If you only want one college wrestling program in your state - Move to Texas or Florida


370 Schools sponsored varsity Wrestling teams during 2017:


http://www.scholarshipstats.com/wrestling.html

I don't want only one program, but the programs we have should be competitive and have full teams.

It is going to make the coaches more competitive to get solid recruits and build their programs. Get involved and help grow the sport - polishing talent is not creating new opportunities.

Odds of a High School Wrestler competing in College *
Men Women
Number of US High School Wrestlers 2016-17 244,804 14,587
Number of College Wrestlers (see table above) 10,568 517
% of US High School Wrestlers competing at any College Level 4.3% 3.5%
% of US High School Wrestlers Competing at NCAA I Schools 1.0% -

* See our page on the Odds of a High School Athlete competing in College for more information

Scholarship Averages for NCAA I Wrestling teams

Only 1% of HS wrestlers are part of a DI team. about 1/3 of 1%
get to be on varsity. Should the back up guys not go to that school (if they are there for academic reasons) even if they are practice partners preparing for the lineup in the event they win a wrestle off the team has an injury? Even though girls and women's numbers are lower than boys and men numbers - should they give up on growing the sport? I think not - I am still so happy to see more than 1 - 4 college in KS and equal the opportunities for community colleges. It would be awesome if the 4 year public institutions in KS also stepped up to he plate.
I think wrestling is about ranked 5th or 6th in kids and HS participation in KS but is offered the least university or college chances.

Kansas needs to start fixing things at the middle school level by having boys basketball held the same time statewide, and the same for wrestling. You would have more opportunities created by doing that.

Another issue is not everyone gets a scholarship! Expect it. If you want to wrestle in college and you have no credentials, walk on somewhere and prove yourself, or go to a junior college where the funding may be a little easier to get a scholarship (such as be active in art or music and get a scholarship for activities and still be able to compete for wrestling).

The issue isn't our coaches. The issue is our admins at colleges that want 80% of rosters to be Kansas kids. In addition some want over 35 on the roster, but many of the kids flake out or fall through. 28 Kansas natives times 8 for just the jucos equal 224...but I will half that saying we can assume 14 are coming back (which if you look at retention rates in our jucos, you know that is way high). So 112 seniors a year among 8 school (that's leaving out 9 universities that pick after the seniors).

Now placer wise there was 151 seniors that placed accounting for 44.9% of the state, but we know not all seniors go wrestle afterwards. It gets very tricky with so many programs.

We lose wrestlers to other states because the KJCCC for example was held hostage by not allowing to give full scholarships, so if you are someone that is good, you would go out of state to a juco for free.

It's easy to sit back and look from the outside, but many of the staffs are underfunded. The first thing we need to do is help to get increase in funds so coaches can focus on their jobs. Many of the coaches in the state at the college level don't have funding for assistants, so they are up against the wall to begin with. Add in the fact many fall into a low pay grade or don't have resources to be successful that doesn't help either.

We have at least 3 colleges in the state that roll mats out daily (may be higher than that).

We have one program that the Athletic Director had no clue that they would need so much athletic tape with wrestling, so he ordered one box for all athletics for the year.

We have kids that live 2 hours from home that get homesick and leave, because a coach is a "jerk" and doesn't feel sympathy when they are told to withdrawal from a class a month before the deadline to withdrawal is, and they miss the deadline and get a F.

We have attendances that suck at college duals. I recall being at one that had 7 people in the crowd. I have been to others with maybe 25. The excuse of some saying colleges need to advertise is perplexing because if you live within a short radius of a program they have posters up all over the place, additionally schedules can be found online (for most of the schools)...which gets me to another point, many of the schools have horrible Sports information directors who aren't even on par with many high schools in terms of getting out information. You see this prevalent with a lot of the NJCAA schools in state where updates are hard to come by, because the AD may also be the baseball coach.

We need a goal of 100 per dual to shoot for regardless of team hosting...to start anyway. Many of these teams should honestly stop streaming live and free and make you come and pay in person to view, or pay to stream to make up for those who don't come. Even when the weather is good, there are low turn outs for many of our teams in Kansas. Up here in Nebraska I have yet to go to a dual for a college with less than 100 in attendance...I think we need to maybe look at hosting HS matches prior to college duals and allowing for free admission for team and coaches and charge the parents to get money.


Also the $$$ for paying for officials is not cheap. We need more to get certified for sure...but many don't want to officiate after they have seen how much heat they take for the pay they get!

Swayz pretty much nailed it. Especially on the part of athletic directorrs awareness of the sport and funding for programs. The health of the sport would improve drastically with a division one program televised on like fox sports Midwest. Alot of kids see college wrestling as a dead end compared to football and basketball. Although 1% of the 1% compete professionally in either sports, for bigger guys the elite athletes will pick those sports thinking that there is hope of riches one day because of big college games and professional level. Seems extreme but a few kids have really thought that. I think programs have to start going to near extremes for exposure and we need to push this talk of Kstate adding a program.

Pondbear and Swayz

DI Program in Kansas

There has been A LOT of work done on this several years back - 10 years ago in February it was presented it probably started getting worked on in 2005. A report that needs updating.


http://www.usawks.com/College/D1NCAAinKS.pdf


It is also the responsibility of the current Colleges to make their programs more visible, responsibility of the KWCA KS High School and Middle School programs to support the colleges as well and USA KS Wrestling - all levels. To fund a D-I program KS has 3 options. The KS Board of Regents will tell you it is up to each University - so you need AD and the rest of the administration on board. K-State and KU in general have more money PERIOD. KU more TV revenue by far or so it was the case back when the above study was done. Financial reports at that time had KU, KSU, and (Wichita was about even on cash flow in 2007). Wichita State had not arrived on the basketball scene back then - I imagine their revenue stream is much better (not having a football team) - but along with that so goes their expenses. A good example and the most recent D-I program that I can think of is Fresno State. Not sure how many DI programs have started since the report above. Form a committee and run with it - Get Involved! Don't forget if you want a men's program there needs to be an additional womens program. The dollar amounts are or were staggering when talking to an AD or School President to start a DI wrestling program in the Big 12.
Be prepared for a very very large endowment number and a 10 year funding plan.


smokeycabin

A lot of these problems would be solved simply by graduating seniors being more prepared for being a student athlete. Unfortunately there are way to many kids that struggle in the classroom or in the wrestling room and do not deal well with it. Now the coach has to worry more about grades and keeping kids out of trouble which takes time away from promoting the program and recruiting. Then when the kids quit (which is inevitable that about 25% of college wrestlers will give up the sport at sometime) the time they spent with that student athlete does not show the community how invested these coaches actually are. Additionally those kids no longer being on the roster means less support from their local wrestling communities which further hurts the programs. There are several in the Kansas wrestling community that have done incredible things in creating a lot of college opportunities and I applaud them for that. Too many of us complain about all these things and don't actually do very much to help these programs out though. Go to a dual, get to know the kids on the roster, make them feel at home. Invest in the kids as a community to help coaches keep them in the program.

... great post Curtis!!

I agree with Randy's statement. ALso, in regards to DI...why can't we do something like a few of the PSAC schools that are DII in everything and DI in Wrestling? Edinboro is a great example of this! Additionally how about just more local, like UMKC (I get that it is in Missouri, but it is close enough it may open up way more opportunities....

Another thing, let's quit having all star meets or tournaments at venues that don't sponsor college wrestling. The Mo-Kan could just as easily be held or rotated between larger high schools, or we can find a college in the radius we are nabbing talent for those events.