How Fat Are High School Wrestlers?
As with college, every once in a while we drill down into the high school weight certification data.
For this past season, 2019-2020, we looked at data for 80,209 male wrestlers rostered for 3,127 teams in seven states: California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, Washington and Nebraska. This data is is from February 2020.
You can explore the data on your own here.
In all states except Pennsylvania, roster size by school year declines from freshman (Fr.) though senior (Sr.) year. In aggregate, Pennsylvania freshman are 22% of the total roster whereas in all other states freshman account for 30-32% of the total state roster.
Average roster size varies considerably in this group from a low of 19.5 (Nebraska) to a high of 31.1 (Texas) wrestlers per team.
Weight Related
Except for 113 pounds, wrestler count by minimum weight class (MWC) is relatively flat from 106 to 145 pounds and then declines steeply from 152 to 285 pounds.
At certification, average body fat percentage ramps from 14.3% at 106 to 23.4% at 220 and then declines a bit for 285.
Roughly 32% of the wrestlers had an assessed body fat of more than 20%.
In this sample, 73,871 wrestlers had a certification weight exceeding their MWC. On average, this group had to drop 9.7% of their certification weight to reach MWC.
Excluding 220 and 285, If all wrestlers in this group dropped to their respective MWC, average body fat is 7.9% with a narrow range of 7.5% (138 MWC) to 9.1% (106 MWC).
Which State is the Fattest?
You decide.
High School Wrestling — Fat % by State