Blaming football coaches??

[Waitingforbaseball]

First off I'm not a football coach. But I don't think the fall of any sport can be blamed on coaches from other sports. I do believe that there are coaches that try to stear the kids to only doing one sport but that is when the athlete and parents need to stand up and say wait a minute. If your child wants to play more than one sport incourage them to do it. The coach will and should get over it. Parents and wrestlers it is up to you to stand up and do what is right for you. Coaches should be inspirational to their athletes and back them in their endeavors as long as they are positive.
But on the other hand wrestling coaches also need to understand there is more to life then the mat.
Either way, my thought is if the kids want to do more then one sport, parents need to back them no matter what their coaches of other sports tell them. It is a sad day when a player has to choose what sport to play to make another coach happy.
Only when the kid is getting paid by scholar or salary should the coach have that right.
Sorry if I rambled but just trying to keep it short and get everything in.

[aaacoach11]

I think its more of a 3 sport thing. Many wrestlers are football and baseball players. Many want to prepare for their upcoming baseball season after football is over. The sport they decide to drop is wrestling. The most grueling and demanding. Those us who have been heavily involved in wrestling and see the so called "big picture", is not the view that most kids have. We know the benefits that wrestling has for young athletes as they move into adulthood. We know the sport specific assets such as leverage, flexibility, aggressiveness, toughness, etc........ Its a shame that kids fill pressured to specialize by both parents and coaches, however its the reality we live in. The best way to see the decline in participation is to go to the scores page and look back at the regionals for the last 20 years. That shows how many are participating. Id Say in the last 20 years the state has had a 25% decline in participation in wrestling.

[Bucktail]

I am a offensive & defensive line coach at University, I will tell you, a kid who has wrestled is an asset on the football field. Their ability to engage others with their hands and they typically play with a lower pad level. In addition, they are more likely to engage bigger blockers at appropriate angles. Three of our five of our top tacklers were wrestlers this year, with Frisco number 1 despite missing 2.5 games with a broken hand. I encourage my linemen to go out for wrestle and continue to lift, it tends to pay dividends down the road. In my opinion, wrestlers playing football helps football more than wrestling, but I also feel they are less likely to burn out when more than one sports is involved. I know this, our wrestlers make more tackles than they miss and I heard Independence football was much improved this year because several wrestlers were on the gridiron. After watching them at PowerAde, I would say it definitely did not make them worse on the mats.

J. Zeiders

[coach_williams]

I do not believe that a coach of one sport can cause the downfall of another sport. However, I have been in the presence of two football coaches who had publicly stated policies that prevented their football players from wrestling. One did not say "You can not wrestle." Instead what he said was "If you want any chance of being a starter next year, then as soon as the season is over I better see you in the weight room every day after school lifting." which promoted the mentality that they were required to be in the weight room and thus, could not be in the wrestling room. The other coach, who is now deceased, very plainly stated, "Play football or play some other sport, but you won't do both." During the years that those people were coaches, our wrestling numbers were down.

By the same measure, a coach of another sport can promote a different sport. The current football coach at Greenbrier East High School very clearly tells his players, "If you are not going to be lifting, play another sport like wrestling, track or basketball." On numerous occasions I have heard him say that he loves the idea of his football players being on the wrestling team. Not surprisingly, this year Greenbrier East has one of the largest teams they have had in nearly a decade (which I am sure Coach Miluk played a role in as well). When I was head coach at Eastern Greenbrier Middle School we had a basketball coach that told any basketball tryouts that he had to cut that they should head over to the wrestling room and give wrestling a try.

Smart football coaches know that a double leg takedown in wrestling turns into a highlight film tackle in football. Smart football coaches know that a highly conditioned wrestler from December to March will make for a much more prepared athlete when training camp starts in June. Football coaches that think a football player simply lifting weights in the offseason will make them better conditioned in football season do not understand the difference between strength and conditioning very well.

[wvenergyman]

I do agree that from school to school it varies, along with parents. Single sport athletes, at least at a young age around 12 and under hurt themselves by specializing. As they get older if that is their preference that's fine, but multi sport athletes benefit from decreased "overuse" injuries, change of pace mentally and just the ability to train and work other movements and skills. Football and wrestling go hand in hand especially for linemen as mentioned above. Here is a link to an article from Bridgeport, WV touting the benefits of wrestling for football.

http://www.connect-bridgeport.com/connect.cfm?func=view&section=Sports-Blog&item=From-the-Bench-Wrestling-Program-Benefit-Continues-for-BHS-Football--John-Thomas-Latest-on-List24406

If you don't have the time to read it basically discusses the benefits of wrestling and how it helped this particular junior player make himself bigger asset to the team and surprised a lot of the coaches this year. I had an old coach tell me back in the 70s and 80s when he was a line coach at a local HS if the linemen didn't have another sport in the winter he made them wrestle, they didn't have to compete in tournaments but they had to practice. Most of them realized the benefits after spending time in the wrestling room and stuck with it. While making them probably isn't the right answer, articles like the one above highlight the benefits and how the teams can work together.