blueandgold Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 I’ve seen some push on social media lately for wrestling to be a spring sport, most notably from 4X NCAA Division I All-American and 2013 National Runner-Up Mike McMullan, formerly of Northwestern. He proposed wrestling should run from January to April with an NCAA Dual Meet Championship taking place at the end of March and the individual championship taking place in April. With this, wrestlers wouldn’t miss Thanksgiving or Christmas, which are important time with families, and would avoid broadcast overlap with the March Madness basketball tournament, potentially drawing in more viewers. I kind of like the sound of it to be quite honest and now I’m wondering how that would work on the high school level. Obviously the spring season is an important time for USA Wrestling events, so I am curious as to what you guys’ thoughts are on this. Cricket21, navy80 and Danny Bell1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Disco Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 This has been cussed and discussed extensively. But I’m thinking it is good as it is Danny Bell1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
casualwrestlingfan Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 All for it if high schools move the current spring sports to summer (baseball, track, and etc). Think it would benefit baseball as it could reduce arm use by eliminating club baseball in summer. Especially if they play spring, summer, & fall baseball. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ontherise219 Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 I think it would be great. Give football players time to recover after a long season and still lift over the winter Cricket21, indypharmd, indianmorg and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ahawkeye Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 25 minutes ago, casualwrestlingfan said: All for it if high schools move the current spring sports to summer (baseball, track, and etc). Think it would benefit baseball as it could reduce arm use by eliminating club baseball in summer. Especially if they play spring, summer, & fall baseball. I agree and wish you were right about baseball but I think the clubs would overpower high school baseball. Travel ball is already killing league play for younger players. I think travel teams would just say “Play for us or your high school, we are starting on time.” They would lose too much money and in my opinion that’s what travel ball is all about… The Benjamin’s! Sad but true. Lawdiggity and MUSKEEWRESTLER 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattM Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 44 minutes ago, ontherise219 said: I think it would be great. Give football players time to recover after a long season and still lift over the winter Every season will always be “football lifting season” even when we all known the reality of it. ontherise219, artesianwrestling, sslaymon and 1 other 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawdiggity Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 I think this would be fine and possibly favorable when considering college wrestling and the elite HS wrestlers who are basically training and competing year round anyway. However, this may really hurt our sport with the high school base we sadly still struggle to grow. Consider the varsity wrestler who enjoys the sport, does reasonably well, but also enjoys being a 3 sport athlete. They may never make the podium at state but they are happy enough with the winter season and then running track, playing baseball, rugby or something else in the spring. With this change they will now have to choose between wrestling and what they normally do in the spring. Some may choose wrestling, but many will not. To many winter in Indiana is a great time to spend indoors enjoying this sport but spring means outdoor sports. Again, I fully realize our top wrestlers (and many of those with ambitions of being on top) already wrestle in the spring. But I imagine most rosters, aside from the Brownsburgs, Mater Deis, etc, are comprised of over 50% of kids who have other spring plans. WoodJC82 and Ahawkeye 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmsmelby Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 (edited) Most people want to spend their time outside in the spring. Numbers will be the greatest in the winter because your only competing with basketball and swimming. Edited December 30, 2021 by Dmsmelby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
casualwrestlingfan Posted December 30, 2021 Share Posted December 30, 2021 7 hours ago, Dmsmelby said: Most people want to spend their time outside in the spring. Numbers will be the greatest in the winter because your only competing with basketball and swimming. Late winter to early spring in the OP. Most of the time those spring games are postponed or are just purely miserably cold games. Cricket21, Gasman and Danny Bell1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rookie78 Posted December 31, 2021 Share Posted December 31, 2021 tyquhp13 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
casualwrestlingfan Posted January 1, 2022 Share Posted January 1, 2022 Also like it for the wrestling only wrestlers. Put Greco and/or Freestyle in the winter. If you put just one of those 2 in the winter the other can be summer/fall. Probably fall out of those 2 options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Cloud Posted January 4, 2022 Share Posted January 4, 2022 Like the idea for college and I think it will happen. Not crazy about it for high school. I don't think ADs want to have to be here in the summer for baseball and track. Many only have 9 or 10 month contracts. Schools likely wouldn't want to pay the extra costs. A lot easier to convince kids to be in the wrestling room when it is snowing and cold outside. Not sure how that would go when it is sunny and warm. MUSKEEWRESTLER 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrestling Scholar Posted January 4, 2022 Share Posted January 4, 2022 (edited) No one wants to be in gymnasium in May and April when the weather starts to turn nice. I always enjoyed getting outside for spring sports. Maybe one gimmick you could do weather permitting is bring mats to the football field and have an outside match. I think you would lose participation significantly moving to spring. Competing against baseball, track, tennis, Lacrosse wouldn't be good. There's a good reason the upper Midwest is so good at wrestling and the south sucks at wrestling. The reason is the weather. Its cold in the winter in PA, IA,MN, NJ, OH, MI, IN, NY, WI, NE,MO: so the next best thing to do is go to a gym and wrestle. I think that's the common denominator. In the south and west, weather isn't so bad so kids are outside doing stuff, but not wrestling. Also, a lot of wrestling referees also officiate baseball and softball. I think you would have a tougher time finding refs. Edited January 4, 2022 by Wrestling Scholar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westforkwhite Posted January 4, 2022 Share Posted January 4, 2022 It’s an outstanding idea, and really makes sense at the college level. It’s hard to maintain interest and eyeballs when you have a weeks long gap in the middle of the season. IU for example has a near month layoff. The most compelling reason in my opinion is shifting the marquee event to the sporting dead zone of April and away from the b-ball tourney. Think of the millions in promotional dollars have been spent by the NCAA to draw viewers to the women’s tournament in direct competition with wrestling. It’s stupid for the NCAA to cannibalize it’s own product but there is no reason to believe they would ever give wrestling an even footing. Imagine how many additional viewers Matness could draw when it’s actually being promoted (albeit not to the extent of b-ball) and not it direct competition with two heavily promoted tournaments? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrick Snyder Posted January 5, 2022 Share Posted January 5, 2022 I would be very careful and concerned with this idea. My experience of football coaches is they want their football players running track in the spring. I’ve seen it time and time again. Snyder nkraus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trinedad Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 20 hours ago, Darrick Snyder said: I would be very careful and concerned with this idea. My experience of football coaches is they want their football players running track in the spring. I’ve seen it time and time again. Snyder And if you are at a "football" school, they want their kids lifting year round. Most football coaches do not want to share their talent with other sports. Darrick Snyder and busstogate 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cosgrove Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 Nope Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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