College wrestling needs to get youth involved.
(11/29/02)
It’s a challenge. Not
so much for the division one programs, but for the division two
and division three programs.
A challenge that currently does not have enough effort
involved. The
challenge is getting the interest up in the local collegiate
wrestling scene. It’s
easy to go watch a wrestling meet that involves Iowa and
Minnesota, but what about a dual meet between UW-Stevens Point and
UW-Whitewater, a dual meet that is lucky to draw a crowd that
closely resembles the attendance of a high school dual meet. It’s no secret that wrestling in general isn’t promoting
the sport good enough. Just
recently J. Robinson, the head coach at the University of
Minnesota, had an interview with The Wrestling Mall.
One of the questions was, “what does the future hold for
this sport?” Robinson
replied by saying, “Wrestling needs to get out and promote
itself, we do a terrible job of that right now.
Unless we show hard work and dedication that results from
wrestling, the sport will decline.” A good place to start is at the local state universities.
One way to better promote collegiate wrestling is to move
one of the team’s dual meets to a local high school.
Even better, move it to the high school of one of your
wrestlers. This isn’t something exactly new. Just a few weeks ago the University of Wisconsin had a triple-dual in River
Falls, Wisconsin. River
Falls happens to be the home of the Badgers Kevin and Tony Black.
Another option would be to go the other way around.
Invite your local high school teams to your dual meets.
Having a high school dual meet as a prelude to the college
dual meet isn’t a bad idea either.
It’s kind of hard for wrestling fans to attend a
collegiate wrestling meet if they don’t know when the meets are.
A good way to promote your team and let your fans know when
the meets are is to create a poster.
Most of the state teams in the WIAC have created posters in
the past, but that’s about where it stopped.
The universities need to get a poster in every high school
wrestling room in their area, if not the state.
Not only does this promote their team, but it also helps
their recruiting. One
thing some of the state teams are doing well is writing up a
newsletter. Whitewater
and Oshkosh have great newsletters.
Not everyone can make it to all their local university’s
wrestling matches. This is a great way to promote your wrestling team.
That’s just half the challenge.
The other half falls in the hands of the high school
programs. They need to get involved with college wrestling, they will
only benefit from it. Believe
it or not, just by taking one of your high school wrestlers to a
college dual meet can make that wrestler better.
It’s obvious that college wrestling is better than high
school wrestling and that college matches are won by sound
fundamentals. By
seeing what it takes to win against a quality opponent, your high
school wrestler now knows the importance of fundamentals.
Granted, there are some high school matches that are won by
fundamentals but lets face it, those don’t come until February.
Taking some of your high school wrestlers to a collegiate
dual meet might even persuade them to pursue a collegiate
wrestling career. The
reason some wrestlers don’t go on to wrestle in collegiate
wrestling is because they think no one cares about collegiate
wrestling and that there is no attention received.
First of all I believe this is the wrong reason in the
first place, and second of all if there is no attention its
because they don’t promote it enough.
The same people that say this are the same people that won’t
go watch a collegiate dual meet.
I’ve talked with many people who tell me they wouldn’t
have gotten a college diploma if it weren’t for wrestling.
They truly believed that wrestling is what kept them from
dropping out. Wrestling forced them to keep their grades up and kept them
out of trouble. For
some of them, wrestling was the main reason they went to college.
They had no interest in going to college, but they wanted
to wrestle. They got
two for the price of one, they got to wrestle and get a quality
education at the same time. College
wrestling needs to get the youth involved.
So one question, who’s up to the challenge?
John Elmer
For
Wiwrestling.com
Written for WIwrestling.com by
Freelance Columnist John Elmer
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