When you talk about a good wrestler, generally you talk about his technique, strength, speed and heart; those are all parts of the sport. But you never hear anyone talk about a good wrestler in respect to how much weight he cuts.

Like tattoos in boot camp, we have kept weight-cutting around like it's some kind of rite of passage in this sport. We have convinced kids that the only way to be a success in this sport is to cut weight. When we do this, we do a disservice to the kids and to the sport.

This sport is about technique and skill; it is not an anorexia festival. We treat weight control as if it were sacred, when it many ways it hurts the sport. We've all (if we're honest) lost kids - potentially good wrestlers - because of horror stories about weight cutting. That only hurts us.

We have to stop telling kids that cutting a lot of weight is O.K. Sure, we did it when we were kids, but also did a lot of other stupid things when we were kids that we'd probably prefer our wrestlers didn't do.

Let's keep the sport what it's supposed to be; a testement to skill and strength and not a testement to the nutritional value of rice cakes and ice cubes.