NWCA Outlines initiatives to strengthen wrestling

5/24/2009 9:46:08 PM

The NWCA Board of Directors has been very aggressive in three primary areas that we believe will have the greatest impact on saving and/or growing wrestling at all levels:  coaching development, student-athlete welfare, transitioning wrestling to a more media friendly sport. 

Over the past 4-5 years, we have been collaborating with many high level university administrators, elite coaches, businessmen, and the scholastic/collegiate governing bodies to develop the specific strategy outlined below.  

Coaching Development

Nobody plays a more important role in securing the future of wrestling than the head coach.  Successful coaches today must have strong CEO skills (marketing, fundraising, relationship building, organization, etc.).  Here is specifically what the NWCA is doing:

College Coaches

• Invested 300,000 to develop a one of a kind College Coaches Leadership Academy - the content is being developed by some of our nation's top coaches, athletic administrators and CEOs (with wrestling backgrounds). The NWCA has also scholasrshipped 30 of our neediest coaches so they can attend the annual convention to participate in the Leadership Academy.
• Improve Eligibility and Graduation rates of Wrestlers - The has recently developed several initiatives designed to measure each college teams eligibility and graduation rates. While wrestling has historically struggled in these rating systems, the NWCA is more committed than ever to improving our sport's position on the ladder. NWCA has retained the consulting servies of academic expert, Mark Gumble and a team of colleagues from the National Association of Athletic Academic Advisors (N4A) to work directly with the coaches of our most threatened teams. For the 2nd straight year, wrestling had the 2nd best improvement of any sport...our strategy is working.
• Developed a standard code of operating procedure manual to all college coaches designed to strengthen their CEO skills.

Scholastic level

• Recently completed an online course in collaboration with the NFHS titled “Fundamentals of Coaching Wrestling (for the novice middle school and high school coach). 
• Collaborated with our nation’s top high school coaches to release an online course designed to improve the recruitment and retention of wrestlers, ages 6 and above.
• Released an online course designed to reduce risk in coaching wrestlers.  

All totaled, the NWCA will have allocated over $200,000 toward the development and delivery of the above-mentioned youth, middle school, and high school initiatives.

Student-athlete welfare 

• Weight Management Reform- historically, unhealthy wt. loss has plagued amateur wrestling and has historically been the number one objection that parents and students cite for not wanting to participate in wrestling. In fact, between 1975 and 1998, high school participation in fell by nearly 130,000 in large part, due to the wt. loss aspect of our sport.  Since the implementation of the national weight management program, high school participation has grown by nearly 28,000.   
• Skin Infection – two years ago, the entire state of Minnesota shut down wrestling for 8 days with a wide spread outbreak of skin infection.  Since then, many leagues have been shut down for extended periods of time for skin infection outbreaks.  If we are not careful, this could shut wrestling down.  The NWCA, in collaboration with Fresh Health, LLC, secured a $150,000 grant to develop and deliver a 25 minute webinar that has been made available for FREE to all 50 state high school activity associations.  Over 7 million high school athletes in all sports now have unrestricted access to our educational video.  We are getting ready to release a companion video for the healthcare provider
• Sports Medicine Committee - The NWCA is convening a sports medicine committee to investigate the growing incidence of overuse type injuries in wrestling.   

Transitioning wrestling to be a more media friendly sport

• The NWCA has collaborated with the NCAA Wrestling Committee to implement a strategic plan that could lead to the adjustment of the wrestling season so our collegiate national championships do not compete for media attention with March Madness.  This plan also places more emphasis on the dual meet in such a way we can grow the spectator base.  This is very preliminary and will require much more dialogue over the next few months.
• The NWCA has made available, for FREE, to all media and fans, comprehensive team and individual wrestler statistics.  In addition, a live scoring system was piloted by over 50 colleges and will be available to all high schools and colleges for the 2009/10 year.  The end result will be unprecedented statistical data on teams and individual wrestlers that will be available to the media this upcoming year.  
• The NWCA allocates a significant amount of resources each year to nationally televise the All Star Classic and National Duals.     

Other Initiatives

The NWCA staff maintains regular communication with entire conferences and/or individual schools that are interested in adding wrestling (particularly D-II, III, NAIA enrollment conscious schools).  For example, we routinely do the following:

• We are currently working with a sponsor who has agreed to purchase a wrestling mat for every college in a specific conference that adds wrestling. 
• We are currently working with a Board of Trustee to get a new college wrestling program added at a small NAIA school in Nebraska. A year ago, we secured a wrestling mat and uniforms for the 1^st NAIA college wrestling team in Kansas.
• Every October, we mail a letter of support to every college President and Athletic Director thanking those that currently sponsor wrestling and asking those that don't consider doing so for a laundry list of reasons.  
• We currently sponsor a National Dual Meet Championship for eight NAIA women’s teams that would otherwise not have a national championship to participate in (the NCAA currently does not recognize women’s wrestling as a championships sport). 

 In summary, no one organization can save amateur wrestling by itself.  Instead, the NWCA is committed to working with many other entities that have expertise in different areas such as USA Wrestling, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, wrestling publications, wrestling websites, and collegiate/scholastic governing bodies.  The working relationship between all of these entities has never been better and together, we are sure there is a bright future for amateur wrestling.      

Mike Moyer

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