Wrestlers and Wrestling Parents- Here are five things you need to stop caring about today
1- Seeds/ draws
The days of Dad grabbing your folder at the pee wee tourney and putting you first to avoid the best guy are over. HS seeding meetings are the most ridiculous thing you would ever want to attend. Blind draw, or an objective point based system, are the only ways to go. Seeding is an American folkstyle construct. Who cares when you wrestle the best guy? The goal is to win, right? I’ve seen coaches get guys so worked up about being under-seeded it hurts the kids performance. When I came to Sem, a kid was seeded 2nd and was sad. I asked him what difference it made if he just went out and wrestled and won and he said, “Seeding is about respect.” You get respect by winning- it isn’t handed out at the seeding meeting. Blind draw vertical pairing is the best system- It is why Fargo used to be so great. Just wrestle.
2- Making weight
Negativity about making weight ruins careers. It is part of your sport. If you don’t like it- quit. Or lift and move up. Or focus on your nutrition all the time and eliminate yo yo-ing. If you are tweeting food porn pictures you are doing it wrong. Not eating that Oreo Sundaes shouldn’t be that important to you if your goals are right. If you are using practice to make weight, it is almost impossible to get better at wrestling. If you are walking around like a zombie in school, calling attention to yourself you are hurting your team, and the sport. If you don’t like making weight- learn how to dribble. There isn’t an awards stand at the tourney for making weight.
3- Officiating
You can usually tell the mindset of a wrestler by how many times they or their parents tell you how they “got screwed by the ref.” Loser mentality. No other way to say it. Officials make bad calls at every level. Coaches make poor decisions at every level. Wrestlers make mistakes at every level. There is a human element to our sport. You have to train and wrestle through those errors. The cleaner, more fundamentally sound you wrestle the easier it is for officials to make the right call. The less you stall the less you will get called for stalling. I’ve seen coaches of good teams debate every single call and it makes me sick. The more you go to the table, the more you are making it about you. There are times to question the official, but there is always something you could’ve done better to make that call irrelevant.
4- Rankings
They sell magazine subscriptions and generate website hits. Parents and fans love them. They don’t mean anything else. At all.
5- Recognition
I am grateful for the amount of coverage the NCAA tourney has garnered on ESPN in recent years. I think Flowrestling has revolutionized the way we view our sport. And sure, recognition is great. But all that really matters is what’s occurring within your program. Don’t get your nose out of joint because your hoops team gets more fans than you, or your school doesn’t see what you guys are doing. Do it for yourself. People who need external validation of their accomplishments lack confidence. Does it really matter if the girl in your math class knows that you are a Prep All American? You know. Your teammates know. Win, expect to be ignored and be gracious if someone notices. Don’t whine about it
Ultimately- the string that connects these things together is that you are in control of your career and that you are responsible to yourself. That’s the beauty of what we do. You don’t have to rely on anyone else but yourself to accomplish your goals. Other people will help you, sure but you can make the decision to be great. At first it can be scary to realize that you have so much power over your own destiny in your sport. But once you figure it out, you are going to improve very very quickly.
The days of Dad grabbing your folder at the pee wee tourney and putting you first to avoid the best guy are over. HS seeding meetings are the most ridiculous thing you would ever want to attend. Blind draw, or an objective point based system, are the only ways to go. Seeding is an American folkstyle construct. Who cares when you wrestle the best guy? The goal is to win, right? I’ve seen coaches get guys so worked up about being under-seeded it hurts the kids performance. When I came to Sem, a kid was seeded 2nd and was sad. I asked him what difference it made if he just went out and wrestled and won and he said, “Seeding is about respect.” You get respect by winning- it isn’t handed out at the seeding meeting. Blind draw vertical pairing is the best system- It is why Fargo used to be so great. Just wrestle.
2- Making weight
Negativity about making weight ruins careers. It is part of your sport. If you don’t like it- quit. Or lift and move up. Or focus on your nutrition all the time and eliminate yo yo-ing. If you are tweeting food porn pictures you are doing it wrong. Not eating that Oreo Sundaes shouldn’t be that important to you if your goals are right. If you are using practice to make weight, it is almost impossible to get better at wrestling. If you are walking around like a zombie in school, calling attention to yourself you are hurting your team, and the sport. If you don’t like making weight- learn how to dribble. There isn’t an awards stand at the tourney for making weight.
3- Officiating
You can usually tell the mindset of a wrestler by how many times they or their parents tell you how they “got screwed by the ref.” Loser mentality. No other way to say it. Officials make bad calls at every level. Coaches make poor decisions at every level. Wrestlers make mistakes at every level. There is a human element to our sport. You have to train and wrestle through those errors. The cleaner, more fundamentally sound you wrestle the easier it is for officials to make the right call. The less you stall the less you will get called for stalling. I’ve seen coaches of good teams debate every single call and it makes me sick. The more you go to the table, the more you are making it about you. There are times to question the official, but there is always something you could’ve done better to make that call irrelevant.
4- Rankings
They sell magazine subscriptions and generate website hits. Parents and fans love them. They don’t mean anything else. At all.
5- Recognition
I am grateful for the amount of coverage the NCAA tourney has garnered on ESPN in recent years. I think Flowrestling has revolutionized the way we view our sport. And sure, recognition is great. But all that really matters is what’s occurring within your program. Don’t get your nose out of joint because your hoops team gets more fans than you, or your school doesn’t see what you guys are doing. Do it for yourself. People who need external validation of their accomplishments lack confidence. Does it really matter if the girl in your math class knows that you are a Prep All American? You know. Your teammates know. Win, expect to be ignored and be gracious if someone notices. Don’t whine about it
Ultimately- the string that connects these things together is that you are in control of your career and that you are responsible to yourself. That’s the beauty of what we do. You don’t have to rely on anyone else but yourself to accomplish your goals. Other people will help you, sure but you can make the decision to be great. At first it can be scary to realize that you have so much power over your own destiny in your sport. But once you figure it out, you are going to improve very very quickly.