H.S. Wrestling Coverage

It's better than covering swimming.

 

I loved covering wrestling. Dual meets are usually done in about an hour and I have a ton of respect for those kids and what they put themselves through.

The only downside was stopping by practice, which is usually in some small room near the gym where they put mats down on the floor and turn the heat up to about 90 degrees.

 

You mean the dancing bears division?

 

This may sound harsh and will probably upset some wrestling writers, but I say get out of wrestling coverage as soon as possible.

Covering wrestling is a complete and total dead end. If you cover baseball, football, basketball or hockey, you can learn about the game and it has some value. There are athletes from your area who will move on to colleges and the pros, and you will have something to write about. If you know, for instance, basketball, you might get a chance to cover college or pro games.

Wrestling? Most of the high school wrestlers have little interest in wrestling in college. I hear the wrestling people whine about Title IX ruining their sport. Baloney - after four years of having to worry about making weight, most people aren't interested in college wrestling.

 

Hmmmm ... don't see where THAT would offend most wrestling writers ... :

 

Eh, no.

If you can pull news and compelling features off the wrestling beat, you're good to go for the next step up the career ladder. (If you can figure out wrestling, everything else is cake by comparison.) If all you can do is gamers and notes, it doesn't matter if you're covering wrestling, basketball or football -- sorry, but I'm not interested.

As for wrestlers, their coaches and fans, no, they don't like WWE or wrasslin' references. (Actually, "we" don't - I wrassled, er, wrestled in high school. Great sport.)

One thing to watch for: We don't get nearly the wrestling call-ins we should. We've had coaches tell us they don't want to tip off their opponents about which of their wrestlers are in which class. True story.

 

Team rankings would be good, but for individuals, it's probably better to run a list of the top guys in each weight class.

Keep track (or have coaches call in) their kids' records. You could run the top 10 (and ties) in paragraph form (or in list form if you have the space).

 

John Newsom: I remember people saying the same thing about a column on dogs a paper ran... if you could make that interesting, you could do anything.

My feeling (OK, bias) is that wrestling was big where high school basketball was lousy. I know there are exceptions, but at least in New Jersey that was usually the way it worked. I know the wrestling people get upset at the mere mention of professional wrestling, but I note there is serious professional, big-time legitimate competition in the major team sports and that isn't the case in rasslin... uh, I mean wrestling.

I changed papers when a wrestling writer left because I thought I might get stuck with wrestling. My brother and brother-in-law were high school wrestlers, but I just don't like the sport.

 

so, by your own account, covering wrestling sucks ... but not nearly as bad as the cheerleaders.

 

Smart move ...

The way we used to handle it (at a smaller shop) was ... for a triple/quad/six-way dual

*-Team scores for each match.
*-Individual records. Tell me who went undefeated, maybe who went 4-1. I'm not printing anyone else.

And see if someone in your state compiles/posts rankings. Indiana's wrestling coaches association posts semi-regular rankings on their website, which we generally use. I wouldn't necessarily do your own, unless you cover at least 16 schools.

(the way the IWCA does it, COACHES have to nominate your kid every rankings period ... record and any notable opponents he's beaten -- as well as everybody he's lost to. They consider common opponents heavily ... any newspaper who wants to consider doing this should have the COACHES do the legwork, and you rank, say, the top five (or six, given that's how many place at a normal tournament) from what they send in.

 

Nope, not at all. What I meant is that wrestling is not football, baseball or basketball -- that is, sports that nearly everyone here has been watching on TV since they were 6. Wrestling's not, at least not in this part of the world.

The guy I was responding to thinks wrestling stinks. I'd probably enjoy it.