Takedown Report

Walk-ons play integral part in success of college wrestling programs

College wrestling programs across the country will soon embark on the 2016-17 season with the first official practice less than three weeks away. Coaches will finalize their team rosters and scholarship money will get dispersed throughout the team of wrestlers. Team rosters will also include many non-scholarship student-athletes known as walk-ons. A fully-funded college wrestling program is allotted 9.9 scholarships. “With 9.9 scholarships, a walk-on can be very valuable to the program,” said University of Pittsburgh head wrestling coach Jason Peters.Many college wrestling rosters have 30 or more wrestlers. “Not everybody can be on money, so we need walk-ons each and every year to balance out our recruiting classes,” said Rutgers head wrestling coach Scott Goodale. “They’re a huge part of our program. We’ve been fortunate enough where guys have stuck with it and end up being contributors to our program.”
Types of walk-ons
There are two types of walk-ons in college wrestling programs. The distinction between the two types of non-scholarship student-athletes comes in how the wrestler lands in the program.
“A recruited walk-on is someone you went after and want,” said Goodale, who guided the Scarlet Knights to a 15th-place finish at the 2016 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. “You develop a relationship with that wrestler. It just happens that it’s a money thing. It’s a scholarship thing. Maybe you don’t want to put all this money into a certain weight class. Or maybe you just don’t know if that wrestler is a scholarship kid right now, and you don’t want to take that chance, but they’re dying to wrestle in your program.
“Then there are just guys who just want to try out. They wrestled in high school. Maybe they didn’t recruited, but are going to come to your school because it’s their dream school. They want to try out. We have a couple guys doing that right now.”
Rest of the story at http://matbossapp.hs-sites.com/blog/walk-ons-play-integral-part-in-success-of-college-wrestling-programs?mc_cid=4bc10e834a&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

October 19, 2016 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized