Leaderboard

Just a short Vision Quest story to get everybody excited and to get out of the pre-season wrestling doldrums. So I was on Facebook and I have an old wrestling buddy who is friends with Frank Jasper "AKA Brian Shute". My buddy got an awsome autographed picture from Frank of the legendary stadium log scene. I had a little conversation with Frank, and he answered some questions. He was at 4% body fat for the movie and that log was real and weighed a 100 pounds. That kind of made my day and thought i would share it. Frank is a fitness guru and sells "Shute Shirts". Here's the link https://www.shuteshirts.com/?fbclid=IwAR0fYW0aPCLB4wqM247T6-FdX1Ydue_7fza3I15wOc38nio_E4D-W75189o . Im just curious as to how many of today's high school kids have seen Vision Quest.

That's for those weak sports that class.

I think there is another set of Bulldogs seeing things a little differently.

A couple ideas for youth programs 1. Get the parents together. Hold a cookout, or maybe during your youth practice have a coach take time to do a "parent clinic". Figure out who the most "likeable" parent is and ask them to be the ambassador for the other parents - do NOT pick the parent that wants to run everything but not many people like cause that will drive people away. The more the parents become friends, the more likely it is that their young wrestler will be back next season. If they enjoy spending time with each other, it's also more likely that one wrestler going to a weekend tourney in the spring will bring more along with them. 2. Early in the youth season get an inexpensive package of cool-looking clothes together and see if the parents will buy it or get sponsors to help cover costs where parents cant. When a little kid gets a "pro headgear" or "real wrestling shoes" they are now a real wrestler. If the tshirt you get them is super cool, it might be their favorite shirt they wear every other day to school and other kids see that stuff especially if a bunch of them are wearing them 3. Communicate! Let the parents know ahead of time what is coming up, what the kids are working on, etc. Seems like every other youth sport has practice on specific nights every week with a game on saturday. With youth wrestling, try to get with other clubs in your general area and set Monday, Thursday or whatever night as your "meet nights" where clubs can get together and do some round robin wrestling with no pressure just get a lot of matches against some new faces. Wednesday night is bad because that is youth night at many churches. Make those meet nights fun. Don't know if its possible, but try to get the screaming parents away from the mat and into the stands as much as possible so its more of a kid-friendly environment 4. Stress to the kids that the focus is not on winning, but trying the moves that they have been working on. As a parent, it doesn't get much more frustrating to practice double legs all week long, only to get to a match and watch your wrestler dance around and never try a double leg! Reward them for trying moves, not just for winning. In football we used to give helmet sticker awards - not sure what could work for wrestling but try to have someone (maybe the kids parents) keep a tally on how many times they attempt a move even if it doesn't work, then make a big deal out of the counts at the next practice - maybe ask the kids really trying to talk about what they were thinking and if the moves worked for them or not

I 100% agree. This is something the coaching staff I’m apart of has been doing for the 3 years I’ve been there. We have kept pretty solid and steady numbers for a small 2a school. We had a kid last year as a state placer that wasn’t so good as a freshman and sophomore and had a decent junior year and by his senior year he only had two losses going into state. Granted it’s pretty rare for that to happen but It’s helped us tremendously because it’s giving those kids that aren’t so good as freshman and sophomores hope. If this kid can do that why can’t I? I think we were blessed with that situation and I understand that doesn’t happen at every school but it goes to show that coaches need to stick with those lower tier wrestlers and coach them up. If we want them to stick with the sport we need to give them reasons to stay. I had the chance to take our team to Disney this year and I don’t even know where to start with the benefits that it provided us. I didn’t have a roster of 14 studs but many of the kids were Jv guys. Give kids opportunities like this if possible! Something teenagers are really good at is talking. When they tell their friends that they got to go to Disney to wrestle it’s going to bring more guys out. I have heard that there are going to be numerous new guys in our room this year which excites me.