Features of a Great Wrestling Program v1.1

by Warren Applegate, Greg DeMarco, Roger Frizzell, and Milt Sherman

If you want a great wrestling program, know that you can't do it alone. It takes 100 GOOD people to make a GREAT program! As such, one of your primary jobs is to DELEGATE, i.e. put the square pegs in the square holes. The first four points below emphasis the importance of getting lots of people involved.

1.  Dedicated Coach - It starts with the head coach who has to have a passion for wrestling, a drive for success, good organizational skills, and can work with large groups of people.  He may not necessarily be a great technician or recruiter.  Whatever his deficiencies, they can be compensated for by good assistant coaches.

2.  Administrative Support - You need an AD and Principal who have a favorable view of wrestling.  If they aren't knowledgeable about the sport, you need to educate them.  However, regardless of their knowledge or fondness of wrestling or lack of, you must strive to maintain a professional, working relationship with them.

3.  Parental Support - It may start with just a couple of parents who are active, but as the success grows more people want to get on the bandwagon.  Parents can be very helpful. For example, some parents can prepare a pre-match meal for the kids after weigh ins.  This means the coach doesn't have to worry about finding a restaurant and you can save quite of bit of time and money, both of which can be used for other things. A parent might be able to setup and maintain the team's website while others can be a great help in fund raising. In addition, the assistance of parents during tournaments can be invaluable.

4. Student Support - Get students involved in your program. You'll need managers, cheerleaders, mat maids, photographers, videographers, statisticians, etc. To get other students interested in wrestling conduct contests, give out t-shirts when one of your wrestlers scores a pin, etc.

5. Feeder Program -  You can't have a great program without a good feeder system. You need a group of freshmen entering your program every year with at least 2 years of experience. The most important statistic for lower levels of your program are the number of kids who finish the season. The coaches' philosophy should be Fun and Basics. In addition, everyone on the team should wrestle at every event and there should be no weight classes (Madison System). As the high school season usually begins before the feeder programs, you should have the feeder coaches attend as many high school practices as possible.

6.  Competitive Schedule - Compete in dual meets and tournaments appropriate to the competitive level of your team.  If it is a weak program, you should upgrade the quality of the tournaments as soon as the team is capable of competing with some success and not before.  Scheduling the toughest competition in the known universe is not a good idea if you can't compete with some small measure of success. If many of your kids are getting pinned in the first period, you need to tone down your schedule.

7.  Recognition -  This can come in many forms including t-shirts, certificates, varsity letters and jackets, school PA announcements, wall of fame, team banquet, newsletter, website, team meetings, etc. A big part of recognition is newspaper coverage. While wrestling doesn't get much coverage in most newspapers. you can increase your chances by preparing a media guide and e-mailing the results of all your matches quickly and accurately.

8.  Promotion - Like recognition, there is no one thing that is going to do it. You have to take the shotgun approach, i.e. doing many little things to be effective. Examples include pre-match warm-ups with music, a team website, showing video highlights during lunch periods, cheerleaders, mat maids, etc.

9. Tradition - Tradition is nothing except what the coaching staff makes of it. You build tradition by reminding the athletes of past success and the team's history. A team book given at the start of the season to each wrestler and lots of bulletin boards are just two ways of getting the team to believe in your program.

10. Opportunities - A great program provides many opportunities for wrestlers to improve including a strength program, off-season wrestling club, national and international competition, clinics, camps, etc. The school and community should be willing to support those outstanding athletes who quality for national and international events.

Note: While it is not imperative that you do ALL ten features listed above, doing any of the ones you don't currently do, will make your program better.