LJ wrestling: Weight loss rules

By Ed Piper, Jr.

A parent of a Mira Mesa wrestler told me Sat., Dec. 10, at the Marauder Invitational that his son had to get a doctor's note certifying his body weight is seven percent to be eligible to compete for the school team.

High school wrestling, whether CIF or nation-wide, went under strict rules several years ago regulating how much weight a grappler could lose to prepare for a season or for an individual match. "Kids are (were) dying from being hydrated," said the dad, who was working as a volunteer at the varsity meet to keep spectators away from the orange mesh barrier rimming the six mats on the floor.

The past two seasons, wrestling meets have been a rich and invaluable source of new information for me as a sportswriter who has covered wrestling meets before, but who didn't grow up wrestling or know in-depth information about the sport.

People at the meets--whether parents, coaches, or officials--are amiable, "people" persons who enjoy talking and interacting with others. I told my wife, who has never attended a wrestling match, that it's not for her. It's usually warm in the gym, and the locale not infrequently carries the rich aroma of many perspiring bodies. That's a potent 1-2 combination.

People educated me last year on some of the weight regulations now in place in the high school sport. Back in my high school days, I shared with the parent in question, I remember Camarillo High wrestlers confining themselves in the P.E. Activity Room, as it was called on campus, the heat up, and wearing a plastic suit beginning a slow grind to jog around the room and try to shed some pounds for the next day's meet.

Wrestlers sometimes said they used the finger-down-the-throat method to meet their weight limit.

Now, you can't do either. You're examined before the season and given a baseline weight. Your body fat level is measured. You can't deviate more than a percent from the baseline weight. You can pig out and eat a ton to go up in weight, or just "wrestle up" without bulking up when the program needs you to fill a higher weight class.

But there are no dramatic sweat-downs or marathon jogs for a wrestler to drop many pounds in preparation for a competition.

I remember a friend who was a wrestler at La Jolla High five years ago, a league champ in his weight class, part of a stellar group that won the team league championship. I knew that he wasn't compelled to go on to college to pursue studies. He was pretty much done with classrooms, at least for now. He relishes action, and wanted to be out in the field doing something.

I thought for sure, at his level of ability, that he would want to go on to wrestle, and that means college. He has expertise in martial arts, and he is just a fit physical being.

He said no, he didn't want to go on to wrestle. Why? He didn't want to have to continue to limit his food intake to keep his weight down for competition.

I thought that was amazing. I had a certain amount of ability in a sport (not wrestling), and I looked forward to trying to develop further in it at the college level. (Community college was the highest level I played; I didn't make the four-year-university varsity I tried out for.) My thinking was that anybody with the ability would most likely want to try their hand at college sports.

Regarding high school wrestling's safeguards against extreme weight loss, I commend the sport. Other sports--football and baseball--are having to deal with safety and health issues, the one brain trauma, the other head injuries from batted balls. We could add girls youth soccer, in which studies have been done related to young girls' neck injuries due to heading the ball. The simple solution there seems to be banning headers in girls youth soccer.