Timely Information for Takedown Scoring and Stats Users

Bugs Takedown App Bugs Takedown App

End of the Road for iOS 9 and iOS 10.

It’s been a good ride.

We’re at the end of support for iOS 9 and iOS 10 devices. Apple obsoleted these versions of iOS a few years ago and the supporting hardware is starting to show its age. Problems are arising for Takedown users, some of which we can fix, some of which we can’t. An example of the latter: Trackwrestling no long supports Safari on iOS 9 for logging in. We rely on Safari for copying your match results and weigh-ins to your Track account. If Track doesn’t support Safari in iOS 9, then users aren’t able to upload their results to Trackwrestling using Takedown.

Next season, we will remove support for iOS 9 and 10. Please plan your iPad acquisitions accordingly.

iPads models impacted are:

  • iPad1

  • iPad2

  • iPad3

  • iPad4

  • iPad Mini 1

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Opinion, College Takedown App Opinion, College Takedown App

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.

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Bugs, New Release Takedown App Bugs, New Release Takedown App

Takedown Scoring and Stats Release 2.12.9

Takedown Scoring and Stats Release 2.12.9 is available for download in the App Store.

Also, Apple just released iOS 13 and, for the iPad, renamed it to iPadOS 13.

Should you upgrade to iOS 13 (iPadOS 13)?

With today’s Takedown Release 2.12.9, we’ve fixed known iPadOS 13 related bugs. As far as Takedown Scoring and Stats is concerned, we think upgrading to iPadOS 13 will be OK. You might have other apps on your iPad that influence your decision. You don’t need to upgrade to 13 to use Takedown Scoring and Stats and our upcoming major fall release will work fine with iOS 12.x.

Another Consideration

Takedown LIVE does not currently work with iPadOS 13, it crashes on launch. We know and will get to it.

Known Issues

For the most up-to-date list of known issues, see:

Takedown Scoring and Stats
https://levelchanger.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026991491-Known-Issues

Takedown LIVE
https://levelchanger.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360030631212-Known-Issues

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High School, Opinion Takedown App High School, Opinion Takedown App

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.

Click or tap to enlarge

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:

Click or tap to enlarge

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:

Click or tap to enlarge

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:

Click or tap to enlarge

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.

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Weight, Best Practices Takedown App Weight, Best Practices Takedown App

Update: Digital Weight Management

Last fall we added to digital weight management to Takedown Scoring and Stats. Developed in partnership with Befour, a leading wrestling scale manufacturer, this new feature enabled paperless weight capture — either manually or via Befour’s bluetooth scale — and a variety of reports and graphs for tracking athlete weight.

During this past high school season (2018-2019), more than 150 schools used this feature to record 17,000+ weigh-ins. Of these weigh-ins, 75% were recorded wirelessly using Befour’s bluetooth scale.

Top five states for digital weight management:

  1. Virginia

  2. Ohio

  3. Wisconsin

  4. California

  5. Pennsylvania

And the top ten programs:

  1. Chantilly, Virginia

  2. Frederick High School, Maryland

  3. Saginaw Heritage, Michigan

  4. Middletown, New York

  5. Chilton High School, Wisconsin

  6. Garden City High School, Kansas

  7. Kirtland High School, Ohio

  8. Palo Alto High School, California

  9. Sulphur, Oklahoma

  10. Revere High School, Ohio

Not surprisingly, most weights were recorded early in the week:

Weigh In Recorded By Takedown Scoring and Stats — Percentage by Day of Week

This is an exciting and encouraging start for this new-to-wrestling capability. We will continue working with our partner, Befour, to enhance this feature and promote its adoption throughout the wrestling community.

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Opinion Takedown App Opinion Takedown App

You don't do Apple. Nobody cares.

Leave your personal bias at home. Help your team instead.

“I don’t do Apple” is the reason sometimes given for not using Takedown. When the final rankings of stupid coach statements is published, this one will be in the top ten.

Personal Experience

I don’t do Apple either. I’ve never purchased a Mac or iPhone for personal use. I prefer Windows computers and Android phones and that’s what I buy.

I can understand “I don’t do Apple”

Great Tools Prevail

Apple announced the iPad in January 2010.

Around the same time, as a pilot I’d been following a company promising to eliminate the reams of paper needed to legally fly an airplane(*) with an app. When that company delivered a well-engineered, comprehensive, reliable app, I bought an iPad. My personal bias against Apple products didn’t matter one bit. I needed to use that app for important work.

Wrestling has Enough Challenges

Our sport has plenty of real challenges. Don’t let a personal brand preference get in the way of using the best tools available for the benefit of your team and the sport.

“I don’t do Apple” is dumb. Stop it.

(*) Coast-to-coast flight requires a 12 inch stack of charts. Without an app, piloting an airplane is more paper intensive than running a wrestling program.

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