I think the answer lies in the most important aspects of this sport.
1. There are no gray areas- you either win or you lose. In our current culture that stresses, "we are all winners," wrestling can be a cruel wake up call- for kids and parents alike. If a kid keeps losing it is harder and harder to keep coming up with new pep talks.

2. The sport only gets tougher as the kids get older. There are fewer "easy matches" for 12/u vs. 6/u thus there are fewer opportunities to taste victory unless you are pretty good.

3. It is an individual sport. Having been on a losing football team and a winning wrestling team in high school I can testify that there is a difference. If the football team won we were ALL happy and if we lost we comforted each other. If the wrestling team won but I lost my match, it was still hard to jump up and down with glee.

4. Besides being an individual sport, it is a very personal sport. Having run track and field to a fairly high level of competition, I can tell you that getting beat on the track or in the long jump pit was very different than getting pinned (or just losing) on a mat in front of your friends and family.

5. Wrestling is hard. Losing a wrestling match usually hurts more than your feelings- it physically hurts.

6. Like marathoning I believe there is an intangible in your personality that you either have or you don't. Many run a marathon to say they did it at least once but few have that "something" that makes them want to do it over and over.

From this I would submit- wrestling simply isn't for everyone. We shouldn't try to force it on our kids. Encourage them to try it and help them all you can when they do, but once they have tried wrestling let them make the decision. Telling a kid to keep wrestling and they will learn to like it is like me telling you I can teach you to enjoy running over 20 miles. Having done both, I can tell you it takes the same level of dedication. Who is it that says our sport needs to be huge anyway? I would rather breed a generation of wrestlers who truely love the sport. Twenty years from now it will be these lovers of the sport who will introduce the sport to the next generation.

Okay, now time for solutions. Any ideas?

Westfehl, you comment is exactly right on.

Westfahl has your solution. It begins with the parents. Support is one thing. What some parents do on the side of the mat is another and just think what the kid has to go home to!

Yes, I know that yelling and rude parents are a problem. I know that when my son started to wrestle at a young age, I often asked him "why do you like it so much"? It was so hard for me to fathom him wanting to be in the middle of the gym with everyone screaming and yelling. He told me he just knows how to "tune them out". I think another reason is because these kids are thrown into a sport that last 5 months, spending a lot of time at practices or tournaments at such a young age. I have heard of some clubs limiting the time or tournaments with younger kids. I was wondering if they have found that the kids don't drop out as much as the others. I also do not think it has to do with tryouts. We are a 4A school. There is no tryouts for junior high and high school sports. If you want to wrestle in high school, you can go out and you will probably get a varsity spot because there is not that many to compete against. Same thing for basketball, football, track ect. In smaller schools, you find the same thing, no tryouts. However, kids are still not giving wrestling a shot. And, it is hard to convince parents and kids to start the sport because of the all day tournaments and cost involved.

Keep encouraging(sp) your kids. Trust me, it pays off. If I had givin up wrestling, I wouldn't be where I am today. I'd probably be out on the streets somewhere. Wrestling can teach young kids a lot at a young age. For exammple: Self-dicipline, self-respect, self-determination. How to keep going when they have nothing left to give. Hoe to fight the good fight and walk off the mat w/ thier head held high, win or lose. If it hadn't of been for wrestling, there's no way I would have survived bootcamp. A lot of the things that I learned as a young kid from wrestling came back to play while I was in bootcamp. When you have a drill instructor in your face yelling at you at the top of his lungs, it takes a lot of self-dicipline to just stand there and take it. It takes a lot of self-determination just to wake up every morning to start training. It takes a lot to go that extra mile, to hump that extra 2 miles, to push yourself harder on your final PFT. So like I said, keep encouraging your kids, even if it's not in wrestling, whether it be in school, church, what whatever activity it may be, one day they will thank you, trust me. I know I thanked my parents.

My son is talking of leaving wrestling for a reason that is probably quite different from most kids: he has discovered an activity that is even more intense. He is now a member of a nationally-competitive drum corps from San Antonio. At 13, he is the youngest person to ever make this organization (the average age is 18). Right now, we travel the ten hours each way once a month for three-day weekend camps. This group will start their spring training in June by practicing seven days a week from 8 AM - 11 PM, with 45 minute lunch and dinner breaks. Most of their show is performed at tempos up to 190 beats per minute, with many of them hauling equipment around that weigh up to 25 pounds. Once the competitive season starts, they will travel around 10,000 miles to perform in 30 competitions in 19 different states, traveling overnight on buses, practicing from 9AM - 6 PM on show days, and, when allowed the luxury of non-performance days, sleeping on gym floors. They eat off a mobile food truck by sitting on the curb, warm up every day with 3-4 mile runs to a defined tempo (like the Marines), and they pay over $1,200 in member fees for this privalege.
The only reward they get: the applause of the audiences.

Solutions--is there one? I have two children in wrestling for the 4th year. One of them has had great success and is very good, but still wants to quit. We let him pick his tournaments and try hard not to burn him out (he has only wrestled 15 matches this year). We tell him before every match to just do his best, win or lose and we give him just as many hugs when he loses as we do when he wins, but it doesn't change the fact that he doesn't want to spend his Saturdays sitting at a meet for maybe a total of 9 minutes on the mat by the end of the day. I really would love for him to stick it out at least another year because next year he will be at the top of his weight class, but this year has been enough of a struggle keeping him interested that I am not sure that is going to happen. (I do not believe in forcing my kid to play a specific sport, as long as they stay active). The biggest problem with my kids is that their friends play basketball and they want to do that too.

Congrats to your son ksdave and job well done to you for all it takes to allow him this experience. There is more to life than wrestling. There are other sports and activities that teach discipline,self-respect etc. Kids are influenced by their friends. Keeping kids involved in SOMETHING besides X-box and Halo tournaments is a challenge.

NurseKs;
Thanks for the kind words. Both his Mom and I got to experience this activity when we were younger, so we are really excited for him to make a former World Champion corps at such a young age. The ten-hour drives to San Antonio are a burden at times, but we feel it is worth it to keep him involved in such a life-changing activity. I am just glad, as you said, that he wants to do something besides X-box with his life.