January 18th, 2013
The High school wrestling is almost done. On this day, many of Montreal's high school teams participated in the Riverdale Invitational Wrestling Tournament. This season will mark my 18th season in the league as a coach for the Montreal High School league also known as the G.M.A.A. In this period, I’ve coached at many schools both in the private and public sector. Both this time and variety has afforded me a wealth of experiences. A comment was recently brought to my attention about the lack of participation amongst High Schools in Quebec about the sport of Wrestling. Throughout the years, we have seen highs and lows when it comes to the amount of schools participating. One contributing factor that I was able to witness in my time was the school strike in the 1990’s, which eliminated wrestling from virtually all the public schools. At this point, it hasn't recovered yet. When I started as an athlete wrestling in the G.M.A.A at a public school called Argyle Academy, there were many pubic schools. We just happened to be one of them. I also seem to remember that there was closer to 20 schools involved in the league at the time. The strike that decimated public schools involvement only occurred in the late 90’s so what happened? While I could site many reasons for this, I think that the landscape has changed when it comes to sports. In this day of heavy litigation, where people are quick to anger and lawsuits happen with more frequency, coaches and educators naturally want to keep things safe. Safety and security are important, but are we in fact protecting our children? Oftentimes I’ve been told that my sport is too dangerous. While I will acknowledge that it is tough, dangerous is not the word that should be used. Parents are more accustomed to team sports such as soccer, football and hockey (incidentally which can all be more dangerous than wrestling), which is more within their comfort zone. Furthermore, in a North American society, every parent thinks that their child will become a professional hockey or football player and they sacrifice everything (including education) in order to achieve that dream. In these sports, which are also “dangerous”, parents feel more comfortable with their kids competing in a sport that may afford some small hope of becoming a professional athlete. So clearly, the concept of wrestling being dangerous is not what are keeping kids away.
The second thing that comes to mind that might explain the lack of involvement in wrestling is that wrestling is just too tough. This stems from the fact that I’ve noticed a steady decline in the overall athleticism of kids throughout the years. At first I thought that this might a public school versus a private school thing but clearly this isn’t entirely the case. The only thing that I can allude to is the fact that kids these days are more of the video game generation rather than the athletic one. Wrestling is a physically and mentally demanding sport that requires commitment. This seems to be something that is becoming harder and harder for younger people to do.
The current state of High School Wrestling
Today, there are only two public schools that participate in the high school league. There are nine boys’ teams and six girls teams. While the total number is in fact down, the numbers are pretty healthy. Could it be better? Absolutely but for now the numbers are acceptable. Many schools field teams of around fifteen, mixed between guys and girls. Furthermore, the closeness of points that separate that teams after the G.M.A.A. finals is as close as it’s ever been. This seems to indicate parity amongst the individual high school clubs. In addition to this, the growth of the girls wrestling at the high school level, which now is an official banner sport also indicates growth as well, albeit a modest one. Lastly, our results and our participation at the Canada Games is another indicator that wrestling is in a pretty good place.
We as a province can look to developing the sport of wrestling from the current roster of high schools, with the intention of adding more to that number in the future. How can this be done? There have been many suggestions as to how to do so. I believe that all these suggestions are good and that they should be implemented amongst the various clubs. This way we could see which way can be effective in this changing landscape of high school wrestling.
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