Wrestling switch of season causing concerns

With the battle raging over the high school basketball seasons, there are plenty of tough decisions that will be made by the State of Illinois, the Illinois High School Association and the Illinois Department of Public Health in the coming weeks. Those decisions could determine the implementation or perhaps even the existence of high school sports in this state.

If they do have them as they are currently scheduled, the next tough decisions will have to be made by the athletes themselves.

The IHSA’s moving of the 2020-21 wrestling season from the winter [Nov. 16-Feb. 13] to the summer [Apr. 19-June 26] of its master plan has left area mat coaches happy that they may still have a season as of this writing.

However, they are not without concerns, most of them revolving around the conflict wrestling would have with other sports. Where wrestling’s biggest competition for athletes came from basketball, it will now have to vie for athletes with football [Feb. 15-May 1], baseball, softball, boys and girls track, girls soccer and boys tennis [all May 3-June 26].

Seneca wrestling coach Todd Yegge worries that may be a source of stress for the unusually large senior group he expects to have take the mat.

“I’m happy for our kids,” said Yegge, “that they will get an opportunity and that the IHSA is making the moves to make that possible, to give the kids a chance. As a coach and an educator, I see the value of the kids being involved. That’s really important.

“My concern as a coach is how this will affect my seniors. Not the least of that concern is that the kids might have to make a decision between sports — between wrestling, baseball, track, football [which runs from Feb. 15 to May 1] — that they’ve never had to make before. That adds a whole new dynamic. It could spread our athletes a little bit thin and that will be tough on them, but some opportunity is better than no opportunity at all. At least for now, they’ll have the chance to make that decision.”

Matt Rebholz, who will take over the reins of the La Salle-Peru program from Ed Wrobleski whenever the season starts, agrees that mat programs at schools of that size and smaller could be hurt by the move.

“My first impression is that while I’m a little disappointed it’s being moved, I’m still happy there’s going to be a chance for a season,” he said, “but there will obviously be more conflicts with other sports and because we are a small, rural school, we will be competing with them within our school for athletes. Right now, our hope is that we will have a team when the time comes, that’s our goal, and we’ll go from there.”

“I’m very excited as this season is my first as the head coach, but you never want to see athletes not have a season and not have results for all the hard work they’ve put in.”

St. Bede coach Sam Allen is not a big fan of the move at all, feeling that there are ways that the sport could have remained where it was instead of putting the various sports in opposition. He feels that wrestling is as much a contact sport as basketball, so if basketball players are in action in the winter, so should the matmen.

“I think there are ways that we could have made this work under certain guidelines,” Allen said. “At the pro level, they’re doing it. At the college level, they’re doing it. They’ve proved it can be done, so it doesn’t seem necessary from my point of view because there are ways to do them safely … In addition, there’s the issue of conflicts with other sports, plus I don’t like the fact that’s its pushing it all the way back to the last possible moment. What if that season gets cancelled, too? Then no one has a season at all.

“I am surprised that there isn’t as much pushback over wrestling as there is for basketball. I think wresting people are just happy to have hope for a season. I’m grateful, too, but there just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of data to back it up.”