With all due respect to Coach Harris, in my comments below:

I'm sure these things have been said throughout the history of our sport:

* Why do people think we need to put on clothes to wrestle, as Ancient Greeks we have been wrestling in the buff for hundreds of years!

* These horsehair mats are fine. We don't need these fancy Resilite Mats for our kids to wrestle on. They just need to be tougher.

* What do you mean we need tops on when we wrestle. We've been wrestling barechested for years. Kids today are just soft and need to toughen up.

* Headgear? We don't need no stinkin headgear. They just come dislodged and the official will have to stop the match for wrestlers to fix them when they come dislodged.

* I don't know why we are changing Junior Highs to Middle Schools. We need to treat those 11 through 14 year olds just like high school kids in spite of puberty and all the things they go through at this unique age. Toughen up and act like High Schoolers. (Research blew tons of holes in that theory and change was for the better!)

* Kids that grow up wrestling thru the club environment only know singlets as part of their uniform. They will be fine.

* We talk about growing the sport but for 7 staight years numbers have declined. Many factors, to many to list here. However, our Middle School Teams are the FUNNEL and the GATEWAY to our High School programs. Not our Club Teams. The more Middle School kids we can get involved the more kids will pass thru this funnel to the next level.

* After 27 years of coaching, I know for a fact that the singlet is the #1 deterrent to Middle School kids coming out for the sport. We think we can grow our MS team 5 to 10 kids each year with the alternate uniform rule.

* We will be doing this for MS kids that want to compete in the 2 piece. We will have many kids that will wrestle in the singlet. The kids in the 2 piece will have a singelet on underneath it, even if it is an older singlet. I want them to get the feel of it. At any point during the season that they tell me, "Coach I'm ready to wrestle in a singlet; they make the transition. I hope that by freshmen year they have made it. If not, we will go from there.

* Our school provides shorts, warm-up top, singlet, headgear and knee pads as part of school uniform. We will have the kids buy their own compression shirt just like they would a t-shirt for the team. That way it is theres to keep. The shorts can last several years.

Just what we are planning to do to GROW the sport in our neck of the woods.

Remember, there are some kids that NEED WRESTLING, more than Wrestling NEEDS them!! Our sport CHANGES LIVES but you have to get them to step in the door first!!

Coach Vander Linden
Burlington Wrestling