What's the board's opinion of wrestlers playing football & vice versa.

[Hamblin]

If you want to see what football coaches will do to a wrestling program just look at Sycamore. 3 football guys destroyed it and now one guy is trying to fix it, again. Leave wrestling to wrestling coaches!!!

[JudoCoach]

That is Teddy Riner and he is a BA. I am currently under a no compete for about 5 more months. As soon as my NC is over I be looking

[JudoCoach]

If you want to see what football coaches will do to a wrestling program just look at Sycamore. 3 football guys destroyed it and now one guy is trying to fix it, again. Leave wrestling to wrestling coaches!!!

That is true.

[JSamson7]

Coach Jones, this conversation was with a Knoxville area coach (Maryville) who was my high school coach from '93-96 as well as the football coach (Tim Hammontree) who is now at Heritage. Don't get me wrong, I have all the respect in the world for Hammontree as a football coach, but this is something I definitively didn't see eye to eye with him the. & still don't now especially with Heritage fielding some good teams here recently. He'll probably tell you face to face that he doesn't have a problem with wrestling, but then he'll give examples of how "you'll never get any bigger, faster, or stronger" as long as you're in the sport.

 

He would always gave me hard time about it & playing any other sports (also lettered in soccer) besides football since "football is year round at Maryville", but having to miss Freestyle Nationals my Junior year because of spring practice was a tough pill to swallow back then & wasn't necessary. I don't think Quarles is the same way, but I ca definitely see it prevelent at other Kvoxville schools. Really, one should point to Cleveland as a school who has won championships in both sports & has kids participating in both all the time.

 

In terms of strength programs at other TN schools I think you guys are right. Luckily for me since Maryville has pretty much a college level strength program, I had a huge advantage over most guys I wrestled in high school which in turn gave me a jump start when I wrestled at UTC. I was stronger & more explosive than all of my UTC Freshman teammates from 118-125-134 coming in as well as some of the upper classmen (except for Cedric Hubbard). Coach Leen made note of it a few times, so I do have to give credit to Hammontree for that.

 

It still goes without saying though that wrestlers at any position have an advantage over non wrestlers as long as they still have good speed. I started CB my Senior year at 5'7 135 pounds during the season, but I was almost never blocked by WR's on run plays & a good blast double was my answer for being an undersized tackler.

[blueangel51]

As a Football Coach, I coach Track too, I encourage my kids to wrestle. It helps with so many things: kinesthetic awareness, body control, understanding tackling, understanding leverage, discipline, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY (the matt doesn't lie), conditioning, ect. However, one thing I see that turns a lot of other coaches away from it is the weight cutting issue. Thankfully, our wrestling coach doesn't cut our bigs more than 15-20lbs which was probably dead weight anyways. We did have a kid drop 50lbs on his own, but that was an outlier based on his own ideas. There used to be more of an issue of this but its not bad anymore with the mandated drop limits.

Weightlifting shouldn't be an issue. Most schools have weightlifting classes that should keep kids from missing afterschool practice. If not, open up the gym early. It can work in a healthy school.

[reftn]

Most of your D1 athletic trainers will tell you when the NFL comes after information on players, one of the standard questions is "did he wrestle?" at any level. 

 

Zack Brown with the Titans was a state champ (Maryland I think).  You can ask the Titan trainers about their athletes that wrestled.  Position coaches look for them.