Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 28, 1993 TAG: 9302280038
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
PUT ASIDE EGOS FOR KIDS
While attending the Group A and AA state wrestling tournaments, I noticed an article written about an old friend, Stan Parker, and his new approach to middle school wrestling (Neighbors section, Feb. 18). I also heard some rather negative comments from other friends about this "innovative" approach.When the Grundy youth wrestling program first began in 1972, we copied youth football, basketball and baseball leagues. In 1984, much to the dismay of some of our fans, we changed our philosophy. We asked ourselves what we wanted from our program and decided that from preschool through seventh grades we wanted to accomplish two goals. We wanted our little ones to complete each season saying, "Wrestling is fun," and "I am a wrestler."
We have one weigh-in before the season begins. We do not encourage or condone weight cutting during the season. We have coaches meetings before the season, with coaches who are hand-picked for their devotion to our system. We have mutually agreed to take the coaches' ego out of our program, therefore, no team scores are kept. The coaches meet before each dual and pair the kids as evenly as possible. A perfect dual meet would be 50 ties in 50 bouts!
We also have three one-minute periods, and some of the fellows get to wrestle twice in one night, while some have to wrestle their teammates to get a match. Some are very developed, some are not. Some learn their moves quickly, some do not. Some are very competitive, some are not. But all have fun!
We believe that children develop at different rates, if you exclude them from your program they cannot help you, nor can you help them. Sports are supposed to be fun for the kids involved, not a system to boost the egos of grownups. When a very matured youth quickly pins an underdeveloped youth, neither wrestler benefits from the experience. The winner begins to think he is great while the loser thinks he is no good and quits the program - often forever.
My sombrero is off to Stan and Howard Light for their willingness to innovate the way youth sports are operated. In response to the question posed, "Is the concept working?" just ask any parent, fan or wrestler from Grundy.
JIM WAYNE CHILDRESS\ PRESIDENT, GRUNDY WRESTLING CLUB