Making weight in wrestling is everything, but this season and beyond making weight will be a little bit different.
In early April of this year, the National Federation of High Schools, which helps set the rules for high school sports throughout the country, quietly announced a change in 10 of the 14 weight classes at the prep level.
The minimum weight changed from 103 pounds to 106. Several other weights also saw an upward shift and there is a now a fifth weight class at 170 or above (there used to be only four).
“The rules committee was able to analyze data from almost 200,000 wrestlers across the country, with the goal to create weight classes that have approximately seven percent of the wrestlers in each weight class,” said Dale Pleimann, chair of the NFHS wrestling rules committee.
The goal of the NFHS was to evenly distribute wrestlers so that an equal amount (7.14 percent) competed at each weight class. Reaching that goal may eventually happen, but the changes have met with mostly negative reactions among local coaches.
“I think it’s terrible for the sport, to be quite honest,” Lyons Township coach Griff Powell said. “You look at most programs, and they have the majority of their guys in the middle weights in that kind of natural bell curve. For a program like us, it doesn’t hurt as much because we have a ton of kids out for wrestling. We’ve got little guys, middle weights and tons of big guys, too. But I’m sure there are other programs out there that are struggling to fill those holes.”
Several coaches echoed Powell’s sentiments, saying the new weight class system is narrowing the amount of athletes that can participate.
“I feel the change was not needed in the middle weights,” York coach Terry Clark said. “Most wrestlers fall between 130 and 160 pounds, and we eliminated a weight from that group and added it to the heavier weights.”
Previously there were seven weight classes that fell between 125 and 160; now there are six. Where there used to be four weights at 170 or above, there are now five.
“We’re flooded between 113 and 152,” St. Charles North head coach Ken Moromi said. “We have very few big guys so (the change) isn’t helping me at all.”
“I do not have a problem with the new weights, but I don’t see a big need for more weights at the heavy end,” Batavia coach Ben Morris said. “I just didn’t see a big demand for that.”
Many of the gripes from coaches have to deal with the loss of classes in the middle weights, where most high school boys would slot best. Geneva head coach Tom Chernich would have preferred losing one of the lighter weights and adding it to the middle.
“I’d like to start at 115 pounds,” Chernich said. “Last year at 103 and 112 there were only three seniors that qualified for state in Class 3A in those two weight classes combined. Not to slight the little guys, but in our program freshmen start at 103, now 106, every year. You look at other sports there are almost never freshmen on varsity, let alone starting on varsity. If we started the weights at 115 you’d get more juniors and seniors competing downstate.”
So far, the NFHS change has met with criticism from most coaches, but one thing is a near certainty — in a sport where the athletes adapt to wrestling at different weights, athletes and coaches will adapt to the new format sooner rather than later.
Weighing in
THEN NOW
103 106
112 113
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