Timely Updates for
Takedown Scoring and Stats Users
High School Wrestling Participation
It was a very good year.
A company friend suggested we revise our annual look at high school wrestling participation to include the 2022/23 data.
Good idea! We did that.
Wrestling overall is doing better and the girls are a big contributor. Total participation is at an all time high and average boys team size reversed a disturbing downward trend.
Take a look at the data and draw your own conclusions about the health of high school wrestling.
The Chart for Every Practice Room Wall
How important are takedowns?
We looked at over 2,000 matches for 63 wrestlers from six high school programs spread across the country and found that scoring more takedowns than your opponent is
How Important are Takedowns?
We looked at over 2,000 matches for 63 wrestlers from six high school programs spread across the country and found that scoring more takedowns than your opponent is highly correlated with having a winning season. Each wrestler had a minimum of ten matches and we considered only varsity events.
Winning Percentage v. Takedown Percentage
Thirty wrestlers scored on average the same or fewer takedowns than their opponent per match. Of these wrestlers, only three (10%) wrestlers had winning seasons. In contrast, thirty three wrestlers scored more takedowns, on average, than their opponent per match. Of these wrestlers, thirty one (94%) wrestlers had winning seasons.
The data supports what we instinctively know: takedown proficiency is critical to becoming a successful competitor. Next time an athlete says "prove it!", just post this graph on the practice room wall!
Statistics courtesty of Takedown Scoring and Stats app users.
Originally published October 2015.
Emerging from the Darkness: High School Wrestling Participation 2022-2023
NFHS wrestling participation for 2022-2023. Coming out of the COVID darkness and into the light, boys rebounding to 2014-2015 levels. As expected, strong growth in girls programs with one concerning metric.
The NFHS recently released their high school sports participaton data for 2022-2023. Total wrestling participants was 305,593, a record in this millenia, representing 16% growth from the previous survey year. This growth far outpaces the year-year growth in total high school sports participation which was 3.1%.
Overall, boys wrestling rebounded to levels not seen since 2014-2015. While the number of boys teams has remained roughly constant, the number of participants increased by 11% to 256,466.
Girls wrestling continues to grow like a weed with 49,127 participants in 6,381 programs representing year-year growth of 55% and 33%, respectively. One in six high school wrestlers was a girl in 2022-2023. One cloud for girls wrestling is the anemic growth in average team size which was reported at 7.7 wrestlers per team. At historical growth rates, the average girls team won’t be capable of filling a minimum dual meet roster for another 20+ years.
Among high school sports participants, wrestling’s popularity has increased a bit. Wrestling’s share of all high school sports participants edged up slightly from 3.5% to 3.9%, with boys at 5.7% and girls at 1.5%.
Click on any chart to enlarge.
Number of Wrestling Programs
Number of Participants
Wrestlers Per Team
Wrestling Share of High School Sports
How Fat Are High School Wrestlers?
Periodic look at the weight certification data for high school wrestlers. States include California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, …
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
LevelChanger Presents at California Coaches Clinic
Fresno State wrestling head coach Troy Steiner invited us to the California Coaches Clinic. Here’s what we talked about.
Invited to present at the California Wrestling Coaches Clinic in Fresno this past weekend. Here’s what we talked about.
Wrestling Participation in High School: Patient is Stabilized
The ugly decline of 2010-2017 has abated. Where from here?
Back in 2017 we wrote about the decline in wrestling participants from the 2010/11 peak of 273,732 (boys only). Since then, the NFHS has published three more years of data so we wanted to revisit this topic. Compared to the situation in 2015/16 the news is good. Not great, but good.
Girls Wrestling: Growing Like a Weed
Everyone knows girls wrestling is going bonkers. No problem there, keep doing that. This post is about boys participation.
Big Picture
High school sports declined by roughly 30,000 participants from 2017/18 to 2018/19 (boys only and hereafter) for a total of 4,534,758 participants. This is the largest year-to-year decline in the data which ranges back to 2002/3. There have been two other year-to-year declines in the NFHS data and both were less than 10,000 participants. Can’t say for certain if a 30,000 participant decline is meaningful though I suspect it isn’t. Back-to-back declines of this magnitude over a number of years would be more meaningful. Looking at the data, total participation appears flatlined at 4.5 million over the last ten years or so.
Back in 2009/10, wrestling’s share of total participation was roughly 6.1% representing 273,000 athletes. From that peak through 2016/17, wrestling’s share declined to 5.4% or 245,000 athletes. At the time, the decline in both absolute numbers and share of participation was a cause for concern in the wrestling community.
Wrestling Has Stabilized
From 2016/17 to 2018/19, wrestling participation has been stable at roughly 245,000 athletes. Also, wrestling’s share of total participation has increased slightly from 5.4% to 5.5%. This is good news.
In addition, the number of high school programs is up slightly to 10,843 and the corresponding average number of participants per program is steady at 22.8. On average, states using NFHS weight classes (14 contested weights) are experiencing a minimum of six forfeits per V/JV dual meet.
State Level
Changes in wrestling participation vary considerably by state and over time. Over the last five years, the top ten states for adding wrestlers are:
Washington is doing very well, adding over a thousand wrestlers to a significant base.
The ten states losing the most wrestlers over the last five years:
Are We Doing Better than Football?
Depends. Football participation has declined in nine out of the last ten years whereas wrestling declined in only six of the last ten years. Over the last five years, football has lost ~4X the number of participants compared to wrestling, 87,000 v. 22,000. On the other side of the ledger, as a percentage of total participants, wrestling’s decline of 8.2% over the last five years exceeds that of any other top ten sport:
Wrestling seems to have pulled out of its nose-dive and that’s a silver lining. We’ll be watching what happens over the next few years. And, again, as far as the girls are concerned: wow. Keep going.
Record Video and Score Matches Simultaneously in Takedown
Just because you like sausage doesn’t mean you want to live in a sausage factory. Video is a lot like sausage.
Coaches love match video. But they don't like hauling around separate recording devices, transferring files from camcorders (or mobile devices), renaming video files, organizing video libraries and making their video library easily accessible to athletes, parents and other coaches. It's one of those love-hate things. Video consumption is valuable. Video production is a pain (and time consuming).
Integrated Video Recording/Review
Luckily, Apple's iPad is a video production powerhouse. Our upcoming Fall 2018 release will utilize the iPad's native video capabilities to offer video recording and review from within the Takedown Scoring and Stats app. This new feature address the major pain points of video production: recording, storage, labeling, organization, cloud storage and sharing.
Here's a Q&A about this exciting feature.
Demo and Early Access
If you'd like a demo or want to kick the tires, let us know by filling out this form. We expect to continue internal testing this month, offer pre-release this summer and App Store availability in October.
How Fat are High School Wrestlers?
Our annual look at fat percentage at certification.
We looked at various data from the weight certification process conducted by state high school wrestling associations during the 2016-17 season. For the 226,000 wrestlers in the database, average fat percentage at certification was 16.9%, up slightly from 16.6% in the previous year.
By grade, fat percentage at certification dips for eight graders then trends back up and levels off in 10th grade.
Tap or click the graph to enlarge
By minimum weight class, average fat percentage looks very similar to the last two seasons.
Tap or click the graph to enlarge.
Lastly, a look at fat percentage at certification by state.
Tap or click the graph to enlarge.
New Mexico sure has some lean wrestlers! Note that the two states with the highest fat percentage at certification -- Oklahoma and Texas -- are the same two states that added the most wrestlers from 2010-11 to 2015-16. Hmmm.
High School Participation at the State Level
Think you're in a thriving state for wrestling? Maybe, but the odds aren't in your favor.
The National Wrestling Coaches Association's Blue Ribbon Task Force is looking at an alarming trend in high school boys wrestling: the five year decline in nationwide participation as reported by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). Relevant to this effort is a look at the state-by-state participation numbers from 2010/11 (peak nationwide participation) to 2015/16 (last year of available data). Here is the state-level data:
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The decline over the last five years seems widespread with the notable exception of Texas. Indeed, of the twenty-two states having more than 5,000 participants in 2010/11, only Texas experienced growth through 2015/16. The six largest states in 2010/11 -- California, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina -- all experienced a decline relative to 2015/16.
Also, nine states lost more than one thousand wrestlers representing 14-20% of the total baseline participation in these states.
Click or tap to enlage.
Taken together, these nine states lost roughly 18,500 wrestlers during the period.
If the NFHS data is correct and I've done the aggregations properly (!), then perhaps focusing on these nine states would be a good start for the Blue Ribbon Task Force?
Also, what is up with Texas? With a regrettable mixed metaphor for you Boise stalwarts, in high school wrestling Texas is hitting the ball out of the park!
Whistling Past the Graveyard? Not quite yet.
We looked a college and now on to high school. There are one or two bright spots, but overall high school wrestling isn't healthy compared to tier one team sports. But, those girls teams! Wow.
Every year, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) publishes program count and participation numbers for high school sports. It's a very useful database. We've spent quite a bit of time looking at college wrestling and now turn our attention to high school wrestling.
For both boys and girls, the number of programs across all states is in good shape trending up from 2002 to 2016.
Number of High School Programs by Year
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The number of girls programs has more than doubled over the time frame and boys program growth was 12%. This is good news -- girls wrestling is wildly successful and boys wrestling is growing slightly on a very large base.
Number of High School Programs by Year, Indexed to 2002-03
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In contrast to the healthy number of programs, participation on the boys side is in trouble. We've lost slightly more than 23,000 high school wrestlers from the peak of 273,732 in 2010/11. This decline has been precipitous in the last two academic years, 2014-2016. Should this trajectory continue, the 2016-17 numbers will fall in the 240-250 thousand range, the same level of participation as 2004/05.
On the girls side, participation is accelerating at a rate even faster than underlying program growth. More good news!
Number of High School Participants by Year
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WIth boys participation down and the underlying number of programs growing slightly, the net impact is a pronounced decline in the average number of participants per program. No small wonder that the JV dual meet format is all but extinct in many regions. If the current trend continues, the number of participants per team will drop below 20 by 2020.
Participants per Program by Year
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Lastly, we compared wrestling participation to tier one, seasonal team sports. The data is indexed to 2002 to make the comparison visually meaningful in graph form. Both basketball and football are slightly down from their post crash highs and football participation is surprisingly resilient given the concussion scare. Perhaps the bottom will fall out in 2016/17. Baseball, everyone's favorite in light of Boise, has grown over the time frame even compared to pre-crash (2006/07) levels. Wrestling doesn't look materially different from the other sports in the 2009/10 to 2013/14 range, but the last two academic years show a considerable decline while the other sports are flat to up. Continuing this trend, the number of boys high school wrestlers will be below 2002/03 levels by 2017/18.
As far as causes are concerned, that would be speculative. Some believe that the emphasis on tournaments instead of dual meets is a key contributor as parents/fans won't sit for eight hours to watch their favorite wrestler compete for a few minutes. I've been on the parent side of that argument and it has considerable merit. Coaches, generally, aren't thrilled with all-day events either but believe that more matches means better performance and the tournament format can offer a lot of matches. Also, some assert that dual meets attract larger and more engaged crowds not only due to the shorter duration but also because school-versus-school rivalries are more spirited. Another good point.
I've recently wondered if our wrestling "elevator pitch" is helping or hurting. The pitch usually contains variations on "work hard" and "life lessons." Not sure if that's effective. Haven't encountered many high schoolers seeking hard work and delayed gratification. Throw in "cutting weight" and our pitch is something like:
"Work hard and be a better future person. Lose uncomfortable amounts of weight. Join the wrestling team!"
Might make sense to reconsider our messaging.