Takedown Report

For the Love of the Mat

TDR Editor’s Notes ; Great see growth in wrestling opportunities even in Alabama. Next they should get some college teams started. It used to be that the University of Alabama and Auburn University had top level D-I teams. Auburn even hosted the National Championships one year.
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High school wrestling thrives despite lack of collegiate options in Alabama
For high school football players in the state of Alabama, opportunity at the college level is an incentive made almost tangible because of the omnipresence of college football. If you push your hardest during summer workouts, your future could be at Jordan-Hare Stadium. If you maximize your potential, Bryant-Denny Stadium could be your next destination. Troy, UAB, Samford, Jacksonville State — the list of right-in-your-own-backyard landing spots is extensive for football prospects in Alabama.
Most other high school sports have a significant local presence at the college level, too, to help incentivize student-athletes. High school wrestling, though, has no such luxury. No SEC member school has a wrestling program aside from Missouri, whose wrestling team competes in the Mid-American Conference. In the state of Alabama, only Division III Huntingdon has a wrestling program that competes in the NCAA. Yet the sport continues to grow at the high school level in Alabama, especially of late. According to the annual National High School Athletics Participation Survey, participants in high school wrestling in Alabama rose from 1,747 during the 2002-03 school year to 2,719 in 2015-16, an increase of nearly 56 percent. Rest of the story at …. http://www.oanow.com/sports/high_school/_other/high-school-wrestling-thrives-despite-lack-of-collegiate-options-in/article_875ee612-f0b1-11e6-9478-13182a6626dd.html?mc_cid=75fb1d2847&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

May 17, 2017 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized