I could be wrong here, but the age cutoff is the same one that schools use for beginning kindergarten. The problem with moving the date is that there will be a group of kids that are in 6th grade that may not have anyone to wrestle because say half of the athletes will be in junior high and wrestling for the junior high or even worse, in high school and you're stuck as an 8th grader with little competition

I don't have a clue of the impact it could have on our athletes numbers wise in those two areas, but I imagine it would be significant.

Here's how it works as I understand it. Lets say you have 100 wrestlers in the weight. At 6th/8th grade, using the Jan 1 vs Sept 1 cutoff, you will lose half of your participants So now we're down to 50. Granted, you will pick up 50 from the 5th/7th grade so it doesn't look all that bad.

Lucky for me, I was able to wrestle kids my junior year because of my birthday. I got a little more mat time against quality opponents. By moving the date back, we eliminate juniors in high school from competing. I think that's a bad step.

Conversely, at the 8th grade mark, 1/2 of the 9th grade will have had extensive experience working out with the high school and will have an advantage over their club counterparts. I'm not disrespecting clubs, but pointing out the freshmen that would be able to wrestle down because of their age have a distinct advantage because of older workout partners/more mat time in the practice room/ a higher level of competition, etc.

Some would say tough, but I think the reason so many sports follow the cutoff of schools is because they want to build continuity with the programs with school age dynamics. A 7th grader will be against a 7th grader. Of course there are those of us that hit puberty before, so I guess it's kind of discombobulated, but that's the theory. A more appropriate measure would be to have a cut off for teens who have reached puberty.

"Any underarm hair? Get in that line with the hair. Those without hair in line b."