Recently, there’s been an interesting article posted on a lot of our social media platforms. It concerns itself with which style is best scholastically for our women’s programs; freestyle or folkstyle?
Before I even read the article, I knew the position the author was going to take.
Without lengthening this post more than I could, here’s my opinion.
Whoever made the decision to go freestyle at the collegiate level, which I’m sure has USAWrestling’s fingerprints all over it, made a huge mistake.
Huge.
Aside from which style is best, right now, given what’s happening in collegiate wrestling in general, and in all non-revenue sports specifically, wrestling can’t afford to have a riff over anything.
United we stand, and divided, we need our heads examined.
On the freestyle front, I care deeply how America does overseas. But we’re already number one in the men’s programs, or really close, and I believe the ladies are destined to overtake the Japanese in the very near future.
So, staying with folkstyle scholastically and moving the women’s collegiate program back that way, for consistency’s sake, which we need badly, isn’t going to affect our international effort.
Remember, we’re now out spending all our global rivals at least 2 to 1. And, we have more wrestlers competing each year than any other country in the world.
But, the basis for this article is to remind everyone that the greatest challenge we have, and it’s really the only challenge that matters, is increasing out spectator base 10-fold. We need people in the bleachers generating revenue.
Nothing else matters at this point.
And freestyle has no fans, or, at least far less than folkstyle does, which currently is woefully short of what is needed. Going freestyle, or keeping this discussion going isn’t productive.
But it will separate us more like has already happened in American politics.
