doing that for a season. But don't expect me to be nearly as active over here! I don't know much about this sport, except that I may have a heart attack before this season ends! Nothing more intense than the 6 minutes when your kid is on the mat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sslaymon Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 My guess is even a good seasonal only wrestler could advanced to semi-state(even state for athletic upper weights), but most will get eliminated in or before semi-state, given the sectionals and regionals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smooth34 Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 Yes, I was assuming this as well. Wrestlers are great athletes and SHOULD be participating in other things, especially at smaller schools. I'm more curious about the kid who does no off-season wrestling and what he can consider to be a highly successful season given his in-season-only commitment to the sport. Semi-state is probably the most likely ceiling for an athlete like. Major Ursula 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hook and half Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 there are many factors that are relevant. many lightweights focus on wrestling, largely because of their size and that wrestling, by definition, is about size. a 113-pound junior is unlikely to find much action playing football. you find lightweights running cross country, track and sometimes soccer, but many of the successful ones have a primary focus on wrestling. this is less true in the middleweights for a couple of reasons. first, 132-160 is the biggest part of the bell curve for boys 15-18. if there are more boys there, naturally you will find more athletes. you will find very high strength and speed ratios per pound in these weights. because of their athleticism, you find these guys successful in football's skill positions, track and baseball. still, the top-level middleweights have a wrestling focus. the big boys have a different wrestling style and set of circumstances for example, a strong and agile 220 pound football player, can deploy a modest set of wrestling skills and find decent success on the mat. an athlete with the same set of skills, weighing 132 pounds, would certainly not expect to get the same results. finally, it is hard to get around the fact that great athletes find success in any endeavor they choose. speed, explosiveness, balance, strength, focus and stamina translate to any sport. that is one of the great attractions about wrestling. anyone involved in a wrestling program will have a story about a kid, who was awkward/clumsy/non-athletic and through sheer determination and work ethic, found some success on the mat. in how many sports is this possible? a number of years ago, my boys were at a wrestling camp where angel escobedo was a clinician. if you have never been around him, his energy and enthusiasm are off the richter scale. during breaks, angel would join the campers in pick-up basketball. while his basketball skills are unpolished, it was a thing of beauty watching him fly down the court, cut, pass and fight for rebounds. it occurred to me that had 5'5" angel focused on basketball, he would have likely become a all-star point guard. by the same token is it a surprise that gelen robinson was a dominating high school wrestler and now a two-sport starter at Purdue? although they are on opposite ends of the spectrum on size, the share a gift of supreme athleticism. everyone will have exceptions and point to hometown boys who excel in multiple sports. in evansville, 152-pound isaiah kemper is ranked second in the state, and was the primary ball carrier for central's football team. 138-pound aj dixon was a key skill player for reitz's football team. mater dei's blake jourdan is a highly-regarded wrestler and stand-out defensive back. the bottom line, for middle and lightweights, that's is exactly what these guys are--exceptions and exceptional. vanderburgh county, with almost 200,000 residents, has exactly three of them. warsawwrestling, Troll, BeastMode#31 and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoontzDaddy Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 I can tell you that my oldest son used to be an in season wrestler only. He found success as a youth and middle school wrestler because of his athleticism but quickly realized his freshman year that it takes more than in season work to be successful. He nearly quit after his freshman year but decided that he'd do a little more in the spring and got a little better. His sophomore year, he began to get quite a bit better, but suffered a loss at semi state in a match he was winning with 17 seconds left. It was at that moment he decided to dedicate his offseason time to wrestling. He continued to play football because he loved the sport but replaced football camps with wrestling camps and competed in offseason tournaments. He made wrestling his focus and played football for fun. His Junior year was a turning point and he upset some guys to get 3rd at state. He made it his mission this past offseason to win a state title, but played football in the fall. It was really a nice mental break during the fall and he had a lot of fun with his friends. The moral of the story is an athlete can compete in other sports, but if he/she wants to compete at the state level, he/she is going to have to put in some serious wrestling-focused work in the offseason. To respond to your question: it's probably unlikely to expect to make it out of semi state as an in-season wrestler. The upper weights can be exceptions with a big, athletic kid, but generally speaking, semistate qualifier. GMSCoach and Major Ursula 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maligned Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 The Rochester regional is one of the deepest in the state. Other than Penn i'm not so sure. Maybe Riley and a few single kids from South bend. Mishawaka is really down. Plymouth Sectional - 2 small schools Triton and Bremen did well. Culver community has a few. The 3 NLC schools did not do well. Plymouth who finished 2nd in the NLC was behind Rochester, Bremen and only one point ahead of Triton. PHS forfeited 2 weights classes. What people don't realize is that there aren't many regionals that have a dozen decent wrestling schools. If you follow the state duals qualifying at all, you know we went to a "quota" system this year that awards points, in part, based on what our research has shown about how many semi-state qualifiers your regional deserves with its cumulative quality level. There may be only one killer team, but the cumulative quality level suggests there's an average of 5 semi-state quality kids per weight at Rochester. We've got it rated as the 4th deepest regional of the 16. Greywolf 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MD92 Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 Back in the day, I was a season only wrestler. Played football/soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring and all summer. More than held my own with the year round wrestlers and ended up placing at state. On our team at MD at that time we had a few that wrestled year round. Most of our guys played more than one sport (football, baseball, track). Today is different with the specialization happening at an early age. But I still see kids from the feeder league that are playing football/soccer in the fall, basketball and wrestling in the winter and baseball in the spring and summer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dkelich Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 It is all about work ethic. If you are working year round on top of everything else you will be more successful. If you only bust it for wrestling it is much more difficult. I was fortunate to qualify for state my senior year being a seasonal wrestler (I wrestled year round until my freshman year). I have thought about the added success summer work would've given me, but now as a coach it is a point that I am able to coach from and teach my kids what level of commitment is required to succeed at something. I guess what I'm saying is that you can be a top dog either way, both require a tremendous amount of work and commitment, one way spreads it out over the year and the other condenses it into crazy madness and God given ability. If I had to choose again, I would spread it out. GMSCoach 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major Ursula Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 I began wrestling as a sophomore. 5-5 split varsity duty with my brother. Junior year had a breakout season because my uncles took us to freestyle and Greco and made us go to Penn and Mishawaka all summer to train. You can squeeze 3 regular seasons in the offseason. You can't replicate that. In 2013-14 my sons team had 8 guys wrestle off season 8 qualified for regional, 4 for semis-state, 1 state placer and a qualifier. This past year only 1 wrestler did the offseason. They had 4 regional qualifiers. Coincidence? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fine Print Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 Thanks for all the input guys. I think we would all agree that doing off-season work significantly increases a wrestler's chances of advancing in the state series! But frankly, wrestling is not the highest priority for some kids, so those guys are going to focus on other things during the summer. I started the thread to get your opinions on what those guys should be able to accomplish and you have all given great responses! I did not understand the difference with the upper weights and had not thought about the limited opportunities in other sports for the little guys. So you've opened my eyes to some things. Here's to an exciting and injury free Saturday for all of our wrestlers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Y2CJ41 Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Here are my experiences at a big school and small school Small school More multi-sport athletes, such as about 95% of the kids, which makes it tough to do anything in the summer as they are being pulled 2-3 different ways. The kids that want to succeed come, the others...well don't as much. The one thing I noticed is some kids that were already varsity did not come too much. The ones that put in the time were ones who knew they needed to to stay varsity. Most knew that they would be varsity no matter what they did in the off-season, so they didn't come as much. In turn they would work harder at other sports where they weren't full-time varsity or were more "games." Big school We have a lot of freshmen that play other sports, but that number is probably cut in half when they are sophomore. Most the kids that want to be varsity know they must wrestle close to year round in order to make the lineup. That also goes for the other sports they are in like football, cross country, or track. The multi-sport athletes are usually behind these kids because they split their time between sports. We have a great relationship with our football coach and that helps, but at the end of the day the kids begin to realize if they want to be the starter they need more focus on their favorite sport. randalllynch 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charger.dad Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 a tale of 2 kids.....(true) The first kid was (is) a total natural athlete blessed with all the right stuff to be good at any sport he chose. In this case it was football, wrestling and baseball. He was all state in all three and a state runner up in wrestling his senior year. He participated in each sport when the season came around and that was basically it. IMO he could have been a national caliber wrestler had he done it year around, but with doing very little extra he was still within a few points of a state championship. The second kid was just your average boy and average in what sports he did. He was a late bloomer which didn't help as he got in high school. After his freshman year he decided to concentrate just on wrestling and hit some RTC's and open rooms along with some summer tournaments. He definitely showed some improvement his sophmore year. Following his sophmore year he really stepped up the off season work and tournaments and had a great junior year that ended with a Friday night loss at state. That fueled his fire even more and with basically non stop wrestling since the week following state last year he has had a great senior year that he hopes will end on the podium in a couple of weeks. In his case, off season wrestling is why he is where he is at without a doubt. Without it, he would probably just be a mid pack conference finisher. It pays off big time as long as the kid is mentally prepared for the grind of wrestling year around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmills Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 What people don't realize is that there aren't many regionals that have a dozen decent wrestling schools. If you follow the state duals qualifying at all, you know we went to a "quota" system this year that awards points, in part, based on what our research has shown about how many semi-state qualifiers your regional deserves with its cumulative quality level. There may be only one killer team, but the cumulative quality level suggests there's an average of 5 semi-state quality kids per weight at Rochester. We've got it rated as the 4th deepest regional of the 16. Only 16 out of 56, 28% going to state from Rochester regional, 7 from Penn about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maligned Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 (edited) What people don't realize is that there aren't many regionals that have a dozen decent wrestling schools. If you follow the state duals qualifying at all, you know we went to a "quota" system this year that awards points, in part, based on what our research has shown about how many semi-state qualifiers your regional deserves with its cumulative quality level. There may be only one killer team, but the cumulative quality level suggests there's an average of 5 semi-state quality kids per weight at Rochester. We've got it rated as the 4th deepest regional of the 16. Only 16 out of 56, 28% going to state from Rochester regional, 7 from Penn about. Even if a regional has the kind of depth I'm talking about, it may or may not mean the high-end talent at that regional is enough to translate into an extremely large number of state qualifiers. Even so, 14 is average and they got 16--above average. Even if you assume that having 5 semi-state quality guys per weight directly translates to an equivalent excess of state qualifiers (and it doesn't always), that equivalent value would be 17.5...a very similar number to the 16 they got. Edited February 16, 2015 by maligned Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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