boo,

I appreciate your compliment. I will continue to speak out for more weight classes for heavier wrestlers. I am also going to petition the national governing body for this to happen. I have already e-mailed them asking what I need to do to submit a formal petition. This is something that will probably not happen soon. I doubt anything will happen before my son who is going to be a junior next year graduates, but I hope it happens way before your 9 year old goes to high school. It is going to take the support of a lot of people like yourself to make it happen. I would ask you to stay in touch with the situation and get other parents of heavier wrestlers that your son competes with involved. I would also encourage you to promote the sport of wrestling to his football teammates. We need more of the football players wrestling and is best to start wrestling at your son's age. The two sports compliment each other and in my opinion all football players should wrestle, but I think wrestling needs to make some changes with additional weight classes at all levels from kids to college to attract more of them into the sport of wrestling. Tell the parents of your son's teammates that wrestling is the greatest sport in the world for kids. You would be telling them the truth. My son started in the first grade and these last ten years of wrestling for him have been tremendous experience for him. Wrestling is a character building sport for young people. It takes a lot of character and courage for a young person to get out on that mat one on one in front of all those people. Let all your son's friends know that. And again I appreciate your support on this topic. We are going to have to get a lot of parents of upper middle weight to heavyweight wrestlers voice their support to the national governing body to make this happen someday.