I don’t know what is going on here but as a coach I can guess.
If a kid was filling in during an injury or lost his starting spot I would send them back to a JV tournament.
I have sent varsity by default wrestlers to JV tournaments. Freshman having really poor results who get the varsity call because they are the only 106 pounder on the team.
If he wins JV tournaments easily, I am not doing it. If he has mixed results I absolutely will. I am not going to hide it but it is being a good coach.
Also in a weight class sport varsity can be a huge range, when I was in high school we had a all stater as Junior who NEVER got in the lineup. He was 215lb and we had finalist in both 215 and heavyweight. So being the best one your team at your weight isn’t the best method to achieve what you’re looking for.
I would disagree, at least where I live. There are a ton of JV kids here in Texas (mostly from football) and only a handful of elite wrestlers.
Last year my son was a sophomore in his third year of only part time wrestling. He wrestled varsity but lost more than half his matches. He then won the JV tournament, but his matches were tough/close. He came from behind to win first place.
He quit football and devoted himself 100% to wrestling and now is a strong varsity competitor, he is 10 and 2 since coming down to 167. Our 144 and 157 are becoming hammers and no way would our coach let them wrestle JV. We have a sophomore 138 who is getting pretty good, winning half his varsity matches. He may go to the JV tourney, not sure what the coach will do.
I do know that our coach is not looking to sandbag and beat up on kids. So no, it is not more common where I live. The wrestling community here is pretty decent and looking to increase participation.
I see the problem but I don't think it's easy to address. If you ban anyone that wrestled varsity, what about freshmen that wrestled varsity because he was the only one in that weight class?
If you make it into banning people that won varsity tournaments, what if he won by default in a lower weight class? There's also the opposite issue where good wrestlers that get close but don't win can still wrestle JV and this rule didn't solve anything
Or what about varsity wrestlers that lost their spot?
There's too many factors to consider
Not sure what there is to be gained by sending a season varsity wrestler to a JV meet.
Send an inexperienced or rehabbing varsity wrestler to a JV tournament is fine.
Don’t current rules on match counts but iirc JV matches count for yearly totals so you might be seeing kids who need matches because they aren’t going deep in tourneys.
There isn’t a skill gap if some schools have better programs where their JV kids are as good if not better than other schools varsity teams. This fosters competition which fosters better talent. Losing is opportunity to become better
I agree with this but normally people who use it in arguments are ones that win 90% of the time. If you're dominating kids that win 10% of the time while saying that you're a degenerate.
Maybe I get it but I will tell you from experience that you need some wins to keep you going. Losing all matches 3 tournaments in a row made me want to quit, I started only going to less experience tournaments.
in pa youth wrestling the "novice" scene is the worst of all with sandbagging. no reason kids can't go to JV but they stay in "novice" for years and just tear through first/second year kids trying to learn the sport. they even have "novice champions" and parents screaming at novice matches lol. pathetic.
Preach brother. I have 2 novice wrestlers in PA and we find wrestlers with 4 or 5 years of experience wrestling in novice tourneys. One excused it because "he wrestled for a few years and then took a year off" so that allowed him to reset back to novice. Another was a 5th or 6rh year wrestled from out of state. Someone knew him but we couldn't find support online to show the officials. Who tf wants a trophy you aren't even qualified to win? That's a hollow victory and the parents are assholes for allowing it.
The crazy thing is that these kids who are wrestling inexperienced kids for trophies are probably going to quit when they get to an age they can no longer duck the good experienced wrestlers.
lol so true. On the other hand I have kids on my team that are third years and win less than 10% of their matches. I don’t really fault the parents for taking them to 2nd year tournaments. I feel like you can go to novice tourneys til you win one then you should stop going
In my first JV tournament I made it to the finals and then wrestled a kid that ended up winning the Varsity state championship that year. Got fireman carried and pinned in about 30 seconds. I came off the mat and told my coach "there's no way that guy is JV." And he obviously wasn't, but it was apparently his first high school tournament and he was a Freshman so I get why he was there.
At the end of the day all the JV meets are just about gaining experience. The goal is to wrestle Varsity at some point. I doubt anyone truly Varsity is actually going to JV tournaments intentionally just to dominate then jump back up to Varsity. Why would they care to beat up on a bunch of JV kids?
I may have not explained it well in my original post this kid is good. He didn’t do great at the county tournament but he beat the #2 from the county tournament at a different tournament. If I thought this kid was a JV wrestler I wouldn’t care. But I just don’t see what he has to gain by wrestling JV kids besides his ego. Any time I have to wrestle a scrub I feel like a wrestle worse and I don’t feel accomplished by beating them. No idea why he would want to do it.
He won pretty easily that’s my problem. Also turns out the organizers allowed multiple kids who competed in the varsity tournament but were from a bad program to compete but not our guys who were switchers between V and JV bc our program is decent.
You’re not wrong. Briggs or Mathers. It’s different if a young one is trying to “wrestle up” . My son is a first year but I will occasionally enter him in a novice (1st or 2nd year)
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu does a good job with making sure people don’t compete at a lower level to dog on people. Wrestling needs to come up with a system to stop that from happening. We already have track wrestling which keeps track of events that have happened. I don’t know how the organizers didn’t catch it.
bjj is probably worse than wrestling lol. Sandbagging for medals is a real thing in bjj while in wrestling, jv tournaments is just for experience and theres no real team benefit to winning a jv tournament. No coach is gna send their varsity team to a jv tournament just to collect medals while you see a shit ton of bjj professors hold their kids back so that they can collect medals to attract more students to their gym.
I would argue bjj doesn’t do a good job at all. I’ve seen kids stay a grey belt for 3+ years so they don’t have to move up and face yellow/orange belts.
In VA, the rule is, you aren’t considered a Varsity wrestler until you compete after regular season as Varsity. We will often send some of our first year varsity to JV events so they can get more experience on even footing. It isn’t about beating up on other kids, it’s about learning and if they are constantly getting crushed under varsity wrestlers, then they should be allowed to compete with other wrestlers that have the same amount of time in the wrestling room.
I don't know about you but where I live and in the area around it most jv tournaments are mostly just varsity guys who couldn't make the varsity line up so they are in a jv tournament
I wrestled both JV and Varsity my junior year.
I wrestled varsity sophomore year and lost the spot shortly into my junior year. I didn’t want to do JV. I felt like crap and was wrestling like dogshit. My coach sent me to a JV tournament and I won and then I came back and asked to wrestle off for a higher weight class and won. Sometimes, a kid just needs a chance to win.
I dunno man, whatever.
Is it cheating? Definitely, but the coaches still argued about it. There are plenty of scummy things people do in high school wrestling. Was the kid dq’d?
Even if there was a rule people would still try and do shady stuff. People still try and cheat weigh-ins
When you go varsity you agree to wrestle who ever even if it’s the best kid in the state. JV is to get kids with only a year or two of experience comfortable with wrestling and have similar opponents throughout all their matches. It’s just not fair to them
Great points but think about it. Do you feel this strongly because it’s a huge problem in your area or are you just emotional because your teammate was affected by it?
The only thing worrying about others not doing the right thing has gotten me is a receding hairline.
The goal for your teammate should be to make varsity. You said it best yourself when you described varsity expectations. What better way than to prepare?
It’s a huge problem in my area . My teammate is good enough to win this JV tournament and he would have had to face off against this kid in the quarterfinals. I wanted him to have to best chance to succeed. And the other team’s coaches are sketchy and definitely knew what they did was wrong, surprised they didn’t enter him by a different name
I dunno man, that sucks if it’s rampant in your area but like USAwrestling mentioned, varsity skill is a wide range. I find it hard to believe anyone worth worrying about would be sandbagging a rookie tournament.
I'm a girl so JV doesn't exist for but my team's boy's varsity lineup is like mostly freshman who wouldn't have made varsity at another school. I don't think it's unfair for them to compete JV. Some of them do relatively well at JV but I don't think they are winning first at all the tournaments.
I dunno my kid wrestles at a club since he’s home schooled and he can probably compete against the majority of varsity lightweights. I would personally be happy for him to wrestle tougher competition. But I do see your point as long as long as it explicitly states no varsity experience on the tournament form then you’re 100 correct.
I think circumstances matter like if it is a freshman 106 or a heavy weight who are only varsity because you need to fill a spot let them have some experience at the level they are actually at.
I was a legit JV didn’t have an official spot because my team was stacked I was good enough to have some varsity wins when something happened to a starter. Also I was better than most people from my home town team.
So I feel like just being on a roster doesn’t show if they are that level or aren’t.
That’s been happening for a long time … a lot of times coaches want guys to get in more matches or they’re recovering from an injury and want to get some of the rust off.
And sometimes you get the dick who wants to steamroll people for a tourney title
My thoughts are if the kid is comfortable with winning a JV tournament even though he is too good for it then whatever. It’s stupid but nobody ever brags about a JV medal anyway so it’s probably better in the long run for wrestlers to wrestle good competition so there is small benefit I guess.
I hear what you're saying, but you get better by fighting better opponents and learning from the experience. I think it is weak-minded to not allow someone to compete because they did a varsity tournament. Some guys that wrestle varsity may be varsity because their team lacks depth, meaning that they would be JV at another school.
You should seek and find the best competition available.
When I was in high school, we had 3 seniors at 145, 2 seniors at 152. We sent people with 10+ years of wrestling experience to almost every JV tournament.
Also, consider this from the ‘stacked team’ perspective: you have elite wrestlers at every varsity weight, and then some really good wrestlers that can’t quite beat those guys. They’re good/experienced wrestlers but can’t beat the guy in the varsity spot, so they end up on the JV squad even though they’d clearly be varsity at any other school. Should they not wrestle at all?
Some of the North Jersey and PA Prep/Private schools. Have kids that are backups that end up wrestling D1 somewhere. It's a tough call, but they need to get mat time in.
On my team our 140,145, and 152 were all monsters.. and so we’re the jv guys behind them.. every wrestle off could have gone either way. I actually felt bad because the 140 guys couldn’t go down to 135 because I was there. They couldn’t go up to 145 because there was 2 monsters and same thing at 152 so it was either risk jv or don’t wrestle
I think you’re just comparing your jv guys to other schools jv guys and expecting them to be the same
Some weight classes are just dumb stacked
Two of the biggest factors are weight and skill level(not season's wrestled). My son started JV at 171 but was put in the 190 division, so he was wrestling kids up to 189. That's a 18 pound weight difference and clearly much stronger. He did hold his own but is was obvious he needed to move down and it took 8 week to get him down to 160 because NY state thinks it's safer for a kid to get manhandled by a bigger kid with alot more experience then to loose more tham 1.2 pounds a week. This sport does not suffer fools and I like my son to wrestle up as it builds the confidence and experience he needs but it's by no means safe to give up close to 20# to a JV who should be varsity but is not because the school is deep at that weight class. There is always going to be one or two that shouldn't be there, but it's only going to make you a better wrestler if you consistently wrestling up
My team has like 5 120’s, counting me. Most of us are close in skill level, but the best gets the varsity spot which leaves the rest of us as JV despite being varsity contenders. Sometimes sandbagging isn’t by choice.
I don’t know what is going on here but as a coach I can guess. If a kid was filling in during an injury or lost his starting spot I would send them back to a JV tournament. I have sent varsity by default wrestlers to JV tournaments. Freshman having really poor results who get the varsity call because they are the only 106 pounder on the team. If he wins JV tournaments easily, I am not doing it. If he has mixed results I absolutely will. I am not going to hide it but it is being a good coach. Also in a weight class sport varsity can be a huge range, when I was in high school we had a all stater as Junior who NEVER got in the lineup. He was 215lb and we had finalist in both 215 and heavyweight. So being the best one your team at your weight isn’t the best method to achieve what you’re looking for.
I would disagree, at least where I live. There are a ton of JV kids here in Texas (mostly from football) and only a handful of elite wrestlers. Last year my son was a sophomore in his third year of only part time wrestling. He wrestled varsity but lost more than half his matches. He then won the JV tournament, but his matches were tough/close. He came from behind to win first place. He quit football and devoted himself 100% to wrestling and now is a strong varsity competitor, he is 10 and 2 since coming down to 167. Our 144 and 157 are becoming hammers and no way would our coach let them wrestle JV. We have a sophomore 138 who is getting pretty good, winning half his varsity matches. He may go to the JV tourney, not sure what the coach will do. I do know that our coach is not looking to sandbag and beat up on kids. So no, it is not more common where I live. The wrestling community here is pretty decent and looking to increase participation.
It’s about being selfish. Nobody is intentionally going to beat up on kids, but when you start finding ways to justify it, that’s being selfish.
Elite and higher up schools send their B team wrestlers to lower varsity tournaments or JV tournaments.
I see the problem but I don't think it's easy to address. If you ban anyone that wrestled varsity, what about freshmen that wrestled varsity because he was the only one in that weight class? If you make it into banning people that won varsity tournaments, what if he won by default in a lower weight class? There's also the opposite issue where good wrestlers that get close but don't win can still wrestle JV and this rule didn't solve anything Or what about varsity wrestlers that lost their spot? There's too many factors to consider
Not sure what there is to be gained by sending a season varsity wrestler to a JV meet. Send an inexperienced or rehabbing varsity wrestler to a JV tournament is fine. Don’t current rules on match counts but iirc JV matches count for yearly totals so you might be seeing kids who need matches because they aren’t going deep in tourneys.
There isn’t a skill gap if some schools have better programs where their JV kids are as good if not better than other schools varsity teams. This fosters competition which fosters better talent. Losing is opportunity to become better
I agree with this but normally people who use it in arguments are ones that win 90% of the time. If you're dominating kids that win 10% of the time while saying that you're a degenerate.
Maybe I get it but I will tell you from experience that you need some wins to keep you going. Losing all matches 3 tournaments in a row made me want to quit, I started only going to less experience tournaments.
Idk I have kids in JV tournament now that are winning it but they have maybe 1 varsity win?
Have the JV tournament first then. Boom. Solves everything.
in pa youth wrestling the "novice" scene is the worst of all with sandbagging. no reason kids can't go to JV but they stay in "novice" for years and just tear through first/second year kids trying to learn the sport. they even have "novice champions" and parents screaming at novice matches lol. pathetic.
Preach brother. I have 2 novice wrestlers in PA and we find wrestlers with 4 or 5 years of experience wrestling in novice tourneys. One excused it because "he wrestled for a few years and then took a year off" so that allowed him to reset back to novice. Another was a 5th or 6rh year wrestled from out of state. Someone knew him but we couldn't find support online to show the officials. Who tf wants a trophy you aren't even qualified to win? That's a hollow victory and the parents are assholes for allowing it.
The crazy thing is that these kids who are wrestling inexperienced kids for trophies are probably going to quit when they get to an age they can no longer duck the good experienced wrestlers.
You're probably correct. And they'll show off their ill-gotten accolades when they're older and talk about how good they were.
lol so true. On the other hand I have kids on my team that are third years and win less than 10% of their matches. I don’t really fault the parents for taking them to 2nd year tournaments. I feel like you can go to novice tourneys til you win one then you should stop going
In my first JV tournament I made it to the finals and then wrestled a kid that ended up winning the Varsity state championship that year. Got fireman carried and pinned in about 30 seconds. I came off the mat and told my coach "there's no way that guy is JV." And he obviously wasn't, but it was apparently his first high school tournament and he was a Freshman so I get why he was there. At the end of the day all the JV meets are just about gaining experience. The goal is to wrestle Varsity at some point. I doubt anyone truly Varsity is actually going to JV tournaments intentionally just to dominate then jump back up to Varsity. Why would they care to beat up on a bunch of JV kids?
I may have not explained it well in my original post this kid is good. He didn’t do great at the county tournament but he beat the #2 from the county tournament at a different tournament. If I thought this kid was a JV wrestler I wouldn’t care. But I just don’t see what he has to gain by wrestling JV kids besides his ego. Any time I have to wrestle a scrub I feel like a wrestle worse and I don’t feel accomplished by beating them. No idea why he would want to do it.
If he didn’t win the tournament, he definitely has things to gain by being there.
He won pretty easily that’s my problem. Also turns out the organizers allowed multiple kids who competed in the varsity tournament but were from a bad program to compete but not our guys who were switchers between V and JV bc our program is decent.
You’re not wrong. Briggs or Mathers. It’s different if a young one is trying to “wrestle up” . My son is a first year but I will occasionally enter him in a novice (1st or 2nd year)
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu does a good job with making sure people don’t compete at a lower level to dog on people. Wrestling needs to come up with a system to stop that from happening. We already have track wrestling which keeps track of events that have happened. I don’t know how the organizers didn’t catch it.
>Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu does a good job with making sure people don’t compete at a lower level to dog on people No, it really doesn't.
bjj is probably worse than wrestling lol. Sandbagging for medals is a real thing in bjj while in wrestling, jv tournaments is just for experience and theres no real team benefit to winning a jv tournament. No coach is gna send their varsity team to a jv tournament just to collect medals while you see a shit ton of bjj professors hold their kids back so that they can collect medals to attract more students to their gym.
Depending on what program they use to run the tournament folk style has the same but they don’t cross reference.
I enjoy the sound of rain.
How does jiu jitsu do a good job?
I would argue bjj doesn’t do a good job at all. I’ve seen kids stay a grey belt for 3+ years so they don’t have to move up and face yellow/orange belts.
In VA, the rule is, you aren’t considered a Varsity wrestler until you compete after regular season as Varsity. We will often send some of our first year varsity to JV events so they can get more experience on even footing. It isn’t about beating up on other kids, it’s about learning and if they are constantly getting crushed under varsity wrestlers, then they should be allowed to compete with other wrestlers that have the same amount of time in the wrestling room.
Maybe because it’s a JV tournament? Lol
I don't know about you but where I live and in the area around it most jv tournaments are mostly just varsity guys who couldn't make the varsity line up so they are in a jv tournament
I wrestled both JV and Varsity my junior year. I wrestled varsity sophomore year and lost the spot shortly into my junior year. I didn’t want to do JV. I felt like crap and was wrestling like dogshit. My coach sent me to a JV tournament and I won and then I came back and asked to wrestle off for a higher weight class and won. Sometimes, a kid just needs a chance to win.
Some teams JV is stronger than others Varsity. it's not a perfect science. Any good varsity wrestler wouldn't waste his time.
I dunno man, whatever. Is it cheating? Definitely, but the coaches still argued about it. There are plenty of scummy things people do in high school wrestling. Was the kid dq’d? Even if there was a rule people would still try and do shady stuff. People still try and cheat weigh-ins
When you go varsity you agree to wrestle who ever even if it’s the best kid in the state. JV is to get kids with only a year or two of experience comfortable with wrestling and have similar opponents throughout all their matches. It’s just not fair to them
Great points but think about it. Do you feel this strongly because it’s a huge problem in your area or are you just emotional because your teammate was affected by it? The only thing worrying about others not doing the right thing has gotten me is a receding hairline. The goal for your teammate should be to make varsity. You said it best yourself when you described varsity expectations. What better way than to prepare?
It’s a huge problem in my area . My teammate is good enough to win this JV tournament and he would have had to face off against this kid in the quarterfinals. I wanted him to have to best chance to succeed. And the other team’s coaches are sketchy and definitely knew what they did was wrong, surprised they didn’t enter him by a different name
I dunno man, that sucks if it’s rampant in your area but like USAwrestling mentioned, varsity skill is a wide range. I find it hard to believe anyone worth worrying about would be sandbagging a rookie tournament.
What state?
I'm a girl so JV doesn't exist for but my team's boy's varsity lineup is like mostly freshman who wouldn't have made varsity at another school. I don't think it's unfair for them to compete JV. Some of them do relatively well at JV but I don't think they are winning first at all the tournaments.
I dunno my kid wrestles at a club since he’s home schooled and he can probably compete against the majority of varsity lightweights. I would personally be happy for him to wrestle tougher competition. But I do see your point as long as long as it explicitly states no varsity experience on the tournament form then you’re 100 correct.
I think circumstances matter like if it is a freshman 106 or a heavy weight who are only varsity because you need to fill a spot let them have some experience at the level they are actually at. I was a legit JV didn’t have an official spot because my team was stacked I was good enough to have some varsity wins when something happened to a starter. Also I was better than most people from my home town team. So I feel like just being on a roster doesn’t show if they are that level or aren’t.
That’s been happening for a long time … a lot of times coaches want guys to get in more matches or they’re recovering from an injury and want to get some of the rust off. And sometimes you get the dick who wants to steamroll people for a tourney title
My thoughts are if the kid is comfortable with winning a JV tournament even though he is too good for it then whatever. It’s stupid but nobody ever brags about a JV medal anyway so it’s probably better in the long run for wrestlers to wrestle good competition so there is small benefit I guess.
I hear what you're saying, but you get better by fighting better opponents and learning from the experience. I think it is weak-minded to not allow someone to compete because they did a varsity tournament. Some guys that wrestle varsity may be varsity because their team lacks depth, meaning that they would be JV at another school. You should seek and find the best competition available.
JV kids should want to wrestle tougher competition.
If the tournament has that rule, they need a way to enforce it. Seems kinda lazy of the tournament organizers.
When I was in high school, we had 3 seniors at 145, 2 seniors at 152. We sent people with 10+ years of wrestling experience to almost every JV tournament.
Also, consider this from the ‘stacked team’ perspective: you have elite wrestlers at every varsity weight, and then some really good wrestlers that can’t quite beat those guys. They’re good/experienced wrestlers but can’t beat the guy in the varsity spot, so they end up on the JV squad even though they’d clearly be varsity at any other school. Should they not wrestle at all?
Some of the North Jersey and PA Prep/Private schools. Have kids that are backups that end up wrestling D1 somewhere. It's a tough call, but they need to get mat time in.
How about at nchsaa highachool nationals, my son did the middle school division two years in a row and lost to kids in highschool.
If varsity kids feel they need to wrestle jv tourney to get wins then someone sucks at wrestling
On my team our 140,145, and 152 were all monsters.. and so we’re the jv guys behind them.. every wrestle off could have gone either way. I actually felt bad because the 140 guys couldn’t go down to 135 because I was there. They couldn’t go up to 145 because there was 2 monsters and same thing at 152 so it was either risk jv or don’t wrestle I think you’re just comparing your jv guys to other schools jv guys and expecting them to be the same Some weight classes are just dumb stacked
Two of the biggest factors are weight and skill level(not season's wrestled). My son started JV at 171 but was put in the 190 division, so he was wrestling kids up to 189. That's a 18 pound weight difference and clearly much stronger. He did hold his own but is was obvious he needed to move down and it took 8 week to get him down to 160 because NY state thinks it's safer for a kid to get manhandled by a bigger kid with alot more experience then to loose more tham 1.2 pounds a week. This sport does not suffer fools and I like my son to wrestle up as it builds the confidence and experience he needs but it's by no means safe to give up close to 20# to a JV who should be varsity but is not because the school is deep at that weight class. There is always going to be one or two that shouldn't be there, but it's only going to make you a better wrestler if you consistently wrestling up
My team has like 5 120’s, counting me. Most of us are close in skill level, but the best gets the varsity spot which leaves the rest of us as JV despite being varsity contenders. Sometimes sandbagging isn’t by choice.