Being from a rather large sports town, I felt I needed to add my 2 cents here. I agree that all kids should be nurtured into the love of the sport, no matter what sport you are talking about.
A lot of the reason that the numbers drop off as the kids get older may or may not be for a lack of love for the sport, but might possibly be a love for a different sport, or possibly a distaste for a certain sport. When you look at the schedules of all sports and their respective seasons, you may notice that we don’t give our kids much rest in between seasons. Couple that with the trend of specializing in a certain sport (year round baseball, soccer, etc.) the seasons are never-ending.
Personally as I was growing up, I had baseball in the summer, followed by football in the fall, then indoor soccer started directly after that in the winter, with spring soccer to follow that. Eventually, I specialized with soccer myself and played all the way through college. Had I been exposed to wrestling as a kid, I am sure that I would not have burned out of it like I see many kids/parents do anymore. However, I was and am very competitive and the love for sport has always driven me to do my best in that sport.
I see this quality in my kids as well. My youngest fell in love with wrestling in his first year last year, and because of this he was rather successful. His love for wrestling even determined that he would put off his other favorite sport of baseball for a little while to compete in the freestyle-greco season. Baseball ended and 2 weeks later football starts up (this is his first year he is old enough to play football and we want to always expose both of our kids to all sports) as soon as football is over, wrestling starts back up. So you can see how the seasons start to blend in together. It is my feeling that this is a main reason that kids (as they get older) begin to choose one sport to specialize in and it is also the reason that parents get burned out on certain sports.
All parents want their child to do well in a sport be it wrestling, baseball, football, soccer, basketball, or whatever. Unfortunately with today’s society, winning is everything and learning life lessons is not always the top priority for the parents. In saying that, parents get discouraged if their kids are not the best in the respective sport, and thus numbers drop as they try to find whatever activity their kid does best.
Honestly, if you, as a parent, don’t have a love for sport and merely go to a wrestling tournament to watch your own kid wrestle, then you are in for a long and boring Saturday. I suggest that each wrestling club have a parent’s meeting before the season starts and make a few suggestions to help the parents get more involved with the entire club and not just their own kids. This could be merely watching a few of the practices, or watching some high school matches, and getting to know some of the other wrestlers in the club so as to cheer them on when their kid is not wrestling, and maybe this will help make it not as torturous as it may seem for some parents.
The wrestling season is long and grueling but I have found, as have my kids, that we are already missing it and can’t wait for the season to start back up again. I guess you can just call us crazy or something like that.
