Wrestling writers

And a lot of times, that's where your stories are -- the losses. Even with a loss, averting bonus points instills a sense of pride within a wrestler. They know it's a team sport right to the individual tournaments; and even then, you still think about the team -- a seventh-place finish is worth much more than a two-and-out.

When a dual meet is close, that fosters plenty of good angles. Some just fall right onto your lap.

 

I covered the state tournament last year and most coaches said going in that the team title would come down to who did better in the wrestlebacks and earn the 3rd, 5th, 7th places etc. The bigger the tournament, the more important having good wrestlers in each weight class becomes.

Two of the three state classifications were decided early on, while one came down to the final match. If kid A won, his school won the team title. If kid C won, then team A and B would tie for the team title. Kid C was from the school that finished third.

I think wrestling fans are some of the most knowledgeable, so if you are confused, or want to know more about a matchup, just ask.

 

Wrestling fans are the most knowledgable and passionate group of fans I've ever been around. In the 9 years I've covered wrestling, I've learned there really is no semi-fan of wrestling. You either love it or hate it. If I had a nickel for everytime I saw a kid's mother up in the stands yelling about arm bars, half nelsons and spladles, I'd have a lot of nickels.

And wrestling fans are always willing to talk about wrestling. They like an outsider's opinion on their kids and want scouting reports and anything else you might know. So I've never hesitated to ask someone something that I did not know, because I'm very much still learning about the sport.

 

At the state tournament I covered you'd see fans from one school classification stop to see a match from a different class because they knew it was one of the top matches of the event. Two kids won their fourth individual titles and the whole arena stopped and gave them standing ovations. That was cool to see and obviously showed how knowledgeable the fans were. Also, in the class that came down to the last match, fans from the top two teams were going nuts during earlier matches where they didn't have kids because they new if team A or B's wrestler lost it meant a better chance for them to win the team title.

 

As the reporter next to me at last year's state championships said, "Wrestlilng is the NASCAR of high school sports."

 

The wrestling state tournament is my favorite event to cover. It's hectic, confusing and everything seems to happen all at once. But when that story is filed -- no matter how many champions you're writing about -- it's an amazing feeling. Way better than Friday night football.

 

How many mats do you have going on at your tournament? We have nine going on for most of the tournament, then they scale back once it gets to later matches.

 

I've been in two states for them, and they each began with six, went to four and two before going to one for the finals. Of course, one of them was a three-day tournament.

 

Also important, although not sure how your state works it ... when you get the lineups beforehand, a lot of times the wrestler listed at a given weight class will bump up (or down if the weight is changed) when matchups are announced. I know here in NJ, the actual matchup isn't cemented until the wrestlers both come to the center of the mat. So be sure to use your ears to know who is actually wrestling. Since you're new, you can be easily fooled. Trust me, I was that fool once.

 

Haha. An editor I worked with once said it's "more Greco than Roman."

If you're working in one of those pockets of the country where wrestling is huge, you're going to have to mentally acknowledge that your readers know more than you do, so don't feign expertise and be humble enough to commit to taking a crash course on it. In other parts of the country, you can treat it like any other fringe sport and write for a general audience (the interest is in the school, not the sport) rather than wrestling fans.

Where I grew up, wrestling drew bigger crowds than basketball (and sometimes even football), so although I didn't like the sport and never competed in it, we were surrounded by it and actually had to do it sometimes in gym class (trauma!), and in high school I was accustomed to listening to guys make themselves puke if they had lost their will and eaten lunch. So when I eventually had to cover it for a newspaper, the learning curve wasn't especially steep.

In a pinch, one easy angle is to look at last year's roster and see who's gone up in weight class or who's literally sweated his ass off to stay in the same weight class. Either way, it's easy to get them to talk about their weight -- they are obsessed with it and they are more conscious of it than they are about the zits on their face. The good ones are also totally looking ahead to tournament time and they really keep tabs on how this season is going for that guy who beat them in the quarterfinals last season. There are some intense personal rivalries with people well out of the county, sometimes fueled by having attended the same wrestling camp in the summer. You can also ask them about wrestlers from other local schools, especially those who aren't in their weight class -- how has so-and-so improved? More than most athletes, they really study each other. They may not want to tip their hand by dissecting an opponent's technique on the record, but they can give you good background that will help understand what to look for you when you cover the other school's match next week.

 

Dual tournament last weekend: All the heavyweight had to do for his team to win the championship dual and the tournament was not get pinned. That team was leading 42-36.

With under 20 seconds left to go in the third period, that kid acts like he heard a whistle and starts to walk back to the middle. But there wasn't a whistle and the other kid got the pin.

The dual ends 42-42 and first place in the tournament ends up being determined by the national federation's fifth tie breaker: Which team had its wrestlers score first in more matches in the championship dual. Luckily for the losing heavyweight, his team won that tie breaker, so he didn't cost his team the match.

It was the first year for the tourney to have eight teams, so they had pools, then matched up the pool champs in the finals. The first year they have a true championship match and it ends like this. Couldn't have had a better lead fall into my lap than that.

 

Same thing here in Kansas (Where duals still always start at 103). Don't write your lineups down in ink when you cover duals, especially if there's some sort of championship at stake -- tournament, league, state, whatever -- because bumping wrestlers up and down is a major part of the strategy. League duals will have up to three or four changes. A coach may have a state-ranked guy at 130, but he bumps him up to 135 so that he can take on the state-ranked kid in that match. Stuff like that happens a lot.