Wrestling Blogs - Rick Addante

Ben Askren made a great post about Saving College Wrestling. However, I'd would add a few more intangible points though too. We need to be better at helping ourselves. How? We as a sport need to stop whining, complaining, and playing the victim in this title IX thing and losing all of our programs, even if we don't mean to be doing it. Heck, we are WRESTLERS, we should know better.

If the ref keeps hitting you for stalling when you clearly aggressive, or if he doesn't award points that you clearly earned, or if he gives the opponent a take down or point even if we still have control, we all know that playing the victim doesn't get our points back and doesnt get us points next time. What do you do? You man up, and do even more work, stop giving the puppy dog eye to the ref and crowd, stop expecting the crowd or the coach to beg and complain a few points on your behalf, and you Find a Way to Win.? Right now, wrestling as a sport is exhausted, in the 3rd period, down by a major, with the ref against us, a stalling opponent, and at an away crowd. We know how to handle this effectively, and we simply are not doing it.

Also, we need to help ourselves, this time by the way we collectively act, on the mat, off the mat, and in the classroom. We have some tremendous mountains of character and integrity in our sport, but also plenty of the other end too. Unfortunately, people often hold us accountable for our stereotypes. The first thing anyone thinks of when you tell them your a wrestler: "oh man, those guys are crazy; I knew a wrestler once, and he was crazy". (while I think this is a great hallmark of our sport). We do need to do a better job of representing ourselves.

There should NEVER be a case of academic dropping of a program. We can not give them the noose to hang ourselves with, and Eastern Illinois was a disgrace. They should have known better. We as a sport should know better.

We need to be EXEMPLARS of our community. Each college and high school team should have MANDATORY COMMUNITY SERVICE. On my college team, that meant my teammates had a plea bargain with the prosecutor; we need this to instead be a proactive effort by every coach to ensure that we are clear pillars of our community, teaching positive values to the athletes, and translating these competitive athletics lessons towards giving back to our local communities. Academic Ivory tower types eat this stuff up, and it behooves us to do so.

We need to commit to better grades across the board, and must not tolerate anything less. Cornell guys should be tutoring Ithaca guys, Princeton guys should be tutoring Rider University wrestlers. Columbia could have been helping out the Montclair guys, etc. etc. We are too small of a community, dependent upon each other, not to reach out and make sure that no other team drags us down by association when we have the ability to help them, and in doing help ourselves.

Coaches need to keep an ACTIVE log of community service activities and hours logged by their athletes; they need to keep active tabs on grades, B's are simply not acceptable at this stage in the game. Its tough to drop a team that has an A average, Deans list, has raised thousands of dollars for kids with leukemia, and reaches out to mentor and volunteer to the local underprivileged kids or autism foundation with volunteer work. When coaches can get the media signed onto reporting these benefits of the team tr-annually in the paper or TV news, its not only tough to drop a program, but its also EASIER to raise funds for your own teams fund raising drives. Donors would not only be supporting athletes and students, but really Character and People of Integrity who are pillars of the community due to their continued financial support. We need to pay it forward, even more than we are doing now.

This can all be done from the kids club level , to junior high, high school, college, and professional elite levels. We need to set the bar higher for ourselves, just like when we are down by a major in the 3rd period and gassed. We cant ask the crowd (American public, who simply don't care) to harass the ref for bad calls anymore, we need to simply shoulder it and make it happen despite the bad calls, and stop letting the ref decide the match.

Behavior. Some wrestlers are Saints. Others maybe not so much. Some of the best people I know are wrestlers, and some of the worst I know as well. I don't pretend not have my own problems through the years, but we simply can not tolerate this anymore. Boys Can Not Be Boys. Out of season, we have to be outstanding exemplars, and we have to control ourselves better than we typically do. Complain about this all you want, but the simple facts are that as you complain, our sport if being suffocated by us choking ourselves. No college administrator, at a primarily liberal industry of academia, who is probably a geek-grown-up, is going to lift a finger to help the guys who act like many wrestlers are known for acting. I dont like the point either, but its a hard reality that we have to change our ways as a community.

Its the end of the 3rd period winding down, we are down by a major, and tired, against a stalling opponent and blind, lying ref, and a hostile crowd. Its time to man up and get the job done as a sport community from the top to the bottom, and it wont be pretty. But this is what we do, this is what we are trained to do, and this is what we are best at. We must stop letting the ref decide the match, and look inward, realize our own major flaws, fix them FAST, keep the right technique and form, and execute cleanly, sharply, and powerfully, not leaving anything out there for the crowd, ref, or opponent to use against us. We dont have to win by points. We can still Pin to Win.

its clear that there is some sort of unwritten grudge or vendetta out against wrestling in the world of college atheltics, since we get hundreds of programs cut, but golf, cross country, water polo, soccer, etc. etc. keep their programs despite never making any money, attracting many fans, or even charging for admissions. SOMETHING is different, we are being treated unfairly different, and NO ONE wants to speak up and simply say why. AD's give every other excuse in the book to hide behind (See Arizona and Oregon...) but we can never get to the main point of why people simply dont like wrestling or wrestlers, and refuse to have us around. think about that. What is NOT being said about us and why they are cutting us? We as a sport need to change our ways and change our image. I love being a meathad, personally, but we can not act like it anymore, or we will be dead meat.

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:) Happy Hunting.