As for football, several really good players were solid wrestlers in high school. Ray Lewis for example. I would love to see coaches encourage wrestling for bigger kids to help develop their feet. Funny story, I had a kid for my high school that weighed 330 lbs and wanted to play football. The bad part was I got him a total of two matches in two years because he couldn’t get his weight down. Went 1-1 so it was a victory in my book but the kid couldn’t even jump rope when he showed up to wrestle. Wrestling, much like boxing, requires so much more coordination between feet and hands that it’s an excellent sport to help develop all the athletic skills needed. I got into shouting matches (really? an ex-wrestling coach? shouting?) with football coaches because they were usually mad when I would get one of the better players to come wrestle. Anyway, I gave up the coaching part for now that I’m raising three boys and trying to get my family moved to Georgia.
