As I was laying my brochures on the lobby table at the Georgia State Wrestling Tournament, a man stepped up beside me and took an immediate look. He was obviously a wrestling dad. “What’s this?” he asked. “It says ‘Middle School.’ Could this be applied to Youth Wrestling?”
“It’s a new book that’s coming out,” I answered, “and, yes, sure it could.”
“Then why ‘The Middle School Way’?” he queried.
Because, I explained to him, that’s where my background is. It’s where I’ve spent my entire coaching career, yet everything in The Middle School Way: The Forgotten Secret Principles can be applied to any youth wrestling program. The book was obviously written for Middle School coaches, but the more I thought about it, my real audience was wrestling dads like the one I found myself talking to. He probably had an older son in the State Tournament and a younger one waiting in his local wrestling club. He might even be from right there in Gwinnett County. If he was, he might be unfamiliar with the concept of Middle School athletics altogether.
You see, the biggest public school system in the state is Cobb (located on the northwest side of Atlanta) and the second largest is Gwinnett (which brackets Atlanta on the northeast.) Both these systems have thousands of students and dozens of Middle Schools, but, as a cost cutting measure, neither system offers any school-run Middle School sports.
This has ensured the survival and growth of USA Wrestling Clubs, which have overgrown Middle School wrestling in Georgia the way kudzu has overgrown its hills and embankments. These clubs are the wrestling equivalent of Little League Baseball and other recreation league-based programs. They are run by enthusiastic and well-meaning fathers, many of whom are great coaches and great human beings, but none of whom have the educational background and experience that a school based teacher-coach has. They don’t see the sport the same way a Middle School coach sees the sport. The coach and the dad are seeing the same world through two distinctly different lenses.
The Middle School Way is intended to bridge that gap. While it will contain many practical, how-to strategies for implementing virtually every part of a successful feeder team, at its heart it is intended to explain the philosophical underpinnings of the Middle School concept as it is applied to athletics.
What follows are the draft articles I’ve written over the past few months which serve as a framework for the upcoming book. If you read these articles, you’ll see where I’m going. They are a beginning, not the final version of the book. The proposed Table of Contents will give the reader a clearer idea of the final form the book will take. While the first chapters will deal with pedagogy, the subsequent entries will be more about practical applications. The first chapters will deal with the why, and the later chapters will deal with the how to provide a well-rounded, holistic approach that few books or videos on the sport offer today.
If you like what you read, you won’t have to wait until the entire book is compiled and edited to know the Forgotten Secret Principles. An entire program of instruction and curriculum will soon be available through Big Rock Publications for all interested parties. What I need is your feedback to make this program the best one possible. Please feel free to leave your responses in the Comments section of each article, and I also welcome your feedback at wrestling@bigrockpubs.com. Until then, I look forward to meeting you and helping you make your child’s wrestling experience a memorable one.
[...] Introduction [...]