New layout still weighing on coaches

Posted: Feb. 2, 2012

Arrowhead wrestling coach Jeremy Miller admits a little bit of bias favoring the heavier-weight wrestlers, himself a bigger guy who wrestled and played football at Lakeland High School.

"Ideally, I think if you have good support from your football program, it will prepare you well for wrestling," he said. "I'll go out and tell anybody if you have a good wrestler, they're going to be a good football player because they know how to battle."

Wrestling coaches and football coaches likely became better friends this offseason when the WIAA approved shifts to the weight classes as presented by the National Federation of High Schools. The result was one more class on the heavier end, with one of the middle weights sacrificed.

It wasn't a move most coaches liked. It still isn't.

"The downside of it is I don't understand the reasoning for shifting everything up (in weight)," Miller said. "When you get to these lower weights, we have kids at 80 or 90 pounds walking through the halls. Some of these guys are even juniors and seniors. It's something that should be revisited in that lower spectrum."

Wrestling's lowest weight class shifted upward from 103 pounds to 106, with slight increases across the board additionally increased by a new weight allowance after the holidays that permits wrestlers two more pounds.

"Wrestling should favor the lower weights," said Kettle Moraine wrestling coach Frank Cuda. "In what other sport can smaller kids have the opportunity to be successful? It is pretty tough in football and basketball. I am not saying that smaller, lighter athletes can't be successful in those sports; wrestling just matches athletes up pound for pound and I think that gives the smaller kids more opportunity.

"The addition of another upper weight class takes the opportunity to wrestle away from the smaller kids and middle weights where there seems to be more kids stacked at the same weight."

The NFHS added a 215-pound class in 2002, the last change to the lineup and an addition from the 13-class lineup that had been in place. The last overriding changes were made in 1988. The changes represented the NFHS attempt at encompassing roughly 7 percent of the wrestling population in each group.

The wrestling community ultimately embraced the 215-pound addition. But these changes, of course, are more sweeping.

"They are not changing, and we really need to make a focused effort to get the football player athletes competing in the wrestling program with five of the 14 weight classes being 170 and higher," said Mukwonago coach Jon Wierzbicki. "It also has firmed up the competition in the 126 through 138 weight classes. At the Mid-States (in Whitewater), for example, multiple state placewinners were wrestling for third in Derek Gill of Burlington and Gabe Grahek of Marquette.

"I also believe 106 has become a more solid weight class, with some athletes being able to make it down to 108 now post-Christmas with the allowance. Some of these guys may have been at 112 in prior years, but with the added three pounds are able to make the cut."

The challenges at the bigger weights are more apparent at smaller schools, where bigger bodies are simply harder to come by. Coaches have also intimated that football players don't automatically possess the mentality to wrestle, instead preferring to lift weights in the offseason in preparation for the next football season.

With the added demand to recruit bigger kids who haven't experienced wrestling at the lower levels, those kids also figure to experience growing pains in the new sport.

"We have a lot of big kids at Arrowhead; there's a football program that has been successful through the years," Miller said. "The weight (in the weight room) doesn't push back. You have to (wrestle) in front of people and put it on the line. You go to the center of the mat where you're the center of attention. It's not easy."

Big change

A look at the changes to the 14 weights in high-school wrestling: