WrestlingGear.Com - Get Ready For The Mat (Sent At Your Request)
March 9, 2005
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Included in this issue you will find Chris Bono's article"What Do You Think?" Chris asks what you think about tweaking some of the rules of the sport. Also included is a Russ Cozart interview from W.I.N. Magazine.
Also check out "House Of Seven Gables" by Randy Lewis, where Randy answers the question What was it like to wrestle for and coach with Dan Gable.
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As always, keep us in mind when you or your friends and teammates need wrestling gear.
Look for our next issue of our newsletter to come out on April 12, 2005.
- Dave
Real Pro Wrestling To Debut On PAX TV And Fox Sports Net
LOS ANGELES (Dec. 29, 2004) - RealProWrestling announced their national television debut of the first Olympic style-wrestling league on PAX TV and Fox Sports Net. RealProWrestling will launch its national television debut on PAX TV on Sunday, March 27, 2005 at 4-5pm EST and on Fox Sports Net Wednesday, March 30, 2005 at 3-4pm EST (schedule subject to change)....
Click Here to read the full article
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"What Do You Think?" by Chris Bono
As I sit and watch many wrestling matches a year, I wonder what people would think about the sport if we tweaked a few rules. Maybe we do some subtle tweaking, maybe we do some drastic tweaking, and maybe we change the whole sport. Anything to get our sport from dying and to get on television more. I know most of what I write will never happen, but I just want to make people stop and think what if? Here are some things that I think need to be looked at all levels of wrestling.
Ever see a wrestler hit a beautiful shot, stand up, get ready finish only to see his opponent dive between his legs and create a dangerous scramble position for both men's knees? I have seen it thousands of times and most of the time one guy usually blows one of his knees out and is lost for the year....
Click Here to read the full article
Russ Cozart Interview From W.I.N. Magazine
There's something unique about every wrestling program in America. And there's no doubt about what Brandon (Fla.) High hangs its wrestling headgear on: "The Streak."
It's Brandon's national-record streak of dual-meet victories that now spans an incredible 31 years - longer than the lifespans of the past decade of Brandon wrestlers - and over 400 wins. The Eagles, ranked No. 13 nationally in this issue of W.I.N., are heavy favorites to take their Class 2A state title once again.
Coach Russ Cozart didn't start "The Streak," but his tireless work ethic helped extend it, while elevating Brandon's program to national prominence. This year, they added a fourth-place finish in the Beast of the East Tournament at Newark, Del.
The past four years, part of Cozart has been on the mat at Brandon, literally. His son Rocky is expected to close his high school career by winning his third state title at 160 pounds this month.
Rocky first stepped out of his father's shadow for good three years ago, when he launched a tremendous air show in winning the Cadet National Greco-Roman title and finished second in freestyle. He repeated those finishes at Fargo last summer in the Junior Nationals.
Rocky, who signed with Michigan State, has lived with it every day of his life and, as he reveals in this interview, has survived to tell about it....
Click Here to read the full article
Custom ASICS Quantum Headgear Parts
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"Why Wrestlers Get Sick Around Tournaments" by Randall Tomaras
Every wrestler is concerned about "making" weight. At the same time they are concerned about performance. It is no secret that wrestlers go without a few meals. Some go without many. What we are actually doing is depleting our bodies of the building blocks of life. These building blocks are called "nutrition" and it effects everything we do from what kind of endurance we have in the third period to whether we catch the flu the day before the tourna,ment. So that places some importance on this article.
We traditionally thought nutrition to consist of vitamins, minerals and enzymes. We now know that there is a lot more to it. Biomedicine has now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that proper nutrition is a recipe of many things that most of us are not receiving even if we ate what we were told and took our vitamins and minerals. Some of the ingredients of proper nutrition we are somewhat familiar with....
Click here to read full article
"House Of Seven Gables" by Randy Lewis, InsideTexasWrestling.com
He is, without question, the most famous American wrestler ever. He's also the most successful college coach in any sport in NCAA history. He won nine straight NCAA Championships and 15 in a 21-year stretch, while serving as a head coach at the University of Iowa. When people find out that I wrestled for, and coached with Dan Gable for 15 years, they always ask the same question. What was Gable like?
That simple question then becomes several more questions. What was it like to wrestle for Gable? What was it like to wrestle with Gable? How tough was he? What were his practices like? I will try and answer these questions with a few short stories involving the man and the legend, along with my perspectives on him. Hopefully I'll answer the question, what is Gable like? ....
Click here to read full article
Marketing your Wrestling Tournament
You must have a marketing strategy for your wrestling tournament. First you must decide when it is your coaches or wrestling teams decide what tournament they are going to attend. In Illinois, for youth tournaments, many of the tournaments fill up quickly so coaches must decide early which tournaments they are going to attend. So it is in your best interest to get your information to the coaches prior to the start of the tournament season, but not so early that the flier gets put in a pile or folder and never looked at again.
After you decide when, you need to decide what you are going to offer at your tournament. Not many people run varsity tournaments, I suspect the reason is they do not earn as much for the club as regular tournaments do, but require about the same amount of work. However, there is great prestige in running a first class tournament and if that is your number one goal you should pursue this goal.
Another type of tournament you can run is a rookie tournament. These always seem to fill up in Illinois. I think this is a great tournament to run, because it helps first and second year wrestlers have a good experience with the sport. There is no fun in getting beat week in and week out.
Another type is a regular tournament with no skill level designated. These are the most popular in Illinois, because they reach the broadest audience and all of your wrestlers can actually wrestle in the tournament. Parent help is critical to running a smooth tournament, and I suspect it may be difficult for you to convince all your experienced parents to work all day at a tournament that their wrestlers will not be experiencing.
Another important activity is to learn what other successful tournaments do to market their tournament. This can be done by talking with coaches at tournaments or calling up friends to see what they do to market their tournament. After the first couple of years in running a successful tournament, it will market itself and you will have strong word of mouth and a long line of returning teams each year.
For example, after interviewing coaches casually at tournaments, I found that they use the state's website to find out the dates of tournaments that are close to them. Also, I found other tournaments mailed fliers to all of the state's contacts. You never know if a team has an opening in their schedule and is willing to travel 45 to 90 minutes to get in another tournament (or if they are looking to get some competition in a different part of the state). Each year I did this, I found teams asking to come that I would have never even thought to invite. The last 100 kids are where you make most of your money. At that point, all of your fixed costs are paid for, refs, gym space, table help, etc so the last 100 kids are mostly profit.
Even more important then the information mentioned above, you don't want to pick a date where there is another tournament close by that will compete with you, particularly if you are a new tournament. Why not pick a different weekend? This way you can both attend each other's tournament and help out your sectional by offering another tournament that is close by on another weekend. The only exception to this rule is if it is a varsity tournament. If that is the case, you can run a JV tournament, because most teams (at least in Illinois) will not send first and second year kids to a strong varsity tournament. We used this strategy on a weekend of a very popular varsity tournament. No one really offered an option in our area for this weekend; we did and had lots of kids attend.
Benchmark the best tournaments marketing fliers. Why reinvent the wheel, chances are if it is the tenth annual tournament, they have figured out what information is required on a tournament flier. Each year we tried to improve the flier based on questions we received. One frequent question was a request for directions, so we put this on next years flier. Another was what awards were going to be given out. All of this information was on the tenth annual tournament, that we did not include the first year we ran a tournament. Avoid our mistakes and others that have been made, by looking at several different fliers and use the best parts of each flier.
Pick your awards carefully, it is important in your marketing of your tournament. We always awarded First through Fifth medals at the least. When we saw other tournaments were awarding trophies, we offered trophies for first and even stepped it up the following year with t-shirts. The kids love the awards they received and talked about them. Although no coaches will probably decide which tournament to bring their wrestlers to based on the awards, parents may decide to skip a tournament that has notoriously bad awards. There is not a tremendous amount of cost difference in providing nice awards as compared to cheap awards.
Next month look for keys to running the tournament smoothly, a discussion on the day of the tournament operations.
Good Luck with your tournament...Jeff Pape
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NORTHERN ILLINOIS WRESTLING CAMP
There are plenty of camp choices to suit your needs. Individual camp, 10 day camp, 15 day camp, or a team camp. Find out how you can attend the camp free as a coach.
Camps are designed for grade school kids from First to Twelfth grade. Here is a brief bio on NIU's Head Coach Dave Grant: Head Wrestling Coach -
Northern Illinois University, Division 1 All-American - University of Northern Iowa, Assistant Coach, University of Minnesota (1986-1996), Assistant World Coach, 1998, 2002 MAC Coach of the year.
Camps are held on campus in DeKalb, Illinois.
Click Here to find out more information about NIU's Camps
IN CLOSING
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