To your questions ...
Q: See link. I heard about this through word of mouth, the emotional and physical abuse by Coach Waller at Lock Haven. What I want to know ... Is this the way that all Division I coaches are? I would suspect not. Maybe all coaches are different and use different means to motivate, but abuse to me isn't the right way. In your experience, how are most Division I coaches wired, especially those at the top of the sport? Are they screamers? Are they talkers? What do they do to motivate?
-- Beau E.
Foley: Abuse isn't a word with a lot of flexibility. Wrestling coaches who tend toward physical or emotional abuse should seek some counseling and find a new career.
I know that many readers think of their coaching days and toughness of their leaders with fondness and nostalgia, but that type of leadership has failed with modern athletes. Professors at educational institutions around the world have studied the science of learning ... and none have concluded that slapping, screaming and bullying athletes is more productive than thoughtful leadership with predictable and fair outcomes for action.
In the article you linked, the complaint most often forwarded by the wrestlers was that Coach Waller's discipline came as a surprise, and his choices were often unpredictable and biased. Wrestlers were slapped, pushed and shoved, but equally as harmful was that they were asked to wrestle off an extra time or made to feel inadequate after failed weight cuts. Ultimately the athletes rebelled and spoke to the administration about the abuses and their frustration. Waller is out and replaced by Scott Moore. (I did not contact Coach Moore for background information.)
Today's top coaches are tasked with creating environments where there are no threats of physical abuse and the rumors of favorites and personal vendettas are removed. Cael suspended Ed Ruth just as he would a backup with a similar track record of offenses. It appeared to those watching from a distance that Cael didn't react to the shock of the event with more harshness, or less than was outlined in the preseason manuals. That type of calculation meant that the rest of the organization saw that their actions would be managed without prejudice. That builds trust and understanding between the coaches and the wrestlers.
I don't know for certain that Cael abides, without fault, to his system. However, in assuming that he has, it's easy to see how predictable outcomes for bad and subpar behavior allows him more time to focus on teaching techniques, scouting film and making adjustments. That's the stuff that makes a good coach great.
The nostalgia for the whistle-wearing middle school coach who convicted you of being a "lower than whale turd" for trivial failures, has no worth in modern day scholastic athletics.
In need of 24/7 support kids have outflanked parents and teachers. Tommy and Suzy don't need your emotional support when navigating the difficulties of failure. Students today have several options for their meaningless validations. They can hop online and post a "poor me" status on Facebook and feel their failures dissipate in moments. They can hop on Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram to relieve that sinking feeling. Young athletes today don't need to work harder and suffer through hours of introspection to discover what needs to be changed in order to live up to a coach's ideals about winning and proper behavior. They hit some keys and in moments feel better. Today's coaches either adapt to that reality, or they disappear.
There are still screamers, but they're being lost not only to administrative oversight, but their own frustrations. Coaches leave the business because they can no longer connect with anger. It takes a more delicate approach. The punching, the slapping, the needless abuses -- they're antiquated. The modern athlete likes a Twitter-savvy coach who understands their frustrations and validates their emotions.
Sure, every coach will still retain their method, but very few, if any, of the top coaches keeps yelling as anything but an infrequent, predictable reminder of why you don't want to break the rules.
Overall, the simple rule is that the modern wrestler won't compete for a coach that treats them with rudeness, much less one who throws them into a stationary bike.
Q: It seems to be overlooked that the Boston wrestling program had an endowment. Orin Smiley ('56) named the program in his estate. I read the amount was just shy of $1 million, which was used to fund scholarships. It would seem that now that the program is dropped the university will "absorb" those funds. If this is true, words cannot describe the underhanded low-life action of the athletic department. But unfortunately it should serve as a wakeup call to current programs. All endowments need to have some type of language written in, that if the university ever decides to drop the program, that the those funds cannot be used by the athletic department, rather redirected to other areas of the university to protect that "nest egg." I guess no one really thought that a university would do such a horrible thing, but your general thoughts on this? You coached at Columbia. The head coach and first assistant position are endowed. Is there anything there to protect that alumni contribution?
-- Frank C.
Foley: I really thought that endowments could not be taken back by the school, but after a few phone calls it sounds like donors can't always write program security into the agreement. Columbia does have a few endowed coaching positions, but those seem to be based on gentlemen's agreements between the donors and the athletic directors. Of course, with AD's changing more frequently, it's tough to know how long those agreements will last.
I agree that cutting the wrestling program at Boston was and is a form of larceny. They are taking money they know was meant for for one thing and not fulfilling their original agreement. Seems like the current administration is treating Boston Athletics like it would an investment property -- tearing out the favorites of previous owners and replacing it with something that they believe will increase the value of their product. New Balance's investment makes everything even more suspect. Boston AD Mike Lynch doesn't care or maybe even realize that he's just adding to a culture of education that is less about opportunity and diversity and more about cash. He wants to be part of big collegiate sports and to him cutting wrestling was another step in that direction -- a new kitchen even though the old one was just fine.
If the New Balance situation proves to be what some have rumored then Lynch took from Trev Alberts' management playbook and showed cowardice and a lack of no vision. Lynch took the easy way. He quit. He ran. He backed down.
Even if wrestling isn't reinstated at Boston that Lynch's reductive approach to education and athletics costs him the illustrious career he thought mortgaging the careers of thirty wrestlers was going to buy him.
UPDATE: Boston Globe article has several people on record denying any relationships between the New Balance donation and the elimination of wrestling. Lynch also states that the monies received is substantially less than $800k ...
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/12/27/wrestling-program-grapples-with-realities-extinction/szkon64EJSPcoLB0QkpfrJ/story.html
MULTIMEDIA HALFTIME
Weidman v. Silva II: Chris Weidman might be the nicest human on the planet, and now the baddest.
The Art of Learning
Q: Can Division I college wrestling have a better schedule? The season is very, very long. J Rob has pushed for more dual meets and I think I read a while back that Cael would like to see wrestling become a single-semester sport. The NCAA wrestling tournament also gets overshadowed by basketball. I see room for improvement. What are your thoughts?
-- Mike T.
Foley: Schedule changes are something that need to be considered by the NCAA Championships before the city bidding process is made official. Right now we are locked into 2018, making 2018-2019 season the earliest a change could be made by the NCAA.
I agree that the season is much too long. Unlike basketball, wrestling requires several of the same individuals to compete several times a week. Though the matches can range in quantity and quality, the amount of time spent managing weight and warming up is much more than that experienced by other sports. Less quantifiable, but more substantial is the emotional toll that five months of competition can have on a young wrestler.
The student-athletes shouldn't be forced to saddle semesters. It's an inelegant schedule that was allowed to grow and take root, but falls apart when considering the health of the student-athlete, and the possible financial benefits of moving the competition date away from NCAA basketball.
It would be interesting to find out what incentive the NCAA would have in making the change. Assuming they sell out an 18k seat arena for three days, the NCAA is making the maximum amount of money per championship. There is less residual media, but would there be a noticeable amount more if we moved the championships to December or April? ESPN's package with the NCAA has already been purchased and though several million dollars in revenue would speak to the sport's power, we aren't yet making that much in viewership.
I think the argument should be made around the physical and psychological health of the athletes. Wrestlers shouldn't be forced to sacrifice Thanksgiving and Christmas for a sport that could very easily slide forward or back a few months.
Who makes that argument? I don't know, but if done well and with consistency I think it could affect positive change.
Logan Stieber battling Anthony Abidin in Las Vegas (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)That match was awesome. I mean, wow. Zain is the real deal, PERIOD. He looked like he was coached well and had a plan, but Logan did not seem right He looked off -- like his head was in a different place.
What did you think?
-- Paul L.
Foley: I think we are experiencing a season of parity! I don't think for a second that In-Zain will repeat his performance and beat Logie Bear at Big Tens or NCAAs, but I love that his earlier win launched Edinboro's Mitchell Port into the top spot -- a place he could easily remain the rest of the season. That means that a guy who beat the world's No. 1 wrestler might be No. 2 at the NCAA tournament. Go figure!
Your question got me thinking about all the matchups at the 2014 NCAA Tournament ... Whoa.
Q: When you first started talking about how "the singlet is dead," I was one-hundred percent opposed to this idea. At the time, the idea of taking away the singlet made no sense to me, as the wrestling singlet is the only uniform that I have known as a wrestler. However, this past year marks my second year as the head wrestling coach at a low-income school just outside of Atlanta, Ga. While trying to recruit young men and women to come and toe the line in my wrestling room, the same question kept coming up over and over again, "Am I going to have to wear those tights?"
Overall, I would say that I have had over 100 wrestlers come and show interest in the wrestling team between my two years here. However, between last year's final numbers and this year's projections, I will be looking at less than 25 wrestlers who have completed a season. Of those seventy-five percent that did not complete a season, I would estimate that over half of those kids quit because they refused to wear a singlet.
So with that being said, I see now that evolving from the singlet to a rash guard and fight shorts could have a profound impact on the number of kids who decide to give wrestling a try, and will have nothing but a positive impact on the sport that we live and breathe.
My question to you is about the timeline of this happening. Let's pretend that right now, at this moment, every single athletic director of every high school around the nation agreed to get rid of the singlet. How long do you think it would take to implement this uniform change?
Keep in mind schools such as mine where funding is almost impossible to come by, and we JUST raised enough money for new singlets. So it would be a huge undertaking to raise money for more uniforms.
-- Kent W.
Foley: First, let us all learn from the NBA and Mark Cuban.
Assuming a design is already in progress, I think test products could be in place by the start of the 2014 summer leagues, with selected programs and athletic associations using the uniforms by the 2015-2016 wrestling season. The goal would be to have every athletic association in America approve the design for the start of the 2016-2017 wrestling season.
The first piece of progress that needs to take place is that somebody who likes lots and lots of money decides to put forth the effort and design a two-piece, non-bulgy wrestling uniform. Not the doublet, and not a bunch of cotton. The outfit will need to be high-quality, intelligently designed athletic wear. Shorts and T-shirts are an improvement, but whatever replaces the singlet will need to be more advanced and made of material with more stretch than cotton, but less shine and tension than spandex. Shorts will need to be baggy enough to not show the crotch, but tight enough to ensure there won't be too many snares.
Once the product is launched, it will only take a few months for coaches eager to draw in more athletes to see a rapid increase in enrollment and the people who made the product to take their first daily dive into a vault of gold coins.
COMMENT OF THE WEEK
By Jan
Nice mailbag today. Glad you are safe. As I am an American & world history teacher I am interested in hearing about your experience in South Sudan. We begin our colonialism unit in January.
On another note, attached you will find a pic of my fifth/sixth grade wrestling team. In my school district we built an "autumn wrestling league." The boys in the pic are wearing their wrestling uniforms. This is their competition apparel. Fight shorts and Dri-FIT shirts. They loved it! All 180 kids in the "league" wore a variation of the outfit. Thought you'd like to know someone was trying to change the singlet situation. The kid in the front was our only outlier.
Have a good holiday.
InterMat senior writer T.R. Foley answers reader questions about NCAA wrestling, international wrestling, recruiting, or anything loosely related to wrestling. Questions can be sent to Foley's email account or Twitter.
Do you want to read a past mailbag? Access archives.
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