Club Based Youth Wrestling Leagues

[samaj]

I am pretty sure that I have heard some news of some Youth Wrestling leagues that have been formed recently and I wanted to check into the current landscape of that.  I thought maybe we could share some ideas and thoughts on who is doing what.  I think it could make for some great conversation and idea sharing. 

 

in 2009 we started the Southern Indiana Elementary Wrestling League aka the SIEWC down here in the southwest corner of the state.  We had 8 teams for a couple years, then went to 10, and currently sit at 12 teams.

 

Teams involved are

 

Tell City

Heritage Hills

Vincennes

Jasper

Castle

Mt. Vernon

Gibson Southern

Princeton

Evansville Reitz

Evansville Memorial

Evansville Central

Evansville North

 

A few unique things that we do.

 

1. all teams must be ISWA registered clubs and all wrestlers and coaches must have ISWA Cards.

 

2. we use only IHSAA patched Officials for safety reasons with the young kids.

 

3. We have 23 weight classes in our league.  11 are for K-2 grade and 10 are for 3-5 grade and those combine to form a 23 weight class dual meet.

 

4. We wrestle on Sundays and send multiple schools to multiple locations so everyone gets 2-4 duals on the day.

 

5. one of the best things we do is that we all but eliminate the dreaded weigh in process and the watching of weight.  All teams weigh in at the first match of the season.  This weigh in locks the wrestlers into that weight class, as his lowest weight class for the year. We give a .9 allowance on digital scales on that first day.  So a 50lb wrestler can weigh in at 50.9 and qualify at 50 for the year.  All rosters and weigh in results are sent to our league "player agent" who creates spreadsheets for all rosters that show the wrestlers names, ISWA numbers, and what weights they qualified for for the season. These rosters are sent to every coach in the league so they know who is eligible for what weight class on dual meet days.  We then wrestle the regular season without weigh ins.  This allows the young wrestlers to not have to worry about weight management at all.  Teams get to show up, warm up, and wrestle....just like all of the main stream sports.  In other words.....Moms and Dads don't have to deal with not allowing little Johnny to eat breakfast on Sunday mornings and a huge negative to parents at that age is removed from the process. 

 

6. At the end of the season, we have a huge Individual tournament, the SIEWC Conference Championships. This is hosted by Castle HS.  The weight classes are seeded and we place the top 4 in each weight.  We have our second weigh in of the season at this event and all wrestlers must make weight again, this time with a 2lb growth allowance.  So 50.9 is now 52.9. 

 

7. another big thing the league does is that all coaches must have an ISWA coaches card and it must be around their necks in a lanyard for them to coach in the corner or be on the floor.  If they do not have a card, they cannot be in the corner.  There is no filming from the floor, there are no parents bunched up on the edge of the mats.  The parents are in the bleachers and the coaches and teams are on the floor.  We do this so that we can give the wrestlers a "high school competition" feel to it.  We have parents that fight us on it but over all we win more battles than we lose and result is a 300 wrestler championship tournament that looks like a high school sectional or regional taking place.

 

I would be interested in hearing what some of the other leagues that have been formed do and if they have any cool ideas that we could consider adding to our league in the off season.

 

Jeff Schaefer

"retired" SEIWC founder and Commissioner....current role is "advisor" haha.