"The Real National Champion"

Sometimes I feel like my posts lean on the side of bashing the sport that I love. To be fair, I promote the positive side of wrestling throughout my daily endeavors. This blog serves as my outlet sometimes, though. And I need to vent.

I got on an airplane earlier today and headed to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for a wrestling tournament. After a few minutes into the flight, I pulled out the most recent issue of Wrestling USA. I feel obligated to subscribe to every wrestling publication because I'm wrestler and we support our own. I do my best to read what others across the nation have to say about our sport. Taking up eleven pages in the center of the magazine were the "December 2011 Youth Rankings!" (exclamation point is included in the page heading).

Here's the criteria: "World of Wrestling presents the Cliff Keen/Wrestling USA National Youth Rankings. These are based on national tournament results only, no bias or prejudice involved. If you wish to be ranked to accumulate the required points then your chance is in Tulsa, OK at the 57th Annual Tulsa Nationals."

I guess this is a valiant effort to be objective. But correct me if I'm way off base, but shouldn't there only be one national tournament and not a bunch to facilitate a rankings system? Whatever...moving on...they have a 6 & under age group starting at 37 pounds! Come on, seriously? This is ridiculous on so many levels that I don't have the energy to write about them. Does this really make sense and are these kinds of things going unnoticed in youth wrestling or in youth sports in general? How can a major publication endorse national rankings for a 37 pound kid under the age of 6?

Imagine the pressure on these young children for the rest of their athletic careers. Does a 6 year old who is already crowned "The Best of the Best" have much to look forward to? Is "The World Series of Wrestling" the pinnacle? "The Real National Champion" is a toddler, not Jordan Burroughs or Cael Sanderson? That's what it says in this magazine. I wonder how many of the athletes at the Olympic Training Center this week have held these titles and been on "The Ultimate Triple Crown" poster.

The irony is that at the beginning of the issue, the editor's letter explained the difficulty in ranking wrestlers at the high school level. With over 280,000 high school wrestlers last year, it's hard to create objective standards and keep in perspective that "not all states are created equal in the depth of competitive wrestlers." I agree. How much more difficult is it to rank children who need help putting on their wrestling shoes?

I don't think I have a point today. I just wanted to vent. I was excited to read the Wrestling USA magazine today and was left with yet another awful taste in my mouth because of direction of youth sports.

Does this make your skin crawl, too? Does anyone else see a problem with this?