This was me when I started. Was told the team would get cut if they didn't get a coach and participation numbers didn't come up. I stepped in to save the team.
I knew a double, a cow catcher, a bear hug, a sit out switch, and a half nelson when I first started to coach, although you will see my team do more than these moves now lol. It's still a struggle for me from a technical standpoint to read a situation and know how to solve it (although its much easier now a decade+ later). One of my wrestlers this past weekend got put in a situation I struggled to digest and had to ask another coach how to handle it.
One thing people fail to remember is the availability of clubs or opportunities to wrestle. Not everyone has the demographics of money or travel to find great success. Top notch programs become top notch through feeder programs. Which top team does it through their HS program alone? My team was always 8-15 kids yearly until we started to find success consistently at the state level (and my abilities to coach increased). That consistency began shortly after the switch to 6 classes. This season. I finished with 35 kids on my active roster; 24 boys, 11 girls.
I started off-season wrestling with my school 2 years before COVID and then it got shut down. Thankfully I was able to encourage and aid a former local stud to start up a club team locally that is doing AMAZING work post-covid and will eventually filter ready made wrestlers into the room like other programs get.
Almost my entire program right now is made up of kids who don't know what wrestling is until they show up to practice (most think WWE) in the 9th, 10th, 11th and sometimes 12th grade. I have one kid, placed third this year, who I got into the room with me in the 4th grade. Other than that, everyone is a 1st or 2nd year kid on my team, I still blame COVID for this. We consistently have been putting a few kids here and there on the podium in placements 3-6, but until The GOAT House starts producing kids like other programs, we will be what we are.
We have about 550 kids in our school, of which, about 50 could be considered athletes. We fight with basketball and swim for the best, and I can assure you, we rarely win those fights. Others spend their off-season training for soccer or baseball. So we take the best kids we can get and do the best we can with them, and we as the coaching staff love every minute of it. I can tell you stories of how this sport changed some of their lives for the best, and part of it was the attainable goal of making states. The "success" that my program has achieved over the past 5-7 years I partially attribute to the chances the kids have to "succeed" even in a watered down state tournament. We aren't a program looking to filter kids into colleges (yet), just one who are trying to teach the love of the sport, build memories and create the best young men and women we can. Call us what you will, but success can be found in other ways other than "getting kids to the next level".
Now to contradict myself. I do complain all the time about how easy it is to make states. I complain about how watered down the tournament is. I come from NY. State had 15 sections plus private school champ. AAAA, AAA, AA, A all had their own sectional tournaments; top 4 placed and went to state qualifying tournament (16 man bracket). From there, only the winner went to the state tournament to represent your section. Only 1 state champ. Things have changed and they now have 2 and a bunch of other weirdo rules going on too.
I am passionate, my wife will tell you obsessed. I see the benefits of the watered down system as it has opened up opportunities for kids to find love in a sport they've never even heard of or thought to try before. The chances for success has pulled F students to B/A students. It has pulled kids out of gang life and put them into careers like a paid EMT. It has taken kids off of the suspension list to the deans list. It has taken kids out of depression to being a social butterfly.
We live and work in a poor community with social and economic issues galore. Call me a loser, my program a failure, disagree with me, I don't care. On a personal level it's helped so many more kids than it's hurt. I am thankful for the 6 class system as it's allowed us as a team to grow and reach kids who were unreachable before. I often wish it were harder to make states, it's often times embarrassing seeing some of the wrestling occurring at the state tournament. But if that happened today, while I hope it would, I am not sure my program would thrive in the same manner it does today.