From Sportsfan02 on High School Wrestlers topic 3/17/04: "..., I would worry about all those openings in the younger age groups. While I don't have any numbers to back this up, in scanning the D2 results it appears to me that we have a far lesser number of wrestlers in the 12U, 10U and 8U ages. Certainly, we have fewer than the late 80's early 90's. This should be a warning sign for our sport. If I'm right, and the numbers are continuing to fall as in years past we have a HUGE problem and we better get to addressing it."

I also think this is an observation that is worth discussing and agree that we better start addressing it now. I think especially now is a good time to do it because it is right now during the next 3 weeks that we will have the greatest amount of interest and discussion on the forum. From the past few years I know it just about dies off shortly after the next three weeks.

I too am concerned at what appears to me to be a drop off in overall numbers participating overall. I think we really suffer in comparison to youth basketball participation at this time of year. I believe this hurts wrestling's development and is part of the reason why we see wrestling programs being dropped at the college level and why we get very limited high school and college coverage in the media. I believe if we could reverse that trend maybe we would start to see better media coverage and maybe even a few more college programs could be added eventually.

Maybe sportsfan02 and I are not correct in that this is a potential problem that needs to be discussed and addressed now. If most people do not believe this really is a trend or potential problem then I guess it is a moot point. I would be interested in other thoughts and possible solutions. I know we often have differences of opinion on topics, but I think one common one that we all could agree on is that we would like to see wrestling's popularity and participation grow. Maybe we could find some constructive ideas and ways to do that.

From my parent's perspective I believe things like more split format tournaments could help make wrestling more appealing to a lot of families. I also think we need to get parents who are not coaches or club officers more involved. It might be beneficial to have a parent organization within Kansas youth wrestling.

I also believe we need to advertise our sport better to families who have no experience with it. We need to sell it to them. I am sure that most of you like me believe that we have the best character building sport available for young kids. We need to sell that message to other potential wrestling families. I think more families should be choosing wrestling over basketball. I believe there are a lot of very good athletes right now playing basketball and that many of these athletes would be better wrestlers than basketball players.