Wrestling Talk Forums supported
USA Wrestling-Kansas KWCA Wrestling Talk Forums supported & maintained by USA Wrestling-Kansas USAW USA Wrestling-Kansas 
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Parents get in the stands #252521 02/17/19 01:45 AM
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,248
S
smokeycabin Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
S
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,248
Parents get in the stands - PLEASE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJT6gmX1Br4
One of the uglier videos circulated last week with cell phone video of several parents fighting on the mats of a pee-wee wrestling tournament. The brawl, which lasted 20-30 seconds, spilled onto the mats and was watched by several of the young wrestlers participating in the day's activities. The motivation for the altercation wasn't really specified, but it was implied that something on the mat caused a comment from a parent, which inflamed some egos.
No pressure on these 5 and 6 year olds.

Parents don’t ruin the sport –

https://intermatwrestle.com/articles/21444
Foley's Friday Mailbag: February 15, 2019

Re: Parents get in the stands [Re: smokeycabin] #252528 02/17/19 04:09 PM
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,248
S
smokeycabin Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
S
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,248
Foley's Friday Mailbag: February 15, 2019

T.R. Foley
T.R. Foley, InterMat Senior Writer
2/15/2019
foley@intermatwrestle.com, Twitter: @trfoley, Instagram: tr.foley

The wrestling community has been treated these past few months to a number of viral videos -- some good, some bad, and some ugly.

One of the uglier videos circulated last week with cell phone video of several parents fighting on the mats of a pee-wee wrestling tournament. The brawl, which lasted 20-30 seconds, spilled onto the mats and was watched by several of the young wrestlers participating in the day's activities. The motivation for the altercation wasn't really specified, but it was implied that something on the mat caused a comment from a parent, which inflamed some egos.

While women's wrestling is taking off, international styles are becoming easier to watch/follow, and college dual meets are seeing 15K-plus fans, there remains a cancer at the root of the sport.

The culture of youth wrestling is broken.

We see the system in tatters each time there is undue focus put onto these coaches and parents who seem more interested in their bragging rights than the growth of their children. There is no reason to ever watch children aged 5-10 years old competing at a national tournament with medal stands, pomp, and consequences. Pre-teens need to focus on developing physical fluency, creating bonds, and sharpening wrestling skills. They shouldn't be the vessel by which parents navigate discovery of lost glory.

But that might be too harsh. Parents are hard wired to protect their children, to cheer them on and enforce rules. When parents storm the mat they aren't guaranteed to be awful humans at the outlier of our sporting culture. In reality they are the symptom of the disease -- just one of the many visible failures in the culture of youth wrestling in America.

Other countries don't seem to drive their kids into highly visible, consequential wrestling events before their 10th birthday. From what I've seen, most don't leave the wrestling room in any meaningful way until they reach 12, or more often, puberty. They stay in the rooms, drill techniques, learn movement exercises, wrestling skills, and a whole heck of a lot of discipline. In the United States we seem to prioritize winning, and by any means necessary.

We are at a breaking point. The time has come to suspend all elimination-based wrestling competitions for children under the age of 10. A pre-pubescent child wrestling five times in a single day isn't building development, it's destroying joy. Parents and youth coaches dragging these babies across their home states, regions, and even the country, only to be pitted against each other in HIGH stakes physical competition, is absurd and should no longer be allowable.

There are alternatives. The United States has excellent, passionate coaches who would love to learn more about their craft and ways to improve the lives of their young wrestlers. The wrestling community needs to come together to devalue these tournaments, adopt skills-based tournaments that allow for kids to build their competitive spirit, and give coaches the tools and techniques to avoid creating a toxic culture of youth sports.

We need to take our foot off this pedal and come together to find solutions. A summit of top club coaches, officials, and leaders in the sport could be a great first step. Bring in educators and those familiar with creating positive conditions for improving physical literacy and see what they can recommend would also help wrestling be a leader in youth sports.

What we saw happen last weekend was only a sliver of what we all know goes on at these tournaments. It's time to make immediate and drastic changes to the way we approach teaching our kids about the world's oldest (and still greatest) sport

Re: Parents get in the stands [Re: smokeycabin] #252598 02/21/19 12:35 AM
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,248
S
smokeycabin Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
S
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,248
Stay in the stands!

Re: Parents get in the stands [Re: smokeycabin] #252647 02/23/19 11:25 AM
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,248
S
smokeycabin Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
S
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,248
Foley’s report on Intermat.com - Feb 22, 2019


Q: I agree with your take on youth wrestling. It's a broken system with too much emphasis on winning and not on development.

I coach youth wrestling and some of it makes me sick to watch. You see 4-5 year old's who have no idea why they are there cornered by seemingly novice wrestling coaches and/or parents screaming at them and the ref. It is not a good look.

I've thought about this model for kids under 10:
Break them up by age like we already do (5-under, 6 & 7, 8 & 9).
4-man round robins in all tournaments NO WEIGHT CLASSES. These four are close in weight, they go together.
Three 1-minute periods. Green starts on bottom in second. Red on bottom in third.
If there is a pin, they start on the feet (or referees' discretion). Third pin will end the match.
Raise both hands at the end.
No trophies, no medals, no records, just go have fun. No state or national tournaments.
Parents cannot be in the corner if there is another coach available. (May be tough to enforce but worth a shot.)
Something needs to change. What do you think?
-- SPM

Foley: If we want to retain some type of tournament competition, I think that your plan is a great starting point!

The idea I was floating (though hadn't fleshed out) was that the competition would remain but would be driven towards rewarding the outcome of wrestling-based games and drills. Scholastic wrestling is so often about brutishness that working to de-emphasize that behavior and emphasize technique, while also maintaining competitiveness, would be an ideal antidote.

Not totally sold on raising both hands. While I also don't get behind all the college coaches using their pedestal to complain about participation trophies, I think it's OK to have kids learn from some failure here or there.

On a side note, it's always struck me as odd that the generation responsible for RAISING the "participation trophy generation" so often are the ones complaining. They somehow don't see that it's their fault, not the kids. Also, by whining about your athletes on camera you are doing the exact thing you JUST complained about (blaming other people), Mr. Tough Guy Football Coach!

Thoughts on youth wrestling
By Matt W.

I thought the youth wrestling stuff was interesting and important to discuss. I agree that we have issues with the youth wrestling culture, but I don't think abolishing all youth competition up until a certain age is the solution. I really think that would also harm youth numbers. Most of us really love to compete and I think that starts at a young age. The important thing is to find a way to foster that in a healthy way for all of those involved. Abolishing things is often a lazy solution and may very well shift the bad behavior to older ages. Now, do I concede that certain youth events have gotten way out of hand, such as traveling all over the country so a 5-year-old can compete at Tulsa or Vegas, or anything of the sort? Resoundingly yes. However, I do want to tell you about another experience I had with youth wrestling that has convinced me that we can't abolish youth tournaments, and that there are workable solutions to erratic parents/coaches.

Before I came to the University of Iowa for law school I was living and working in Chicago and helped coach a youth club affiliated with Beat the Streets in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. If you aren't familiar, Englewood is on Chicago's southside and is one of most dangerous areas of the city. We had about 40 kids K-8. These kids, as you might have imagined, had very little relative to many in the rest of our country. Certainly no parents were going to drive them to Tulsa for a massive tournament. We took them to about eight tournaments in the season and hosted our own on MLK Day. We were really focused on the development of the kids and teaching them everything wrestling had given to all of us, and there was minimal if any focus on winning and losing. With that being said, the Saturdays that these kids went to compete were the highlight of their week, and maybe even month at times. This ranged from the kid pinning his way through the tournament to the kid who got stuck in every match. They were excited to experience something new and unique such as riding the bus together to a suburb and to compete and spend the day with their friends and teammates. We were able to get money to get everyone the same T-shirt and shorts for tournaments as well, and every single kid wore their warm-ups with the utmost pride at each of those tournaments. Seeing the positive impact those tournaments had on those kids really got me excited for youth wrestling again, when it was something I had thought of as rather noxious for quite some time.

So, here we are with the terrible stories of parents getting in fights and other instances of youth tournaments being massively positive experiences for some kids. Due to my experiences I really think we cannot possibly abolish youth tournaments until a kid is 10, 12 or any other age. I do like the idea of skills-based competitions where there is little to no spectacle and the focus is on developing young people. Some things I saw in the Chicago suburbs that was far more effective than the small-town Iowa style of running youth tournaments was the requirement of USA Wrestling certified coaches, roping off the mats from anyone that is not a registered wrestler or certified coach, and the degree of control that event organizers had as a whole. If those practices become more regular and perhaps more regulated by state AAU or state USAW bodies I think we will see a massive decline in inappropriate behavior. A couple commenters on the mailbag also discussed the coach's obligation to educate parents. I think that is extremely important as well and can remedy a lot of aspects of issues we see here.

All-in-all, great piece as always. I just think that a call to abolish is knee-jerk, punishing the wrong group, and a lazier solution than we can really come up with. Just wanted to share the experience I had with the last group of kids I coached and how valuable that experience was for them. Really makes me want to search for more solutions that get them and keep them excited for wrestling. The best part about when you write these things is that it gets the conversation started, and I think that is what you're ultimately calling for in the article


Who's Online Now
1 registered members (Derek Patterson), 153 guests, and 3 spiders.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Newest Members
Dane Edwards, Mikemacias, tcox, Coach Lueders, forty
12296 Registered Users
Forum Statistics
Forums10
Topics35,911
Posts250,304
Members12,296
Most Online709
Nov 21st, 2011
Top Posters(All Time)
usawks1 8,595
smokeycabin 6,248
Aaron Sweazy 5,254
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.2
(Release build 20190702)
PHP: 7.2.34 Page Time: 0.017s Queries: 14 (0.002s) Memory: 0.7825 MB (Peak: 0.8705 MB) Data Comp: Off Server Time: 2024-03-28 15:40:35 UTC
Valid HTML 5 and Valid CSS