Every once in a while we drill down into the college weight certification data. For this past season, 2020 - 2021, we looked at 8,413 wrestlers rostered by 298 NCAA and NAIA wrestling programs. This data is from the week of 3/1/2021, just in time for the Big Ten and NCAA Championships.

You can explore the data on your own here.

From this initial group, 7,907 wrestlers had a certification weight above their Minimum Weight Class (MWC), meaning these athletes must lose weight to achieve MWC. Average body fat % at certification for this group is 16.2% with a range of 14% to 29% depending on MWC.

If all wrestlers in this group dropped to their MWC, the average body fat is 7.1% with a narrow range of 6.5% to 7.7% excluding the 285 weight class. As in 2019-2020, if all wrestlers (except 285 pounders) sucked down to their MWC the fattest weight class is 125 pounds at an average 7.7% body fat.

For NCAA Division I wrestling teams, average body fat % at certification is 15.3% with a range of 13.8% to 16.2% depending on conference.

Other Fun Facts

• Average roster size: 28.2

• Redshirts: 20% of all rostered wrestlers

• 1st year of eligibility: 41% of all rostered wrestlers

• Average weight of all wrestlers at certification: 175.8 pounds

• Aggregate weight of all wrestlers at certification: 739 tons

• Aggregate drop to get to Minimum Weight Class: 66 tons

• At certification and on average, a wrestler from:

  • Univ of Michigan weighs more than Michigan State by 2.7 pounds

  • Univ of Oklahoma weighs more than Oklahoma State by .9 pounds

  • Iowa State weighs more than Univ of Iowa by 1.4 pounds

  • Penn State weight more than Ohio State by 1.6 pounds

  • Army weighs more than Navy by 14.2 pounds

  • Air Force weighs more than Navy by 1.3 pounds

More Information

• “Weight Loss in Wrestling: Current State of Science”, 2014

• “Validity of the Current NCAA Minimum Weight Protocol”, 2011