tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13009903.post-1119140650058773872005-06-18T17:24:00.000-07:002005-06-18T17:24:00.000-07:00Yeah, you need the rec kids programs before the middle school programs. In the rec programs, it's more open, the kids can participate in multiple sports and they'll enter middle school with a broader experience than just seeing the wall-to-wall coverage of basketball and football. <BR/><BR/>I started wrestling a year before I entered middle school. And I gotta say, my middle and high school coaches were idiots (except for a couple assistants). They made the whole sport some sort of macho march, too much about how great the sport was and being tough and not enough just calming down and perfecting some techniques. And a lot of guys got their asses handed to them. Good wrestlers who transfered to our school became mediocre. I ended up learning most of my wrestling at camps.<BR/><BR/>And that's something I think can turn a lot of wrestlers and parents off --a fear that they're not "tough enough," that they can't live up to some imaginary macho standard, when what it takes --especially at that early level --is just getting your technique down, and the steady success off that will lead to confidence in the sport. (Really, how macho can a 75 pound kid be?) If you think for a minute about what attracts kids, and people in general, to sports, it's in part the whole technical side --the shoes, the gear-heads, the fantastic shot or pitch or fly ball or lateral or cut and the whole image of the thing. Making the sport out to be some sort of sanctioned street fight between tough knuckleheads does no one any good. Toughness counts for something, but I pinned a lot of gorillas who couldn't counter a slick low single and a fast arm bar.J Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02169083439729235279noreply@blogger.com