Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to talk some marketing strategies for HLG wrestling with Bryan Van Kley who is the Publisher of WIN Magazine. Bryan has been most helpful in helping me promote HLG wrestling to the masses through WIN Magazine. While we were talking about the topic of recruiting Bryan mentioned to me as an upcoming resource for recruiting at http://www.thewrestlingsite.com/ which was started by former Iowa State Assistant Coach Less Anderson. What caught my attention about thewrestlingsite.com was the indirect relationship I have Les Anderson. Now I have never met Les Anderson, but I had heard about him many times from my college wrestling coach, Ben Peterson. Coach Peterson is well known by his former wrestlers for telling stories about his time on the Iowa State team and his time wrestling in the World and Olympic competitions. Some of those stories told by Ben included Les Anderson. Although I was never coached by Les I believe some of his influence must have rubbed off on Ben and indirectly rubbed off on me. After listening to some of the testimonials of Gable and Peterson about Les Anderson’s influence in their lives and for our beloved sport, it hit me that in a way Les is like a wrestling grandfather to me. ;-) I know it sounds weird, but let me explain. Ben Peterson taught me a ton about wrestling and in wrestling Ben was a father figure to me. As college coaches, Coach Nichols and Coach Anderson were some of Ben’s wrestling father figures which would make me, in a sense, a wrestling grandson. So I decided to investigate what one of my wrestling grandfathers, who I never met, was still doing for the sport of wrestling. I looked around at some of the resources that were available to wrestlers who want to get better at wrestling. As I looked, I found some resources and articles aimed specifically at high school wrestlers and parents. Click on this link to read the articles! There is also a feature that is being developed for wrestlers to develop a type of wrestling resume. This way college coaches can find out about wrestlers who may want to break into college wrestling, but haven’t had the opportunity to be seen. I already utilize online recruiting sites, but thewrestlingsite.com is a wrestling specific site and may potentially be utilized by more high school wrestlers. In 2008-09 school year the National Federation of State High School Associations did a study which reported that there were 273,403 high school wrestlers. Wrestling has more high school male wrestlers participating since the 1980’s. When comparing the 08-09 high school participation figures to the 08-09 NCAA participation report which list only 6,522 wrestling participants there is a huge disparity in participants. I must point out that we could include NAIA school and Jr. College programs to this number to make it greater; however it doesn’t change the fact that there is still a huge disparity between wrestler’s participation in high school compared to college. We could spend some time debating whether or not half of the number of high school wrestlers could even compete at the college level, or if they would be academically fit for college programs, or has title IX taken away too many opportunities, which would all be good discussions. However, there are many college programs such as Hannibal-LaGrange College who could benefit from some wrestlers who may not be a D-1 wrestler in ability or academically, but could find a wrestling home in our program and have a great experience wrestling in college and even have a shot at a NAIA national title all the while accruing a solid college education. I think Les Anderson is trying to help bridge the communication gap between the 10’s of thousands of high school wrestlers who want a college wrestling opportunity, but haven’t heard of a place like Hannibal-LaGrange College where they can wrestle. I know as a college coach I would take advantage of a resource such as thewrestlingsite.com is trying to develop. I hope these resources provided by Les Anderson will be helpful for anyone considering wrestling in college especially those who are considering wrestling for Hannibal-LaGrange College! To someone I have never met and continues working to make wrestling better Thank You Grandpa Les Anderson!;-)
-Coach Scott Hawes
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