Middle School Wrestling Dual League Proposal

[Iron Man]

Attention all MS Coaches.
MS Wrestling is growing in North Texas and I’m trying to work with other coaches to create a MS Dual League. This will be a six-week dual schedule that should help promote the “team” aspect of competition. Please look at the detailed attachment and come prepared to discuss at the area scheduling meeting on Wednesday in Grapevine. I’m going to set up an early meeting at 5:30 to discuss the details further. Hope to see you there.
Coach Wyckoff
Allen Wrestling


During the core of the season (Dec-Jan) schools should maximize the number of events they participate in. Historically MS competitions occur on the weekends (Saturday). These end of the week, all-day events makes it hard for parents to support their kids and school programs and still meet personal obligations. Parents and family want to encourage their boys and we can make it more accommodating for everyone.
Coaches must also split their limited time between other responsibilities (Varsity/JV/Youth) and frequently it makes building a MS program an arduous endeavor. I believe we could make MS wrestling more viable for schools if we worked together and formed a dual meet league. The main objective would be to build team cohesiveness while expanding each boy’s on-mat experience. Together we could customize our schedules so they complement current V/JV commitments. For instance, most V/JV’s have dual meets on Tuesday or Thursday nights. The MS duals could occur on Monday or Wednesday evenings and would make facilities and officials easier to secure. We could also focus on less down time for athletes, parents and spectators by running multiple mats and keeping meets to 2-2.5 hour maximums.
Area ISD’s have to be convinced that MS wrestling is a viable venture for expansion to occur. Most public schools are fighting this battle and have to go the club route and wait for funding and approval to someday happen. Area schools such as Northwest, Frisco, Southlake and Rockwall currently consolidate multiple middle schools into their club to enable their kids a chance to participate. As we try to open up wrestling to increasing numbers of boys it is important that we take steps to allow MS clubs that represent their ISD’s to compete. This will bring more coordinated competition into the area and benefit all. Team eligibility guidelines will have to be clearly defined, but this shouldn’t stop the sports growth.
I would like to propose a 6-week dual competition schedule. During this duration each team would be responsible for hosting one or two events. The meets would include a total of four schools and each would wrestle two duals back to back and then be finished for evening. It might look something like this.

A. Allen Round 1 A vs. B C vs. D
B. Rockwall Round 2 A vs. C B vs. D
C. Lovejoy
D. Southlake


There wouldn’t be downtime waiting for the next round. Wrestling could start at 6PM and be concluded by 8-8:30PM ensuring kids would be home at a reasonable hour. Just imagine six weeks at 2 dual matches/week. That’s twelve bouts that each wrestler could get and it would unleash the excitement of team competition. This is more duals than many varsity and nearly all JV wrestlers in Texas now get during a season. We could keep a win - loss record for league placement or culminate the season with a Dallas MS Dual Championship Tournament. With coaches having more exposure to other teams wrestlers we could also construct MS rankings by weight and keep them updated on websites like insidetexaswrestling.com.


Teams that may be interested in competing are;
Allen Lovejoy Rockwall Southlake Coppell
Northwest Frisco Highland Park St. Marks TCA
All Saints Ft. W Country Day Liberty Christian Plano Dallas Episcopal

Some of the larger programs could have multiple teams (Example: Allen - A Team, Allen B Team). We need to gauge the interest and see if area schools would be interested in participating. I think that we could probably get 12 separate teams in the first year if we sold this dual competition concept.

Proposed wrestling weeks (Duals on Monday or Wednesday)
Wk 1 Week of Dec. 9
Wk 2 Week of Dec. 16
Wk 3 Week of Jan. 6
Wk 4 Week of Jan. 13
Wk 5 Week of Jan. 20
Wk 6 Week of Jan. 27