Here we go....bear with me.....what I am going to say may rub some people the wrong way but I am going to play a little bit of devils advocate here and offer some counter points to Coach Jones' thoughts.

First I have to include some caveats.....

1. I grew up wrestling freestyle and greco. Wrestled those styles for 7 years before ever wrestling a folkstyle match. Now 30 years ago freestyle and folkstyle were a lot more similar than they are today.

2. Personally I agree that freestyle/greco help wrestlers improve and helps kids get more mat time. Having said that, here are my counterpoints.....

a. I don't think freestyle rewards risk and promotes wrestlers taking chances in its current form. It is too easy for a wrestler to wrestle defensively, work for a push out, and wait for your opponent to take a shot then counter it for a 2-3 point turn. This is evidenced by our olympic athletes not shooting as much and leaving their fate in the hands of a 50-50 ball choice at the end of a period.

b. As much as we want to promote freestyle/greco, for us (read US wrestling community), the most realistic goal for young wrestlers is to be able to use wrestling as a means to get a college education. Colleges wrestle folkstyle. Very few go on to wrestle at the international level. There are a lot of exceptions but for the most part the majority of college wrestlers finish wrestling after they get done with college.

c. I am not sure freestyle wrestling in its current form is for young beginners. A lot of the moves you teach in freestyle will get kids crushed in folkstyle. I think the wrestler has to be mature enough when to use the different techniques. For example, we spend all of folkstyle season teaching the kids to sprawl when someone shoots. In freestyle, you want to stop the opponents momentum but a lot of time you will give them your legs so you can set up a high crotch, etc in order to score a quick 2. This gets you in big trouble in folkstyle.

d. Sharon is right about the cost.

Now having said all that, understand, I personally support and like freestyle/greco. I wanted to offer a different point of view.

I think to grow freestyle/greco with our younger wrestlers, then we have to start by shortening the folkstyle season. If we could do folkstyle in 6-8 weeks and then do a 4-6 week freestyle/greco season and be done with it (except for regional and national tournaments) by the end of March/begining of April then we would have a chance to keep a good amount of kids doing all three styles. Until something like this happens, freestyle/greco are going to continue to be what it is.....a chance for the hard core, serious wrestlers to get extra training and matches.

Jmo, fire away!

Shawn Budke