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Thor

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I’m doing a little survey to make a point for our wrestlers. We have guys in our program with state level aspirations, but it is difficult to get participation. We are a small school and nearly every wrestlers participates in football workouts that we work around. So I have a few questions for coaches to get my point across. 
1. Did your state qualifiers wrestle in the off-season? Yes or no

2. How much off-season work was put in? 
3. What odds do you put at being an in season wrestler only and bring a state level wrestler. 
4. Any other thoughts you guys have on off-season participation. 

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1 hour ago, Thor said:

I’m doing a little survey to make a point for our wrestlers. We have guys in our program with state level aspirations, but it is difficult to get participation. We are a small school and nearly every wrestlers participates in football workouts that we work around. So I have a few questions for coaches to get my point across. 
1. Did your state qualifiers wrestle in the off-season? Yes or no

2. How much off-season work was put in? 
3. What odds do you put at being an in season wrestler only and bring a state level wrestler. 
4. Any other thoughts you guys have on off-season participation. 

1.  yes

2. Two of the Three qualifiers wrestled mostly year round.  
3. Have never had an in season only wrestler go to state 

4. Even once a week from March thru end of June can do something for you 

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23 minutes ago, nkraus said:

1.  yes

2. Two of the Three qualifiers wrestled mostly year round.  
3. Have never had an in season only wrestler go to state 

4. Even once a week from March thru end of June can do something for you 

What this man said all day long.

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3 hours ago, Thor said:

I’m doing a little survey to make a point for our wrestlers. We have guys in our program with state level aspirations, but it is difficult to get participation. We are a small school and nearly every wrestlers participates in football workouts that we work around. So I have a few questions for coaches to get my point across. 
1. Did your state qualifiers wrestle in the off-season? Yes or no

2. How much off-season work was put in? 
3. What odds do you put at being an in season wrestler only and bring a state level wrestler. 
4. Any other thoughts you guys have on off-season participation. 

We had three state qualifiers two years ago. They all three pretty much started wrestling in middle school.  We are a 4A school, I used to teach/coach at a 1A school.  At both football is the top dog.

1/2. Of those three, 1 did a lot of offseason (126, 4 time qualifier, three time placer, three sport athlete. Started on football, two-time regional qualifier in pole vault) One did a few camps/open mats (170, two sport- tennis and wrestling). One only wrestled and did very little in the offseason in terms of wrestling, spent most of this time working (106 2X qualifier, injured senior year)… he did do Frosh/Soph state his first two years.

3. It can be done, but is much more difficult.  I gave some examples that show its possible... but I would say it is difficult. Placing high would be almost impossible IMO.  I think you could make a fair argument that the semi-state we are in makes it possible to not do offseason and still go to state.

4. More often than not offseason work is needed to get to state/place. I also feel that it can be done while an athlete is doing multiple sports. We still push our kids to do three sports. The ones who want to do well will find the time to get to some offseason opportunities/ take advantage of yours. 

As a team I think you can have success at the small school level with kids doing multiple sports. Busco has had two 5th place finishes, a runner-up, and a state championship during the team state era, while in many ways being the third sport for many of the wrestlers (football, and track are both big there).  Working with the other coaches will really help, doing things like following the schools weight program is a big help in getting those other sports to push kids into wrestling.

 

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15 hours ago, Thor said:

I’m doing a little survey to make a point for our wrestlers. We have guys in our program with state level aspirations, but it is difficult to get participation. We are a small school and nearly every wrestlers participates in football workouts that we work around. So I have a few questions for coaches to get my point across. 
1. Did your state qualifiers wrestle in the off-season? Yes or no

2. How much off-season work was put in? 
3. What odds do you put at being an in season wrestler only and bring a state level wrestler. 
4. Any other thoughts you guys have on off-season participation. 

Also a small school:

 

1.  all of our state qualifiers/place winners (11, since 2015) wrestled in the off-season

2.  camps, clinics, rtc's, tournaments, scholastic duals, virginia beach, disney duals

3.  none of those qualifiers/place winners only wrestled in season.  also, 6 of them only wrestled, while the other 5 where multi-sport athletes

4.  mat time is mat time

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1. Mostly yes, basically anyone that I have had that was a qualifier since 2006 did some off-season. Note more on this later

2. Depends upon the kid. Some with a lot of experience and mat time at a younger age didn't need or require a lot. Some needed more, it's really dependent upon the kid.
3. Small if you aren't honing the skills. Things have changed drastically in the past 10-15 years.
 

4+

Much like anything in life, there is no "cookie-cutter" solution or even an easy way to analyze what is needed for each kid. Putting in time is always good, it's what you define as time. Some kids love to train and would rather just practice and do very little competing. Some love tournaments and will be going places every week. Some are a little of both.

 

There are so many different avenues to stay crisp with wrestling in the off-season that it takes a great balance between training(RTC, home club, academies), competitions, camps, and even spending time in the weight room. Even playing another sport, especially a contact sport, will help a kid develop as an athlete. 

 

Many kids(and even coaches) like having something short term to work for. I really liked going to Disney and other June dual events because it kept something in front of the kids as a goal to work for. Working in May and June for November seems like ages away.

 

As kids get older off-season competition may not be needed as much. Many kids have been through the grind since they were young and only need maybe a handful of off-season events to keep them hungry and ready. In general I have had a lot of kids that started early that we have lessened the load of competing or even training in the off-season. Some of those times burnout and hating the sport was creeping in and I let them go do other things and didn't bother them as I knew once the season came around they would be refreshed and ready to go.

 

We all want our kids to be 24/7 dedicated to wrestling whether we want to admit it or not. At times it is needed to let them be kids, let them do other things, or even let them fail. The hardest thing to do as a parent/coach is to let a kid fail or see a kid fail when you know the potential is there for great success. Many of our best lessons are learned from failing. 

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On 6/8/2022 at 12:37 AM, ENoblewrestling said:

We had three state qualifiers two years ago. They all three pretty much started wrestling in middle school.  We are a 4A school, I used to teach/coach at a 1A school.  At both football is the top dog.

1/2. Of those three, 1 did a lot of offseason (126, 4 time qualifier, three time placer, three sport athlete. Started on football, two-time regional qualifier in pole vault) One did a few camps/open mats (170, two sport- tennis and wrestling). One only wrestled and did very little in the offseason in terms of wrestling, spent most of this time working (106 2X qualifier, injured senior year)… he did do Frosh/Soph state his first two years.

3. It can be done, but is much more difficult.  I gave some examples that show its possible... but I would say it is difficult. Placing high would be almost impossible IMO.  I think you could make a fair argument that the semi-state we are in makes it possible to not do offseason and still go to state.

4. More often than not offseason work is needed to get to state/place. I also feel that it can be done while an athlete is doing multiple sports. We still push our kids to do three sports. The ones who want to do well will find the time to get to some offseason opportunities/ take advantage of yours. 

As a team I think you can have success at the small school level with kids doing multiple sports. Busco has had two 5th place finishes, a runner-up, and a state championship during the team state era, while in many ways being the third sport for many of the wrestlers (football, and track are both big there).  Working with the other coaches will really help, doing things like following the schools weight program is a big help in getting those other sports to push kids into wrestling.

 

We’ve also had a few qualifiers/successful wrestlers that only started wrestling in middle school , but they put in a ton of time to get to where they got 

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Thanks everyone for the answers, really helped prove my hypothesis. Between answers here and from what I could get from coaches elsewhere, I came up with a very interesting data point. So far, from 20 schools I could gather with 52 qualifiers, every single one of them at least did something in the off-season wrestling wise. This comes from big schools with full time wrestlers and small schools with three sport athletes. And that’s not including data from teams like Prairie Heights, where they didn’t have a qualifier last year, but all of their qualifiers since 2015 wrestled off-season. 

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My experience is the same as most have recounted here. The state qualifiers put in the extra time. The amount of time needed by individual varies, but all are finding some sort of off-season instruction and competition. I also agree with the other comments here that while we would love to have all of our kids highly engaged year-round, I've come to respect that many use wrestling as a way to stay active, part of a team and demonstrating a willingness to try new, hard things. That has value too. Wrestling is a big enough tent for all skill levels and aspirations and I try hard to make sure that we create the opportunities for those who really want them and also respect those who are willing to show up just for the enjoyment and challenge. 

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36 minutes ago, Matt Time said:

My experience is the same as most have recounted here. The state qualifiers put in the extra time. The amount of time needed by individual varies, but all are finding some sort of off-season instruction and competition. I also agree with the other comments here that while we would love to have all of our kids highly engaged year-round, I've come to respect that many use wrestling as a way to stay active, part of a team and demonstrating a willingness to try new, hard things. That has value too. Wrestling is a big enough tent for all skill levels and aspirations and I try hard to make sure that we create the opportunities for those who really want them and also respect those who are willing to show up just for the enjoyment and challenge. 

Well said.  Especially in the smaller schools.  All sports have and need the kids that are there to stay active and part of the team.

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