Feb 3, 2022 3 min read

Though I have yet to meet Amy Scheuneman, who last year took over as executive director of the WPIAL, when I do, I will give her a big thank you for what she proposes to do for wrestling.

In a memo circulated to the organization’s athletic directors, she is offering a change to high school wrestling that is long overdue.

The WPIAL is offering schools a different way to handle poor roster numbers without punitive damage. The memo asks for athletic directors to consider opting out of a team schedule without being penalized.

It appears the WPIAL is changing its stance on a school’s commitment to field teams and is encouraging schools to now take an honest look at their programs by Feb. 9.

What needs to be decided is:

1. Schools can still offer a wrestling team without accepting a section schedule. They can still go to individual and team tournaments and/or schedule dual, tri, or quad matches against other schools with limited roster numbers.

2. Schools that opt out of team events are simply exempt from entering or winning any team events.

3. Schools that opt out of team events can still enter one wrestler per weight class in the WPIAL individual tournaments. The only caveat is that athletes have to be registered at the beginning of the season and go through normal qualification procedures not onlike such sports as track, swimming and golf to name a few.

4. Wrestling differs from other sports in the minimum number of athletes in team events. It is unfair to their opponents who have to use a competition point to account for that match.

Another change that would help would be to no longer restrict the number of tournaments a wrestler can participate in. There are tournaments available on nearly every weekend of the season beginning with the Chartiers-Houston Tournament the first weekend of the season.

If a school decides to opt out of the team events, then there will be no repercussions, unlike other sports. These schools will be able to rejoin the section schedule if there is suddenly an increase to the roster by the next 2-year cycle.

Maybe some schools will balk at the chance to opt out. But believe me, there is very little excitement when the forfeits far outnumber the contested bouts in a dual meet. Programs will be doing more harm than good if they don’t opt out of team events when fielding a small roster.

While this affects a lot of Class 2A teams, there are a few Class 3A programs that are struggling with numbers. High school sports program are not everlasting when it comes to talent. There are a number of examples of that in the WPIAL.

Wrestling has been hit hard by the lack of numbers and this might be a good way to bolster a program. There is only one question about the opt-out possibility:

What took so long?