TexasWrestling
Wrestlers in Business to proud to announce that we will be working with the NCWA, the National Wrestling Coaches Association, and USA Wrestling to promote Wrestling in the State of Texas.
USA Wrestling recognizes that Texas is leading the way in expanding and growing wrestling. In a time where wrestling numbers are declining nationally, Texas has experienced a 40% growth rate in the last ten years. We are now in the top three or four in both the numbers of wrestlers and the number of teams. There are still 900 schools in Texas that don’t have wrestling! Women’s wrestling is exploding in Texas, and new teams like Little Elm are adding to both boys and girls wrestling next year.
Our problem is that until we start increasing our numbers of nationally ranked wrestlers, we won’t get the recognition we deserve. With Bo Nickal’s, and Jack Mueller’s success, we are starting the process of improving Texas’ reputation nationally. But we can’t become complacent. Our State Tournament last year was the toughest it has ever been. We can now supply Texas Universities with the resources necessary to compete nationally.
WIBN’s main focus this year is to help drive attendance at the National Collegiate Wrestling Championships (NCWA Nationals) held at the Allen Event Center in March. The NCWA was the created in Texas by Jim Giunta to help offset the decline in College wrestling after the passage of Title Nine. Their growth has been phenomenal. They have grown from their original 13 teams to over 230. The NCWA now has more collegiate teams than the NCAA. We will be hosting a number of suites for our annual WIBN Social as well as various High School wrestling reunions. ST. Marks had their 50th wrestling reunion last year, and there are other teams than have had a long and storied programs as well.
This Texas born idea needs Texas size support! We have many Texas High School Graduates wrestling in the NCWA and we need to support them on their journey to be All American’s. WIB will be buying tickets to the event, and distributing them to high school students around the metroplex. THAT is just the tip of the ice berg. We need High School coaches to promote the event as well, by promoting the event to their wrestlers. Our goal is to make the NCWA National Tournament the largest attended Wrestling Tournament in the South. THAT will put Texas on the map.
Our next initiative will be to work with USA Wrestling to promote their “Let’s Wrestle” program. This program focusses on successful professional Football Players and illustrates how wrestling helped them in football. USA Wrestling has broken this down by position so wide receivers, like Julio Jones can speak to how wrestling helped them both mentally and physically.
At this point we are thinking that this would be a great to present at the Texas High School Coaches Association meeting held in San Antonio. We could then distribute the presentation to all the high schools in Texas to help drive participation from Football. We need help from the Texas High School Wrestling coaches to make this happen.
This is an exciting time to be involved in Wrestling in the State of Texas. You are all part of our explosive growth, and together we can keep the momentum going.
