nick

We do a lot of toe tag (we do hands to the foot), sharks and minnows, bone fight, and king of the ring (decent amount of kids start in a circle, can't come out of a bear crawl, have to either get pushed out of the circle or turned)

I went with my first name, being a fresh forum and all, had to grab it

So I coach at our area's inner city school... gonna ramble here One of the biggest things I think is understanding circumstances and the wrestlers as a coach.... For instance, I had a kid not shave before a meet so I'm a little aggravated and pull him aside, turns out no one has ever taught him to shave (he lives in a foster facility). I had another kid not making it to practice because his mom was too drunk, two dad's last season OD during season. Nuance that is needed (not saying be a players coach but also not being a hard liner) If you can address things that the team can provide before it even reaches the wrestlers, its a big difference (providing and washing practice gear daily, finding a business to pay for or subsidize costs, etc...) Some kids need wrestling and wrestling needs some kids, but drawing the line of a kid needing wrestling and a kid taking other kids down Content needs to be relatable, to be blunt Dan Gable posters and old Iowa content do not work (or at least for us) Showing that you are prepared helps a long way to the kids looking up to you as dependable, don't wing practices Give the kids something to want that isn't wrestling.. So we do a lock in, chili supper, jv buffett, a few overnights, xmas break basketball tourney, full team “field trip”, special “black team” gear for varsity at the end, etc... In the offseason, going to places they haven't been to (like kayaking, hiking, etc..) Kids quit when they don't get playing time in any sport, so make sure JV kids get matches, ours will get 18/20 a season We write postcards to every incoming freshman in the summer inviting them out to wrestling, do a free two week elementary league at all of our feed elementary schools and then do a big meet at the end of it (making the high school kids coach at each of the schools before than get any end of the year awards), give out multi sport shorts for kids doing more than one sport, give out preseason shirts, etc... (we make and give away shirts for everything) At the end of the day, wrestling is just the tool you have to impact them

MatBoss is awesome So my team has four iPads, we send two with varsity and two with our B/C team to record/keep track of all our matches. It syncs with Trackwrestling and you are able to pull down rosters and what not, makes book keeping a breeze. Generally we run with two iPads at an event so once one battery dies we can roll with the other and let the other one charge (tried an external battery but was more of a pain since its high school kids keeping track of it)

I did a road trip thru Turkey for two weeks last summer, only spent a few days in Istanbul... 10/10, would go again (photos)