How Fat Are College Wrestlers?
Every once in a while we drill down into the college weight certification data. For this past season, 2019-2020, we looked at data for 7,706 wrestlers rostered by 251 NCAA, NAIA and NJCAA wrestling programs. This data is from the week prior to NCAA Division I conference championships.
You can explore the data on your own here.
In this sample, 7,268 wrestlers have a certification weight (also called assessment weight) in excess of their Minimum Weight Class (MWC). Average body fat % at certification for this group is 15.9% with a range of 14% to 30.3% depending on MWC.
College Wrestling Weight Data 2019-2020
If all wrestlers in this group dropped to their MWC, the average body fat is 6.9% with a narrow range of 6.4% to 7.4% excluding the 285 weight class. Somewhat counterintuitively, at least for me, with all wrestlers (except 285 pounders) sucked down to their MWC the fattest weight class is 125 pounds at an average 7.4% body fat. Didn’t expect that.
College Wrestling Weight Data 2019-2020
For NCAA Division I wrestling teams, average body fat % at certification is 14.8% with a range of 13.6% to 16.7% depending on conference.
Other Fun Facts
Average roster size: 30.7
Redshirts: 19% of all rostered wrestlers
1st year of eligibility: 40% of all rostered wrestlers
Average weight of all wrestlers at certification: 174.2 pounds
Aggregate weight of all wrestlers at certification: 671 tons
Aggregate drop to get to Minimum Weight Class: 60.1 tons
Highest aggregate team weight at certification: 11,600 pounds
Highest average wrestler weight at certification, Division I: 184.1