Strategic Plan for Stamping Out the Forfeit
February 04, 2016

 

There can be little argument today in the sport of interscholastic wrestling that the forfeit is one of our greatest concerns. There are very few sports that fans attend and schools support that field less than the designated number of participants required for the contest. Due to the unique team structure of fielding teams by weight classes we have the potential to struggle in the full participation category. This might be one of our most important future commitments, that of "Recruitment" and "Retention" of participants.

Let's examine some of the causes and potential solutions to this alarming problem. You will hear many say that in general kids are less likely to get involved in extracurricular activities, the sport is too tough, sport specificity is the culprit, kids burn out from starting too early and too competitively. Some suggest fewer coaches stay in the profession and create a greater number of transitions thus a lack of consistency. I'm sure there are several other reasons we could all come up with, however if we don't do something collectively and dynamically in the very near future we begin to see our sport erode or vanish slowly as we currently know it. It's safe to say that we've done a pretty good job with the problem identification but have been less attentive to the formulation of solutions.





Comments