Sports in Society: College Wrestling

Introduction

College or collegiate wrestling, also called folkstyle wrestling, is practiced in the United States at the post-secondary level. The sport is also practiced in elementary, high, and middle school. It is noted that the style and rules of college wrestling differ from the Greco-Roman wrestling and Olympic styles of freestyle. The college wrestling programs are found in all states of the USA, plus universities such as Simon Fraser in Canada. College wrestling differs based on scoring and practicing styles. For instance, the wrestler is not given the exposure points for forcing the shoulders of the opponent to rotate quickly and get exposed to the mat. The college wrestler must control one shoulder of the opponent on the mat and force the other shoulder to the mat at an angle of 45 degrees for three seconds. This situation generates the points called the near fall points. I chose this sport because it is entertaining and enjoyable, especially when watching live.

I have attended college wrestling since joining high school with my parents, which never bothers me. College wrestling is among the sports I find comfort with, and it is part of me since it gives me room to dance with stars. I also like this sport because wrestlers are our friends, icons, legends, villains, peers and heroes. I enjoy watching these people because they do extraordinary things we only dream about and accomplish feats we have never achieved, even though we aspire. Some people like Vince McMahon argued before the New Jersey Athletic Commission in 1989 that wrestling is not a sport because the matches sport have predetermined outcomes. The aim was to ensure his business was exempted from licensing fees for sports. But in a real sense, wrestling is a combat and martial art sport involving opponents grappling and striving to gain an advantage through different techniques based on a given set of rules.

History of College Wrestling

The origin of college wrestling is traced back to the indigenous styles of folk wrestling in Great Britain. Studies indicate that wrestling styles were already among the native Americans practiced, especially by the tribes in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. This made North American French and English settlers find wrestling the best sport for passing time. Tribes started organizing local champions and contests between them in every settlement on the level of regional (Kroshus et al., 2018). The noted point is that folk styles of wrestling became popular in the United States, and they started being practiced in athletic clubs and gymnasiums in the mid and late 19^th century. This stimulated the sponsoring of tournaments, and wrestling started being promoted in the United States and across the globe by the professional circuit of wrestlers. Research indicates that the collar and elbow style of wrestling was typical among the Irish people who later migrated to the USA.

In essence, this style was a jacket wrestling variant, requiring the wrestlers to grasp each other at the start of the match by the collar with one hand and the other by the elbow. This position was used to enable wrestlers to realize the fall, and they would continue grappling while standing on their feet and the ground until they achieved a fall. This style was later spread by the Irish immigrants in the United States (Kroshus et al., 2018). The other style of wrestling that became popular in the United States was the Cornish wrestling. Similarly, college wrestling became famous and started being recognized as a legitimate sport in the 18^th century regardless of its roughness. Several United States presidents were among the people who were known well for their techniques of wrestling.

In the 19^th century, the catch-as-catch-can was another technique in the United States that became more popular in festivals and fair events. Studies have added that the success of George William Flag, who was a wrestling champion of the Potomac Army, played an essential role in enhancing the collar and elbow style to gain ground after the Irish immigrants refined it. Afterward, freestyle wrestling emerged at the end of the Civil War as a distinct sport and rapidly spread across the United States (Kiningham & Shadgan, 2020). This resulted in the emergency of professional wrestling during the end of the 19^th century. American wrestling started being organized in the 1880s, with matches conducted often alongside boxing tournaments, and gymnastic meets in athletic clubs. Wrestling sports became famous because of the necessary avenues provided by industrialization, cities’ growth and the frontiers’ closure.

The Amateur Athletic Union started sponsoring competitions in freestyle wrestling by the end of the 19^th century. Similarly, colleges and universities started competing in tournaments and dual meets at the start of the 20^th century. These tournaments and dual meets are spread across high and lower-grade schools. College wrestling evolved into an American sport during the 20^th century and started being regulated by the National Collegiate Athletic Associations.

College Wrestling as an Amateur

College wrestling is an amateur because it is strictly for sport, and competitors are not paid. The skills acquired in amateur wrestling provide a foundation for professional wrestling in the professional arena. This amateur wrestling is practiced at the collegiate, Olympic, schools and other levels of amateur competition. Studies indicate that Greco-Roman and Freestyle are the two international wrestling styles performed at the Olympic games (Kiningham & Shadgan, 2020). The amateur style of college wrestling, also called folkstyle wrestling, is practiced in secondary schools, universities, colleges, and middle schools by the young age groups. This amateur wrestling has witnessed an increased interest due to raised popularity in mixed martial arts.

The college wrestling awards points for reversals and takedowns during international styles. The penalty points are awarded based on the current rules that penalize the moves that affect the limb or life of an opponent participant. The points in college wrestling are also awarded for escape, where the wrestler runs to a neutral position from a defensive position. It is also awarded points for near fall and riding time or time advantage (Kiningham & Shadgan, 2020). The format of college wrestling is two to three minutes in the international style because it is an amateur sport. The wrestling student must get more points than the opponent or 10 points lead in two rounds to win the match. Many coaches have indicated that college wrestling is televised as the NCAA championship. This enables spectators across the country to watch on televisions such as ESPNU and ESPN.

In addition, the college wrestling competitions are also streamed for free on stations such as Sling, Fubo TV and other live TV channels. In addition, college wrestlers do not attract sponsorship directly. However, some changes and expansion have occurred in women’s college wrestling, such as creating opportunities for women to compete with the best female athletes in NAIA or NWCA’s small schools. Schools are now sponsoring women recruited to Power 5 conferences for wrestling. The other opportunities for wrestling-college students are the approval of individual NIL deals by the NCAA or students benefiting from the monetary allowances for their image, likeness and name. These deals compensate student-athletes for endorsing brands or images used by corporations.

Is College Wrestling Healthy or Unhealthy?

College wrestling is unhealthy because the competitors or student wrestlers engage in patterns of cutting weight before going to the match and also gain the weight back following the contest. This process is also known as weight cycling patterns. Studies indicate that about one-third of school wrestlers engage in practices of cyclic weight control over ten times per season. Some practices of weight cycling include increasing exercise, decreasing caloric intake and artificial dehydration strategies (Jones et al., 2019). Simultaneously, most competitors or student-athletes are found by studies to engage in more than two of these practices. This affects the body negatively and translates to reduced performance. It sometimes causes death. The noted point is that the store of energy in the body can be manipulated to reduce the carbohydrate and available water stores in the short term. This happens when the student’s wrestler increases body exercises while restricting the overall intake of calories through reducing the intake of carbohydrate in the diet.

The approaches are noted to be risky, especially if the student-athletes are planning to compete at optimal levels. For instance, the exercise can cause excessive muscle soreness and fatigue if they are designed to cut additional and excessive weight. It also causes a risk if the athletes restrict calories associated with the loss of perceived energy and hunger along with the muscle glycogen reduction. Restricting carbohydrate diets makes an athlete experience fatigue during exercises. To meet performance needs, the athlete might require glucose replacement to meet the needs of performance during the competition (Ratamess et al., 2013). College wrestling has also made students’ athletes to manipulate the contents of the intestine and stomach so that to cut the weight before competition. They do this by restricting food intake or by using the laxatives. These methods make athletes to reduce muscle glycogen and perceived energy loss. They also affect the body by causing electrolyte imbalances and impairment of cardiovascular functions.

Further, dehydration becomes a real concern for students’ athletes when they try cutting the weight through reducing the intake of fluids or sweat loss. Subjecting the bodies of students’ athletes to intentional dehydrations causes significant medical issues like impairment of body parts, death and performance. Excessive dehydration of about three to five percent causes muscular endurance and reduced strength which results in reduced performance of athletes (Kiningham & Shadgan, 2020). It also causes reduced blood volume, plasma, decreased flow of blood in the kidney, cardiac output compromise, thermoregulation impairment and reduced stores of liver glycogen. These problems make a student’s wrestler to experience life-threatening illness, kidney failure, rhabdomyolysis and cardiac arrests.

The future of College Wrestling

The coaches of smaller college wrestling have indicated that the future of college wrestling is thriving slowly because these sports are only found in small liberal art schools. The other indicator of college wrestling thriving slowly is the reduced number of wrestlers from 3,428 to 2550. This represents 26% of participants who moved in Division I. The reason college wrestling is thriving slowly is that it is quite expensive to be run in schools especially if they add grants, aid, or scholarships to help student-athletes, salaries for coaches and other necessary expenditures (Dorsh, 2016). The college wrestling for men is noted to increase at division II and division III levels compared to division I because this division lack enrolment drive. The division II and III levels are thriving at high speed because of the increased opportunities for students at these levels. The number of high school wrestlers participating in men’s wrestling was 238,924 by 2022, while those in college wrestling was 12,377.

Studies have noted that women’s wrestling is one of the top high school sports that is growing faster compared to men’s wrestling. This is because of the increased opportunities for women in college wrestling, like chances to study liberal arts degree. The noted point is that the country has over 16 club programs and 29 collegiate programs with more 32,616 high school girls participating as wrestlers and 2,052 participating in women wrestling (Dorsh, 2016). Similarly, women’s wrestling is increasing at division level II and division levels III because of increased opportunities at these levels.

Figure 1: growth in women’s wrestling at division levels (Dorsh, 2016).

College Wrestling Based on Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality

In regards to gender, the NCAA and NAIA have established college wrestling for women and men in college. These bodies have established over ten women’s wrestling colleges that competes against each other in the women’s college wrestling association regardless of their division levels. Studies also indicate that the USA has over 400 men’s wrestling colleges across three division levels, NCAA Division 1, 2 and Division 3 (Twersky, 1973). About 10% of high school wrestlers in 2020 were female, making women’s wrestling the fastest growing sorts in high school. This reveals that both men and women are given equal opportunities to participate in wrestling sport.

In addition, racial discrimination is noted to exist in college wrestling against the minority athletes. Racism starts during the recruitment process of students’ athlete in college wrestling teams and also during the game. The referees also cited to blatantly makes poor calls against the black players so that to favor the whites (Twersky, 1973). Mark Hall, who was a former wrestler at Penn State University, revealed that there are bad coaches and bad refs in wrestling but also good refs. The Defiance College wrestling team recently requested the head coach to resign for making racist remark against one of the black players, Watson-Powel. This has continued to happen despite colleges and NCAA establishing non-discrimination policies. Social class affects the performance of college wrestling because college student athletes from low class experience pains in the field but they fail to report and seek medical attention (Grant & Lee, 2014). The National College Athletic Association has indicated that the health of student athletes improves when they come from higher economic status, and poor health outcomes are associated with those from lower socioeconomic status.

Protests

The student athletes of college wrestling engaged in street protests striking against the racism’s practices from coaches. They knelt outside courthouses, campuses and at the capital and filmed videos to call on coaches to stop racial discrimination in stadiums and classrooms. These students led the chants in the protests and refused to play as a way of calling for change in the college wrestling sports (Blinder & Witz, 2020). The student athletes in the United States have also engaged in protests calling for change in the issues affecting African- American people like racism and discrimination. The College wrestling is not coed but single since women and men play in different parts. The college wrestling teams for women play against other women’s teams from other colleges or universities, while men play against other male wrestling teams. This prevents wrestlers from engaging in sexual immorality.

References

Blinder, A., & Witz, B. (2020, June 12). College Athletes, Phones in Hand, Force Shift in Protest Movement. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/sports/ncaafootball/george-floyd-protests-college-sports.html

Dorsch, K. (2016). The Future of Collegiate Wrestling Isn’t At Division I Level. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristidosh/2016/03/17/the-future-of-collegiate-wrestling-isnt-at-division-i-level/?sh=64beb3d62fcc

Grant, K. S. L., & Lee, V. J. (2014). Wrestling with issues of diversity in online courses. Qualitative Report, 19, 12.

Jones, M. T., Oliver, J. M., Delgado, J. C., Merrigan, J. J., Jagim, A. R., & Robison, C. E. (2019). Effect of acute complex training on upper-body force and power in collegiate wrestlers. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 33(4), 902-909.

Kiningham, R., & Shadgan, B. (2020). Wrestling. Sports-related Fractures, Dislocations and Trauma: Advanced On-and Off-field Management, 981-984.

Kroshus, E., Utter, A. C., Pierpoint, L. A., Currie, D. W., Knowles, S. B., Wasserman, E. B., … & Kerr, Z. Y. (2018). The first decade of web-based sports injury surveillance: descriptive epidemiology of injuries in US high school Boys’ wrestling (2005–2006 through 2013–2014) and National Collegiate Athletic Association Men’s wrestling (2004–2005 through 2013–2014). Journal of Athletic Training, 53(12), 1143-1155.

Ratamess, N. A., Hoffman, J. R., Kraemer, W. J., Ross, R. E., Tranchina, C. P., Rashti, S. L., … & Faigenbaum, A. D. (2013). Effects of a competitive wrestling season on body composition, endocrine markers, and anaerobic exercise performance in NCAA collegiate wrestlers. European journal of applied physiology, 113, 1157-1168.

Thomas, R. E., & Zamanpour, K. (2018). lnjuries in wrestling: systematic review. The Physician and sportsmedicine, 46(2), 168-196.

Twersky, M. (1973, April 8). Racism Is Charged in Wrestling. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/08/archives/racism-is-chargedin-wrestling-some-scattered-instances.html#:~:text=He%20says%20blacks%20are%20purposely,sport%20with%20few%20minorities%20participating.%E2%80%9D