Suddenly this topic dies, was it because the facts show otherwise? Or did everyone just seem to lose interest?
Alex,
I apologize to you and anyone else who was waiting for my replies. I posted on this topic ten days ago and after that post I decided to stay off the forum completely for at least ten days. I was getting a little too obsessed with the topic. This is the first time I have been on the website since my last post on the topic ten days ago.
I have read the posts since my last post. Some of my thoughts to them are:
1) Whatever the median weight is for juniors and seniors should be the starting point for making weights. If the median weight is somewhere around 152 then I think half the weights should be up to 152, and half over. Right now we just have 5 weights over 152 (160, 171, 189, 215 and 285) and 9 weights up to 152. At the very least we should have two more in my opinion if the median weight for juniors and seniors is around 152. I believe the median weight is probably actually higher than 152 and closer to 160 for juniors and seniors. I saw the National Health Examination Survey 1999-2002 and it showed that the mean weight for 15 years old boys is 150.3, 16 years olds 163.7, 17 years olds 166.3 and 18 years old boys 166.4. These mean weights have risen from their 1966-1970 survey signficantly when they were 135.5 for a 15 year old, 142.6 for a 16 year old, 149.6 for a 17 year old, and it did not list a figure for a 18 year old. Weights have increased significantly since wrestling's weight classes were first established. Wrestling has not adjusted weights to match this increase in size of high school students. Personally I really believe wrestling should be basing its weight classes on median weights of juniors and seniors which I think is at least 160 median weight. Weights that are dominated by freshmen do no really make sense to me at a varsity level of competition. Even if you take the median weight of all four classes in high school, I am confident that the median weight is signficantly higher than it was 25 to 30 years ago or whenever wrestling's current weight classes were established. Wrestling needs to start adjusting its weights to reflect it. I would prefer wrestling did it by just adding classes for the heavier wrestlers and not dropping weight classes. As a reminder if I could only add one at this time I would change our current heavier weights to this:
from 189 to 185, add a 200, change 215 to 225, and keep 285 at 285.
2) I will come back to this later. This took longer than I thought it would.
