Moving the certification date and therefore the two pound growth allowance to before Christmas WAS discussed by the committee. The decision to not recommend this move was made due to the move reducing the time an athlete would have to lose weight. As a committee, we believed that reducing the amount of time an athlete had to lose weight would not encourage healthy weight-loss practices.
Mann
There is no conventional wisdom in use. I thought the whole point was to discourage an athlete from losing weight... If you couldn't certify before Christmas why would it be healthy to give you more time to certify after? Most of these athletes are growing and when you couple that with the mandatory practice shutdown how is it healthier? This policy encourages or allows wrestlers to procrastinate to certify. Is that healthy? Is it healthy to make the wrestlers make scratch weight after instead of giving the two pound allowance? It makes absolutely no sense to me. Maybe Sport0 can explain it.
