By Keith Pompey
Inquirer Suburban Staff
Will a weight-reduction monitoring plan tentatively set to go into effect next season in New Jersey destroy high school wrestling there?
Depends on whom you ask.
Officials at the National Wrestling Coaches Association and New Jersey State Interscholastic Athlete Association will tell you no. Yet at least one South Jersey coach – Joe Hollywood of Deptford – says he will consider quitting if the proposed plan designed to better monitor wrestlers’ weight loss and prevent binge dieting is implemented.
“I don’t want to be a part of the killing of our sport, “said Hollywood, who indicated his resignation letter may come soon.
“It’s going to be tough, “said Paul Morina, Paulsboro’s coach. “It’s not a good situation. It’s not realistic. On the college level, it’s realistic, because they train all year long.”
Morina points out that most high school wrestlers usually play football or don’t participate in fall sports at all. For that reason, he says, they usually spend the early part of the season shedding their football weight. And for the ones who don’t play football, they usually need at least a couple of weeks to get in shape.
Yet the proposed rule would require a wrestler to have urine tests as part of a certified hydration assessment and have his body fat measured in October, a month before the start of wrestling season. Such tests are designed to show rapid, even dangerous weight changes.
But, argues Steve Cossaboon, the coach at Glassboro High, “there is a ratio of error on [the body-fat] scale which is 2 to 3 percent, which is a lot.”
Cossaboon is concerned that if a wrestler weighs in 10 pounds heavier than his desired weight class, he would have to wait two weeks before he’s eligible to wrestle in the weight class he prefers. Currently, all that wrestler has to do is lose the pounds before weighing in before the match and he is good to go.
“I think it is going to lead to a lot of forfeits, “said Hollywood.
The NJSIAA has used the weight-certification plan on a trial basis since 2003-04. A decision on whether to fully adopt it is expected later this spring.
Steven J. Timko, an NJSIAA assistant director, defends the plan. “It’s a healthy way of weight loss and weight management, “he said. “We are concerned about the way the wrestlers are cutting weight… . One of the fastest ways of cutting weight is being dehydrated.”
But the coaches want to know why the NJSIAA is singling out wrestling.
“Every year football players drop dead of heat exhaustion and nobody checked their hydration, “said Gary Papa, Camden Catholic’s coach. “Maybe somebody should check them for being overweight.
“All you have to do is pick up a newspaper and there’s an article about obesity. We are the healthy group.”
Papa, the president of the South Jersey Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association, also pointed out that a high school wrestler has never died because of rapid weight loss.
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