(Long post)

No not at all. Then again in a high school match there is 6 minutes in regulation, and most don't really even care about stalling if their wrestler is the offending party. There are a few coaches around the state, and I hate to drop names but I think it illustrates my point, like Jason Brown of Anderson County who actually recognizes when his own wrestlers are stalling and actually asks the referee to call his wrestler for stalling. This is in stark contrast to many others whose words to the referee is to insist they call the other guy.

Finally to my point, if a wrestler didn't do enough in the first 5:15 to 5:30 of the match to find him/herself trailing in points, you can't possibly expect the referee to throw out 2 1/2 periods worth of work by the other guy just so the other guy can have a chance.

It's sort of like the Victory formation in football. Granted there is no rule against kneeling on the ball in football, but the idea is the same. It's interesting how the ebb and flow of opinions on stalling in high school wrestling change. Lots of people clamor for stalling to be called more, and yet when it is, inevitably yet another countless post on the topic ends up on this forum when some hot shot referee "decided" the match unfairly by calling a wrestler for stalling near the end of the match.

Several years ago Missouri tried a bold experiment within its borders which essentially amounted to referees being instructed to call wrestlers for stalling in neutral for backing out of the 10 ft circle without an ensuing takedown shot attempt. The number of stall calls shot up exponentially. Within just a couple of years of that experiment they decided that was too extreme.

Bottom line is one group of people want stalling called one way, the other group wants it called the other, and ultimately both groups really only want stalling called when it benefits them or the system they teach. Much the same way that one group wants officials to "stay out of the match" and the other wants them controlling the flow of the match. If the NFHS put out a survey today asking my opinion of whether stalling was an issue in our area I would answer ... no not really.