Westforkwhite

Those are some excellent ideas to enhance both numbers of kids and the overall quality of experience they have with the sport. 
Here are a couple of thoughts I'd add:
The first idea would be indirect recruitment via increased interest in the meets. Reach out to non-sports departments like the band director, art teacher, drama/theatre club, and cheer coach (I know this is technically a sport). Getting the pep band to perform at matches adds energy and excitement as well as putting additional parents and friends in the stands. Drama club for lightning up the mat, creating showy entrances and adding additional flair, making the meets fun events. Those kids would have parents and friends too. Art teacher for potentially making a class project of creating promotional posters for individual home meets. They could be like WWE or Concert posters or whatever the kids come up with. The art kid would suddenly have an interest in attending an event they did the promo poster for and there folks would too.
All are low to no cost options to utilize the resources available, and give kids opportunities to apply their skills doing what they enjoy in a practical environment. All this creates ownership in the wrestling program from the various groups that are contributing in their way to grand event. The greater interest in the meets will make it a lot easier to recruit kids out for the team.

Those are some excellent ideas to enhance both numbers of kids and the overall quality of experience they have with the sport. 
Here are a couple of thoughts I'd add:
The first idea would be indirect recruitment via increased interest in the meets. Reach out to non-sports departments like the band director, art teacher, drama/theatre club, and cheer coach (I know this is technically a sport). Getting the pep band to perform at matches adds energy and excitement as well as putting additional parents and friends in the stands. Drama club for lightning up the mat, creating showy entrances and adding additional flair, making the meets fun events. Those kids would have parents and friends too. Art teacher for potentially making a class project of creating promotional posters for individual home meets. They could be like WWE or Concert posters or whatever the kids come up with. The art kid would suddenly have an interest in attending an event they did the promo poster for and there folks would too.
All are low to no cost options to utilize the resources available, and give kids opportunities to apply their skills doing what they enjoy in a practical environment. All this creates ownership in the wrestling program from the various groups that are contributing in their way to grand event. The greater interest in the meets will make it a lot easier to recruit kids out for the team.

Westforkwhite: Some great ideas! Thanks for contributing. I will look to implement a couple of those for next season.
 

I love all the suggestions and cool fun stuff added to wrestling.. Televising the meets is great... anything that can grow the sport i'm in favor of...Football teams are great places to get Athletic big men to fill voids many schools have.. also like stated before there's kids of all sizes playing different sports that can benefit from wrestling.. Wrestling is a awesome sport and everybody can benefit from trying wrestling.. Especially when you have passionate Leaders like Dave kicking these kids his knowledge and love. 

The main thing I did when first took over at MV was to recruit heavily from the football team, I was there anyway. Then would just stand in the halls and talk to any kid I could and tell them how wrestling could benefit them. I remember seeing a young man running down the hallway, he looked to be around 100lbs and we needed a 106. He was a soccer player, so told him he could spend his winter upstairs with us. He has told us coaches that he is more aggressive on the soccer field and has much more confidence in life. 
Dave setting up the our dual to be televised has been a huge bonus. We have had lots of kids tell us how cool that was and asked if we would be doing it again. I am hoping to get Dave and PH back on the screen this coming year, and possibly another dual when we get our schedule finalized. (We need a couple duals if anybody is interested). We have discussed trying to use the auditorium, football field (weather permitting), the schools new Performance enhancement center basically anything to create interest. Randal Hayes has came up with great intro music for our duals that the kids love. We have thrown free t-shirts into the crowd just to fill as many seats as possible. As Dave said, anything to let your kids know that you are putting in the effort to make this as fun as possible.

A constant recruiting effort benefits our program directly by making forfeits less likely, giving us future wrestlers in training and having larger crowds. But perhaps most importantly, if you believe in what wrestling stands for, why wouldn't you want the maximum number of students to benefit from being a part of the sport? You never know where or how someone may benefit the sport. A former wrestler of ours, who never made the varsity, became the coach of a state championship middle school team in Illinois. He loves the sport and passes on the lessons he learned as a wrestler to his wrestlers. I couldn't be prouder of him. 
With that being said, I would like to hear what coaches are having success with in recruiting kids into their programs. I have listed three we do to start the conversation.
1) After 30 years of coaching high school football, and recruiting like mad the whole time, I moved to our middle school football program three years ago. One of my assistant coaches there is on my middle school wrestling coaching staff. We use every opportunity to recruit kids into the program. A player that I started recruiting as a seventh grader finally went out for the team as an eighth grader. He fell in love with the sport and this year as a freshman went 10-5 as a varsity fill-in, earned a letter and established himself as a very promising member of the lineup for next season.
2) I work to have a good relationship with our high school and middle school basketball coaches. We've had a few kids who got cut in high school come out. Watch out for those kids who quit basketball after their freshman year! We got a heavyweight who played basketball as a freshman but didn't go out as a sophomore. He came out for wrestling knowing almost nothing about wrestling but was a state qualifier as a junior and placed sixth as a senior. We had another heavyweight who came out after quitting basketball as a freshman (I spoke to the basketball coach first to make sure it was not going to be a problem). He was a Regional champion and 2X Semi-State qualifier. I speak to the boys middle school coach each year and ask him to refer the boys who get cut to wrestling. We also encourage the middle school basketball players to come out for wrestling for the last month or so of the wrestling season after basketball is over. We got a fifth place 215 lb.state placer that way when he chose to wrestle instead of play basketball in high school.
3) Do something special for a match. Last season we partnered with Chad Masters to televise our match with the Marauders. Josh Holden of Greenfield and Courtney Duncan of Frankton graciously agreed to do the play-by-play and color (the only objection the TV station offered when I asked them was that they didn't have anyone who knew wrestling to call the match) for the broadcast. We had the best home dual meet crowd ever. Next season Coach Holden and I are broadcasting our dual meet from Hoosier Gym. I have seen other schools do the match on a theater stage (great job Floyd Central!). Randy Qualitza did a varsity match before a varsity basketball game decades ago. Be creative. Could it flop? Sure. Who cares. Let your kids know you are trying things to make your meets an event.
It will always be a slog for most programs to get kids in large numbers in but I believe it is worth it. What works for you?

Here is alleged video Snapchat-1245038841.mp4

Juxtapose the officiating in Cael's match vs Stoll Parris. These are officials at the same tournament. I know you are supposed to adjust to the way the match is being called, but with that much variable on how stalling is called it can be tough on the athletes. 
I believe stalling should be called on guys who dont open up on their feet or refuse to make any offensive effort. (Pushing a guy out of bounds after he just turns to face from an escape isn't the precursor to offense its jobbing the rules) 

I spy @Y2CJ41! 
Saw Mark Durham running a table too. 
Now answer me this... the camera adds how many pounds???? 

I know Parris deserved a couple of those stall calls, but that was silly. Stoll didn't take 1 shot, never attempted to turn, only pushes, and is rewarded with 4 points. That is just encouraging ugly no offense wrestling. 

Did you see Y2 sitting matside smiling as big as the sky when OK St choose down in the second?

Watching Bo Nickal (Nolf too) is a beautiful thing.  He doesn't look athletic, he doesn't look overly quick or very strong.....  until the wrestling starts!  Then he pretty much does what he wants.  Will miss watching him at the collegiate level.

Wabash College Schurg, Darden 174 Wabash College Cicciarelli, Anthony 165 Wabash College Herrin, Andrew 184 Wabash College Doster, Owen 133 2019 NWCA Scholar All-Americans

Congratulations to Danny Irwin on coaching Wheeling Jesuit to a Runner-up finish in the Dii Nationals
https://wjucardinals.com/news/2019/3/9/wrestling-national-championships.aspx?fbclid=IwAR0EtQMNJhMqBG3Ztg_aqiqaVDyYmqHUqFjujE04Causw4E-bD6vF0oAGiU

That's spot on.
I think the current local tourney formats are a turnoff. Trying to squeeze HS thru K wrestlers into one gym(s) and making kids wait all day to wrestle twice is turning kids away not growing the sport. I understand local clubs have to generate revenue and this has always been the model but maybe we need to explore other options. Volunteers put countess hours in to make these tourneys go, and not one of them intentionally makes kids wait for 5 hours between matches. Unfortunately it still happens and will continue to happen under the current system.
Wouldn't that volunteer time be better spent on something that was driving interest in our sport, or at the very least not driving them away?
I'm not sure what that looks like, but maybe some Round Robin as Galagore mentions or the evening tourneys where kids can get in and out quick. More age specific events? 

They do things to facilitate more matches in a shorter period of time.   
1.   Most tournaments don't have pre-defined weights.   You show up and weigh in and they group the brackets by closest weights to get an even distribution of wrestlers.  They don't waste time trying to seed. They don't have huge overloaded brackets that slow a tournament down and they avoid the super small brackets with 1or 2 guys in a bracket.
2.  They used modified wrestling rules.   If you go out of bounds or have a whistle,  you start in the neutral position all the time.  It really improves the flow  of the tournament.
3.  the best thing is they schedule age groups with time allotments.   6 -12 for example wrestle from the slot of 8 to 11.  So youre there for 3 hours and  done.   Then the 12 to 18 years wrestle from 11 to 2pm.  You're only at the gym for 3 to 4 hours.  Its much  more manageable.
4.  You don't have to buy a USA wrestling card. No offense,  I never bought a card in Ohio because the tournaments weren't sanctioned.  And that was fine.    It gives you more flexibility.
 
 
 

One of the biggest issues in wrestling is retention of athletes. 
Based on USAW statistics the retention rate in 2017 for Indiana was 53%. That means every year even we bring in 47% new wrestlers...at the same time we are losing that many. Indiana is actually doing well compared to the other states, but in most people's minds it is something that could use a vast improvement.
Indiana has 8,000 USAW members and every year almost 4,000 of them are new! Think if we kept 75% and then still added 4,000 new members! 
You can view the stats on page 15
http://content.themat.com/2016-17annualreport.pdf
Retaining kids...and parents is something that will grow the sport. There are many reasons kids/parents don't come back, one big one is the tournaments.

Ha...then you mention 30% of the weights where the defending national champ or undefeated #1 phenom loses. Those 3 matches made it well worth watching the finals. 
A few thoughts on those 3 matches heading into NCAAs:
1. Will the committee reward Rivera with the #1 overall seed despite the bumped-up loss to Micic when Piccininni also owns a win over Lee and still stands undefeated? I definitely feel he deserves it, but either way Lee will most likely have to beat both of them to win a second title. No small task.
2. Man, Marinelli has Joseph's upper body ties and hooks figured out. It will be fireworks again if they meet in the final, but the big question is going to be whether Marinelli can get past the rest of the field where he'll see plenty of guys with more of an outside/low-attack game than Joseph. (Also...does anyone else think these guys accidentally swapped first or last names? Vincenzo Marinelli would be a beast on the senior circuit for Italy.)
3. Cassar's takedown was a thing of beauty, but I thought Steveson looked mostly in control until then. I'd still pick Gable to win NCAAs for two reasons: 1) I think he's less vulnerable to losing before the finals than Cassar and 2) I'm not convinced Cassar will get another split-second window like that very often for his blast double against the usually impenetrable Steveson.

Check out the finals match at the 1:52 mark, great match with a crazy ending.
https://www.ncaa.com/video/wrestling/2019-03-09/diii-wrestling-championship-full-replay

Tremendously proud of Darden for his achievement this past weekend. He gets better each time he competes. Darden represents Wabash with class in victory and defeat.
I'm sure Wabash is disappointed they aren't bringing back a team trophy to Crawfordsville this year. But, with all of their national qualifiers returning next season (as well as many others capable of scoring big points at nationals) look for them to earn a trophy next year and potentially contend for a national title. 

I'll add that while Kyle Hatch didn't finish quite as strong as he would have liked, he did give National Champion Lucas Jeske his toughest match, losing 9-7 SV1.  
I was also impressed with Owen Doster at 133.  He didn't place but was impressive in a couple of wins and his losses were by 1 point to the 4 seed (who finished 3rd) and 2 points to the 8 seed (who finished 5th).
Those two stood out to me in addition to Schurg. 

Wabash's Darden Schurg pulled a rabbit out of a hat and won himself a National Championship tonight in Roanoake VA.  A two-time Indiana HS State Runnerup at Crown Point, Schurg was down 3-1 in the final period and tied the match via a stalling penalty point and an illegal move/hold penalty point (think it was grabbing the headgear).  Jairod James from Mt. Union got in deep on a double leg shot in sudden victory, but Sshurg rolled him through, elevator style, and came out on top for the winning takedown.  
174 lb. Final Score:
Darden Schurg 5
Jairod James 3 SV1
Congratulations Darden!

Some good press for Parris.
http://intermatwrestle.com/articles/21183
 

Weather permitting, it should be an interesting matchup. I'm excited to see if Lee can show some seperation or if Red can bring back his form and pull the upset. It's getting hyped on flo and intermat.
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6317221-live-this-week-jan-17-20-2019

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/world/europe/russia-dagestan-wrestling.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&referer=https://www.nytimes.com/section/world
Youth participation in wrestling thwarts extremism, not a bad attribute for any sport.