corncar

Great topic and conversation!
 
Can someone educate me on this - Is there any active marketing steam within or behind the IHSWCA to brand the sport across the state?  Does any sort of marketing plan exist with the objective of increasing participation and increasing visibility to the state's athletes from next-level programs?  From everything I read on here there seems to be an at-odds relationship with the IHSAA to some (or large) extent.  But does the IHSAA have any marketing muscle that they are willing to devote to the sport?  I grew up wrestling here, so I can assume the answer is, "No - all energy goes toward basketball."  But I am truly curious if there is a bridge to be built there or even on the back of the IHSWCA itself.  Lack of buy-in from AD's, coaching colleagues (including football programs), student body, and communities seems to be the norm these days.  I remember vast disparity between community support of basketball and wrestling nearly 25 years ago, and the gap seems greater now than ever.  I have not looked closely, but perhaps someone with solid ties to USAWrestling would know if a marketing template exists that can be applied for a more community-based (or even state-based) approach.  I'm specifically thinking about the "Keep Olympic Wrestling" campaign.  Is there something that we can take from that as an example and apply to our own local communities?
 
Data are now evident not only among coaching academia but also from the athletic training and sports medicine and orthopedic sciences as well as to the negative impact of specializing.  Back in the day the term "cross-training" was huge!  But today, that sounds like a Webster's fad word of the 80s or 90s.  I have a 4th grade daughter who is already 3 years committed to year-round travel soccer, and it drives me nuts!  On the other hand, I have a 1st grade son who has been wrestling (a little more than casually) for a few years now, among other sports, and I am being very cautious not to force our sport upon him... and it seems to be paying off.  He is suddenly proactive and excitedly asking me about when his next wrestling practice or meet is, while my daughter is quickly growing sour on the nothing-but-soccer mentality.  And you know what?  If my son decides wrestling's not for him after all, I will be sad, but I'll be ok with that ultimately.  My son has a wrestling Press Secretary here at home, always advocating for the sport and trying to get him fired up about it.  But in the bigger picture it is frustrating to see what almost amounts to an "active disengagement" from wrestling by our communities and school leadership at large.  Obviously there are still communities where this is not the case, but they are the exception.
 
I am not personally convinced that a move away from singlets as the standard wrestling "uniform" (as has recently been announced by "FILA") - nor that changing the name from "FILA" - are the magic bullet that's going to suddenly increase the fan base or participation.  But in the spirit of the "Adapt or Die" principle I believe that any organization must look at its market and understand its customers' needs and desires.  Is anyone addressing how the sport is being "messaged" to the community and considering how to adapt that message to the challenges that exist locally (i.e., Title IX, funding, liability, the specialization movement, or any number of other reasons)?  Has anyone thoroughly explored the common denominators among the most and least successful programs in the state and identified the secret ingredient(s)?  No doubt everyone has an opinion on that question, but who is leading the effort to translate that summary into an actionable plan?  Does anyone have a playbook that a coach or other local champion for the sport can tailor to their specific community based on that community's size, current interest vs. potential interest, and available resources?  There are so many modern cultural and technological factors that would seem to be in favor of the growth of the sport, but what are we doing to capitalize on them?
 
For example, while I am not a huge MMA fan personally, I did watch it in Prime Time the other night on the Fox network, where at every commercial break I heard the NFL commercial break bumper theme music.  Pretty cool, and pretty main stream, I'd say.  So, if you're a kid, and MMA is your generation's WWF (not that I was ever into that either - just sayin'), how else are you gonna get there but to get out on the mat and first learn about the sport of ground wrestling?  Additionally, we seem to have this adversarial relationship set up with our coaching colleagues in other sports:  "They're not supporting us."  "Every kid in Indiana wants to play in the NBA."  Wrestling might consider tearing down that adversarial wall between the sport of basketball and building a bridge to the basketball staff, since the vast majority of athletes in our state still want to dribble the rock and be prom king.  But clearly only one kid is going to fulfill his dream of being the starting point guard and have a shot at cutting down the nets at the end of the season.  So why not try to build a relationship with the basketball coach as well as the football coach (Wow, it pains me to say that, but maybe I've grown wiser and more tolerant of basketball with age!) and the rest of the coaching staff.  I think most of us would love nothing more than to take a basketball coach's reject and turn him into a real athlete... nay, a real man!  Right?  (Ok, that was a gratuitous cheap shot, but hopefully you get the drift.) 
 
I'll bet you could interview the coaches at the state team duals tournament, or the coaches at Bankers Life in a few weeks about their respective programs and get some really valuable information - much of it we probably all know anecdotally or from personal experience; but there would probably be some solid nuggets in there too around which some best practices could be implemented on a local level and ultimately developed into a game plan that could be applied across a broader audience.
 
Does any of this resonate?  If so, what do we do about it?