H.S. Wrestling Coverage

Do some sort of King of the Ring graphic to run with your notebook each week.
It can include the top three wrestlers from any school in the coverage area at each weight class. Also do a Fab 5 ranking system of the schools in your coverage area based on record and opponents faced, with a few honorable mentions included.

These were two big hits with the readership at my former paper. Actually they still are as I receive that paper at my house, and still hang out with and talk to my former co-workers. The guy who handles the wrestling really gets into it and the readers seem to eat this shit up.

 

Breathe with your mouth when attending meets. Or get some nose plugs. (sort of a jokie)

Do something on either skin disorders caused by the mat funk, or cauliflower ear.

Watch out for coaches that care more about their win/loss record and domination of a league than anything else. Check out how some teams wrestle to win duals and dual tournaments while others are focused on individual style wrestling.

 

SCHUTE? Schute's a monster! A genuine geratoid! His own father has to use a livewire to keep him from fuckin' the fireplace!

 

Go and rent Vision Quest to get you pumped for the start of the season.

 

I'm from a part of Alabama that did not offer high school wrestling. Now, I'm covering for the first time. The first bit of advice my coworker gave me: "For the love of God, do not even allude to anything concerning the WWE. The real wrestlers really hate it."

 

I tend to think it's all or nothing. If it's a tard thing to wrestle a kid for a piece, how is it any less tardish to stand in against a softball pitcher or walk the links with a golfer hoping for a nugget of wisdom or funny lines in hopes of writing a story?

Edit: fixed extraneous words ...

 

Strap on your singlet, put a (large) cucumber in pants and ask the coach for directions to the locker?

 

Meets aren't a problem. Locker room visits for off-day features are what make you wish for death.

 

Rankings, both team and individual, are a great way to go, and the readers tend to eat that stuff up.

Any milestones make for good notebook copy: a record number of wins or pins, whether it's a county, school, district or state record, etc.

And some of these kids in similar weight classes have grown up wrestling each other in club tournaments, middle school tournaments, etc., for years. There are bound to be ways to write about rivalries or head-to-head matchups that go back earlier than the high school years, just for something different.

 

I'd like to see a story on the following topic: If wrestling is such a "manly" sport, as many wrestlers claim, how come the losers always go off and cry while refusing to be interviewed afterward? You don't even see that on the girls basketball beat.

 

1. Rankings, records, et al, are gold for wrestling followers. Wrestling fans comprise a small base of people, but they are some of the most intensely loyal to their sport people alive.

2. When you're at a big meet, find one or two big matches (between two top kids, two kids who are unbeaten, possibly a pivotal match between ranked kids that might sway the team score) and focus squarely on those. You'll need to wait until the finals to find them.

3. Featurize, featurize, featurize. I know it sounds trite in our business (because we hear it from everywhere), but wrestling is a place where it's necessary.

Seriously ... a wrestling "gamer" can either drone on into oodles and oodles and oodles of "Smith reversed Johnson with a side headlock to go up 4-3, but an escape at the buzzer tied it at the end of the second period," for 14 matches, which can lead to lots of 35" stories that really need to be no longer than 12-14" at the most.

Instead, if you pull out one or two key matches and possibly focus on the one kid who helped turn the match his team's way, or the one kid who either a) pulled a huge upset, or b) won a big matchup of ranked/strong wrestlers, you can get into some depth and get some gold.

4. Know the folkstyle scoring system. It's rather odd (basically, if you're in the "up" position, you can only score if you put your opponent on his back, so it's often seen as an advantage to be "down.").

5. Hang out near the awards podium during the finals, and grab guys as they're either waiting to get onto the podium or right after they've got their awards.

6. Understand the different types of meets ...
Dual (obvious).
Triple-Duals are just four-team meets where everybody wrestles 3 dual meets (might be called Quad Duals in other areas).
Six-Way/Super Six are six-team meets where everybody wrestles 5 dual meets (usually with 3 matches going on simultaneously).
"Tournaments" are individual tournaments, which are bracketed by weight class, usually seeded so the best match will be in the finals, and (well, everywhere except Indiana's state tournament, where the IHSAA insists on running wrestling like a basketball tournament) will almost always have wrestlebacks that determine places 3-6.

7. Don't be afraid to ask lots of what might be inane questions. Most wrestling folks (especially coaches) are evangelical enough to be able to explain just about everything. I covered wrestling competently for 8+ years, and I still couldn't tell you what anything besides the most simple moves are, but just conversing with wrestling people gave me a really good education into the sport.

 

Oh, yeah ... if you visit a school's wrestling room for feature stuff, make absolutely sure that you pack some shorts and a t-shirt, because they usually set the thermostat at 150 degrees.

Also, don't walk in with tasty food hanging all over your mouth. You might get killed by the "cutters," whose food intake will consist of two rice patties and one glass of water a day for the next four months.