Timely Updates for
Takedown Scoring and Stats Users
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
Fog in the NCAA Wrestling Rules Committee
We might need to tap the brakes.
Recently, the NCAA wrestling rules committee proposed a slate of rule changes some of which involve scoring. Specifically, the committee proposed (1) increasing the point value for a takedown from two to three and (2) conditioning the riding time advantage point on earning a near fall.
One might reasonably assume the committee knows exactly what they’re trying to accomplish with these fundamental changes, and that they’ve developed some measurable success metrics.
Need for Situational Awareness
Various coaches, including the committee chair, have expressed the goals of the scoring changes as some variation of:
Avoiding undesirable scoring scenarios
Increasing excitement or ‘action’
These are meritorious goals to be sure.
So, let’s do it!
Not so fast.
The issue with proceeding might be twofold:
We don’t know where we are
We don’t know where we want to be
Data Free Decision-Making
Consider the goal of “avoiding undesirable scoring scenarios.“
Three questions should be answered before adopting a scoring change:
Which undesirable scoring scenarios? These scenarios? Any wrestling scoring scenario can be uniquely described as a sequence of scoring activity in specific periods.
How frequently do these scenarios occur now?
How frequently should these scenarios occur in the future?
Same argument goes for “increasing excitement or action.” What exactly does this mean?
Answering these questions revolves around collecting and analyzing data — readily available in Trackwrestling — and setting explicit objectives. For example, the committee might say:
“We want to reduce the occurrence of situations in which (describe scoring sequence here) is sufficient to win the match. Currently, this occurs in X% of all college matches. Our goal is to reduce this by (insert goal here). We are proposing (insert rule change here) to achieve this goal by (insert timeframe here).”
If this work hasn’t been done, then it is a matter of fact that we will never know if the proposed changes, if adopted, are effective.
And, that’s a bad outcome for wrestling.
How Expensive is an NCAA Division I Wrestling All-American?
Updated look at the cost of producing a NCAA Division I wrestling All-American with reference to the March 2019 championships.
Producing a Division I Wrestling All-American is Expensive
Back in 2016 we first looked at the cost of producing a Division I wrestling All-American. Here we update that analysis for the most recent Division I Championship in March 2019.
Of the 70 participating teams, the twenty most expensive programs collectively spent about $32.3 million annually (averaged over four years).
These programs captured 59 (74%) of the All-American awards at the 2019 Championships.
On average, this group of teams invests roughly $521,000 annually per All-American with a range of $322,000 to $1.86 million.
Most Efficient College Wrestling Programs
Many of the most expensive programs are also pretty efficient at producing All-Americans. However, the two most efficient programs — Princeton and Cornell — aren’t in the group of the twenty most expensive programs.
We can also look at how much it costs to produce a team point in the championship. This metric encompasses more teams than cost per All-American. The chart below compares annual expenses (averaged over four years) versus championship team points.
The line on the chart is statistically fitted to the data (though the fit isn’t great) and attempts to show the average relationship between expenses and team points. To the extent that this line is meaningful, it is desire-able to operate above or the the left of the line as this represents above average performance. Conversely, operating below the line represents below average performance. Again, the line doesn’t fit the data very precisely so these conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt.
Know Your Numbers
Wrestling has been under assault for quite some time. When we did this analysis back in 2016, Boise State’s program had just been terminated. Recently, Stanford’s wrestling program has been threatened with discontinuance justified, in large measure, on financial grounds. It helps to know where you stand in terms of delivering results for funds invested when your program’s future hangs in the balance.
Why is it so Difficult to Score a Wrestling Match?
Why can’t coaches, managers, athletes, parents accurately score a wrestling match? Lots of reasons.
In athletic competition the score matters. Wrestling is no different. All wrestling matches are scored according the the applicable rules book. It’s harder than you might expect. Why is that?
Rules Book is Bad
The NFHS rules book is an old, expansive, intricate document conceived of and edited by committee over many years. It is often difficult to interpret and is subject to annual revisions for clarity and rule changes.
Certain sections of the rule book are no longer relevant and are routinely ignored in practice. These sections aren’t culled over time as they should be so that the book is confusingly bloated with vestigial passages.
Finally, the rules yield "corner-cases" -- infrequent scoring sequences -- that trip up even the most experienced. The net result is scorers, coaches and officials do not — and probably can not — have full command of the rule book and its application in all possible situations.
Referee Role
After athlete safety, getting the bout score correct should be the referee’s #1 priority.
In this light, referees should signal scoring promptly, using official hand gestures persisted long enough for recognition by the scorer. When there’s a quick flurry of activity and lots of scoring, the referee should communicate with the table to verify that all the scoring was accurately recognized and reflected in the score.
Also, prior to an event a good referee will discuss with the scorer their responsibility — “recording points scored by each contestant when signaled by the referee” — and procedures for fulfilling that responsibility as outlined in NFHS Rules 3.1.4.e and 3.1.5.e or appropriate state rules.
A great referee will be in frequent contact with the official scorer to insure all is well.
Scorer Role
The scorer’s primary role is to get the score right by recording the scoring events signaled by the referee.
If there’s confusion or disagreement about the score, the official scorer should ask the referee for assistance and resolution. To translate the referee scoring signals into a recorded scoring event, the official scorer should be familiar with the “Referee’s Wrestling Signals” in the NFHS rules book.
Proper notation helps, too, when reconstructing from the scorebook what happened on the mat. Official “Scoring Symbols” are documented in the NFHS rules book.
That Never Happens
In practice, the implied contract between the referee and official scorer is almost never fulfilled.
In practice, scorers typically lack the confidence to stop a match to clarify scoring confusion. This is especially true in high school.
In addition, scoring hand gestures are often confusingly and quickly presented by the referee. Sometimes non-standard signals are employed.
Compounding this problem is the referee’s apparent desire to move the action along at Mach 5, creating the impression that pace is more important than an accurate score.
That behavior can lead to disastrous outcomes as in the case of Ian Miller at the 2015 NCAA Championships.
Technology Helps
A carefully engineered digital scoring solution will drastically improve scoring (and clock) accuracy by embedding the rules book into well-designed scoring interface.
Here are few examples of how digital scoring can help your scoring table:
Uses standard scoring symbols
Prevents illegal scoring sequences, e.g. near fall for defensive wrestler, escape for offensive wrestler, escape/reverse/near fall not allowed in neutral, etc.
Presents 2nd and 3rd period choice for correct wrestling
Implements the penalty table including disqualification sequences
Starts/maintains injury timer for each wrestler
Maintains blood, recovery timers for each wrestler
Implements choice on restart as appropriate
Records each scoring notation offset from previous for easy readability and reconstruction of scoring activity
Implements overtime protocol
Does period arithmetic for automatically recorinding cumulative match time for bout-ending scoring events such as a fall or disqualification
College: automatically stops/starts riding time clocks with change in control and calculates riding time advantage
Continuously calculates the tie-breaker counts by criteria and identifies the winner
In dual meet, automatically calculates team score.
Takedown Scoring and Stats has all of these features.
Scoring a wrestling match is hard. Make it easier by using a state-of-the art, high quality digital scoring solution.
More Leaders Needed in College Coaching
Sample NCAA Division I head coach responses to an email outreach:
Head coach 1: "I'd like to learn more about your app."
Head coach 2: "I didn't ask for this email, take me off the list"
Neither coach has a top 20 team.
Head coach 2's team website is sparsely populated with stats and their team Twitter feed lacks timely and consistently presented dual and match results.
Head coach 1 may or may not use Takedown.
But, that isn't the point. Head coach 1 is a learner.
College wrestling is in dire need of more coach 1, less coach 2 leadership. The sport can't survive with coaches that spend more time polishing their cauliflower ears than they do innovating in all aspects of their program.
We need more CEOs, fewer mat moppers.