wvmat.com

Posting up all these wrestling scores the past few days and it seems that about all duals, middle school and high school, have matches where there is a weight class forfeit. I dunno - I could tabulate it myself, but frankly it is 3:36AM and I am too tired. How many teams, high school and MS, have every weight class filled? How many duals have had no forfeits? What is the %? Do we need to reduce the number of weight classes? Is this an old issue? Etc.

Maybe I should have just gone to bed and not written this...

Keep in mind it is the first week of the season. Not speaking for everyone but our school's football team was in the playoffs so the wrestlers who played football did not start the season at wrestling weight, they were at football weight. Once certification was done after the playoffs many are not eligible to be at the weight they intend to wrestle until after Christmas so there are holes due to that.
Also last weekend was an SAT weekend that caused absences from lineups and this coming weekend is an ACT weekend which will cause wrestlers to be out. And finally the flu and strep are going around after everyone visited family over Thanksgiving and shared germs their families brought in from other areas.
Our first event had 13 teams, 12 from southern WV with 218 wrestlers competing. That is an average of 16.8 wrestlers per team which is much higher than I have seen there in the past few years. Numbers seem to be up at a quick glance at just that one weekend and one event. Many teams had multiple wrestlers at several weight classes and it will take a while with the way the weight loss plans work for those wrestlers to spread out if they had not done so before the season and their certifications.
It is however getting increasingly harder to find those 106 and 113 pound wrestlers in our school. I have 8 freshmen this year including six young men and two young ladies. The average weight of those 8 freshmen is 177 pounds. The smallest started the first day at 122 pounds. The kids today are bigger than they were 20 years ago and there are far fewer kids walking the halls that can wrestle in those two smaller weight classes. In the history of our school's wrestling team (since the 50s) I do not think we have ever had 7 wrestlers 220 and above but we do this year.

Speaking as a South fan and wrestling fan in general, I know South had a forfeit at 195 because of a football injury that needs time to heal.

The problem usually arises in the upper weights for most teams. You have several smaller kids banging for the right to start. I agree with what the coach above says and his analysis is well thought out.

Many kids walking the halls that could help don’t want to work that hard and that’s a shame. Unfortunately, their regret won’t come for many years.