2017 UWW Senior World Championships

USA's World-Level Success: Is It Sustainable?

USA's World-Level Success: Is It Sustainable?

What a summer! The United States wrestling teams enjoyed unprecedented success at all age levels. Out of the 27 total medals won this year 13 of them were gold. If you are one that likes to revel in accomplishments the medal count can be found below. Me

Sep 14, 2017 by Michael Malinconico
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What a summer! The United States wrestling teams enjoyed unprecedented success at all age levels at the 2017 World Championships last month in Paris. Out of the 27 total medals won this year, 13 of them were gold. If you are one who likes to revel in accomplishments, the medal count can be found below.

The U.S. men's freestyle team won its first senior world championship as a team in 22 years, and the junior men's freestyle team won a world title for the first time since 1984. It's hard to explain to young athletes just how important this type of success is to the future of wrestling in America. In order to give these accomplishments scope, we have to recognize that this is not an overnight thing. This is a plan that has been brought to fruition over the better course of a decade.

If we want to continue to have the same success, we must implore the young leaders in our sport not to rest on their laurels. Identifying the markers for what's been accomplished so far will play a part in the success in the future.

Regional Training Centers

When you start taking a look at the success that USA Wrestling has had this year, you don't have to dig very deep to see that the regional training centers model is a big part of it. After the Beijing Olympics in 2008, USA Wrestling pushed to make the RTCs more prevalent in the wrestling landscape. 

Under the direction of Zeke Jones, a small subcommittee of athletes and coaches were put together to form what we now know as the regional training center circuit. Eric Guerrero, then an assistant coach at Oklahoma State, was on that original subcommittee along Andy Hrovat and Lou Rosselli back in 2009.

Funding Age Group World Teams

It's an RTC world, and we're all living in it. But as you can hear in the interview above with USA Wrestling executive director Rich Bender, "When we started to pay attention to and provide resources and support for age group kids to wrestle freestyle at a higher level, that's probably when a lot of reasonable people say that about the time when we started to change the trajectory a little bit."

Exposure

We can't downplay the media's role in this either. Make no mistake about it. When FloWrestling started making a big deal out of the world championships and bringing coverage to the grassroots level, you could almost feel the shift and importance from local and state success and to national- and world-level success.

Clean Wrestling

The proverbial elephant in the room that no one likes to talk about is doping. Since Rio, WADA has kept an extremely scrupulous eye on all Russian sports programs, including the wrestlers. There were a few high-level Russian athletes who mysteriously did not compete at Russian Nationals this year when rumors started to circulate that WADA was making an appearance.

What Now?

Bender has a clear vision on how to continue the success that we've enjoyed this summer: "More, now than ever, there is a connection between our collegiate systems and our national team program," he said.

The relationship between the RTC's and collegiate programs must continue to grow if we want to sustain this level of success. When asked what, specifically, the wrestling community can do to help continue the success that our world teams have attained in 2017, Guerrero said, "Go out and support your local regional training center. Support doesn't always come in the way of writing a check. Go watch one of their practices. Tell someone about the success that their athletes are having. The support of the community will directly affect the success of the RTC and the athletes that train there."

In case you were wondering just how successful USA Wrestling was this summer, here is a list of every world medalist that we had at world competition.

2017 USAW Total Medals -- 29

13 Gold, 9 Silver, 7 Bronze

Cadet Total Medals -- 9

5 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze

Greco: 1 Gold
Gold -- Colton Schultz

Women's Freestyle: 2 Silvers
Silver -- Emily Shilson, Alara Boyd

Mens Freestyle: 4 Gold, 2 Bronze
Gold -- Kurt McHenry, Will Lewan, Aaron Brooks, Dan Kerkvliet
Bronze -- Jacori Teemer, Gavin Hoffman

Junior Total Medals -- 11 Medals

5 Gold, 4 Silver, 2 Bronze

Greco: 1 Gold, 1 Silver
Gold -- Kamal Bey
Silver -- Cevion Severado

Women's Freestyle: 1 Gold, 1 Bronze
Gold -- Maya Nelson
Bronze -- Asia Ray

Men's Freestyle: 3 Gold, 3 Silver, 1 Bronze
Gold -- Daton Fix, Mark Hall, Gable Steveson
Silver -- Mitch McKee, Ryan Deakin, Zahid Valencia
Bronze -- Kollin Moore

Senior Total Medals -- 9 Medals

3 Gold, 3 Silver, 3 Bronze

Women's Freestyle: 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze
Gold -- Helen Maroulis
Silver -- Alli Ragan
Bronze -- Becka Leathers

Men's Freestyle: 2 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze
Gold -- Jordan Burroughs, Kyle Snyder
Silver -- Thomas Gilman, James Green
Bronze -- Nick Gwiazdowski, J'den Cox