You’ve heard of the books…for Dummies….well, this is a couple of notches DOWN from that….I don’t even know what would be in that book.  This is the absolute not-a-clue-novice-totally-beginner’s-guide to wrestling.  For moms.

Wrestling:  the most confusing sport.  OK, that’s arguable.  But it is confusing.  And I’m not even trying to understand the referee’s hand signals or calls.  I’m talking about being a wrestling mom.

Tip 1.  First, let’s get on the same page.  Wrestling as a school sport is not WWE.  There’s freestyle and greco-something.  I think we do freestyle.  Note to self:  find out which one it is.  Regardless, there’s no ring, it’s not a “fight,” and there’s no bikini clad girls walking around with poster board.  That tells you the extent of my knowledge of WWE.  So now we are clear that I don’t know much about either one of these things!

Tip 2.  Next, beware the Smell.  Your boy will stink.  I don’t know what exactly goes on at these practices that would cause the odors they do, but my suspicion is it’s because your boy’s stink gets mixed with all the other boys he wrestles with, and the result is disgusting.  We only live about 10 minutes from the high school, but I thought I would pass out from the smell on the way home after his first practice.  I also made a near-fatal mistake on that day.  Letting down your window is a big no-no!  All that does is SUCK the stink from his body, across your face, and up your nose.  Our best defense has been for GK to hold an open container of deodorant in front of the air vent ALL. THE. WAY. HOME.

Tip 3.  Antibacterial soap.  Be sure your wrestler bathes as soon as possible after practice or matches using antibacterial soap.  Bathe well.  ‘Nuff said.

wrestler sturggling with math? get help here from algebrastudent.com

Tip 4.  What your wrestler should take to wrestling practice.

  • Water in a refillable bottle.
  • GK likes to wear the drifit shirts and athletic shorts.
  • Wrestling shoes.  We ordered four pairs from Dick’s Sporting Goods online and returned the three that didn’t work at the local store.  Worked great for us because of free shipping since our local store had a limited choice in stock.  If you live in a larger city, you may not have to go that route.
    • Don’t put on wrestling shoes before you’re in the gym and heading onto the mats.  Wrestling shoes are for mats only.
  • Head gear.  The team may have a specific required one, or Coach may let each wrestler choose his own.  GK likes this one.  The key is finding one that’s comfortable and will stay put during a match.
  • Snacks–We usually pack protein or cereal bars, sunflower seeds, pistachio nuts, cashews, or almonds; bananas are a favorite but usually get squished in the bag by the end of the day.  Yuck.

The down-and-dirty-list of tips for new wrestling moms from


This is a long list…I’ve created a one-page PDF with just the basics (and not all of my witty commentary, haha).  If you want it for the price of your email address, click here!  No spam allowed.  For real.


Still reading?  Awesome!  Let’s keep going….

Tip 5.  Nutrition.  I had always heard the comical stories about teenaged boys eating their family “out of house and home.”  And now I am living it.  I have been thankful many times that I have a son, and just one son!  Sympathies to those with more than one boy…wow, at the food he can eat!  And this is a skinny kid!  He eats dinner, then returns two hours later for a snack (really, another meal), then comes back in for some chocolate milk before bed.  Bottom line, get good, nutritious food in the house that he will eat…we’ve been encouraged to focus on protein, fruits, and veggies.  My son is not a big vegetable eater, so I try to stock the ones he does like and serve those at dinner (different kinds of beans and peas, mostly).  We keep bananas, apples and applesauce, oranges and halos.  Keep what he will eat, remember?  Bear Naked Granola, Clif bars, nuts & seeds (pistachios, almonds, and sunflower), boiled peanuts, beef jerky, and vanilla carnation instant breakfast stirred into his milk are also on GK’s favorites list right now.  I know we could do better, but I am thrilled that he makes good food choices most of the time.

Tip 6.  Varsity/Junior Varsity (JV)/Rec league:  These are the groups at our school.  Most of the varsity wrestlers are 11th and 12th graders, but there are a couple of 10th graders and one 9th grader.  Rec league is the middle schoolers and younger.  My son’s a 9th grader on JV.  For us, wrestlers can sometimes float back and forth between Varsity and JV, depending on weight classes and other factors.  If we don’t have someone in a particular weight class, sometimes a JV wrestler will wrestle varsity for a particular match or meet.  There’s a whole points system for the school’s season that I know little about, and this plays into that.  It’s more for the team than the individual I think, for us to put someone in even if they’re sure to lose the match….

Tip 7:  OK, uniforms.  They’re called singlets.  And you just pray for dark colors for your team’s singlets.  White singlets scare me.  That is all.

Wash it and lay it flat to dry.  We have always just laid ours out on a bath towel on the floor (because I have a laundry closet, not a laundry room, which is another story for another day).  Apparently hanging them up to dry stretches them out, and they need to stay un-stretched.  🙂

Oh, and don’t use fabric softener.  I read somewhere that it can weaken the fabric, and I’m still new enough to this that I don’t want anything I do to distract him from getting the job done.

Tip 8:  Fat testing.  Before the season starts, wrestlers have to do a fat test.  This determines their minimum weight class for the season.  The first part is a hydration test.  Apparently, some wrestlers purposely dehydrate themselves (severely) in order to ”cut weight” and get into a lower weight class, thus gaining advantage.  So, regulations are in place to check hydration before doing the fat testing.  My son failed the fat test the first time this year!  I couldn’t believe it!  Not really the “fat” test, but the hydration test….he didn’t drink any water that morning (no reason, it was just early, and we were going to get breakfast after we “ran by” to do the test) and had performed with the marching band at the football game the night before.  I guess he hadn’t hydrated enough, so believe me that they are serious about the hydration thing.  We had no idea he was dehydrated.

When you get to wherever it is…for us, a nearby (neighboring town) sports medical center, there’s a form to fill out, and lots of bottled water everywhere.  They want you to be hydrated.  🙂  You pay a fee, I think around $10, and then your boy heads off to pee in a cup.  That’s the hydration part.  If your wrestler’s hydration level is a little low, they will tell him to drink some water and try again.  GK’s level was so low they said even drinking a bottle of water wasn’t going to be enough!  Our coach checked with the officials there, and they said we could come back the next week to try again.  Believe me, we consciously kept him drinking water all week.  Side note, this was in October, not even the heat of the summer, so don’t let the weather fool you when it comes to hydration!

OK, once you’ve passed the hydration part, you do the fat test.  I don’t know what this involves, I think a caliper fat check and stepping on the scale.  And that’s it.  The whole thing should take about 10 minutes.  Unless there’s a long line or you flunk the hydration part!

Tip 9:  Tournaments/meets.  I don’t exactly know the difference here either.  Except I guess meets might just be the Tuesday/Thursday ones we have with two other schools at a time.  Home meets:  Our team wrestles everybody on another school’s team.  Then they wrestle the third school’s team.  Then the second team gets to go home (this seems to be the one who has the farthest to drive home, but that’s not always the case) while we wrestle the third team.  Your son may or may not wrestle against each school.  There are several factors in this, including whether the other team has someone his size for him to wrestle, and whether he earns the wrestling spot if another boy weighs in the same class as your wrestler.  Tournaments tend to be on the weekend or during school breaks, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas.  They involve many different schools/teams and can be one, two, or three days.  Double-elimination tournaments mean just what they sound like:  at a minimum, your wrestler will wrestle twice.  If he loses both, he’s done; if he wins, he may continue, depending on other variables.

Tip 10:  Matches.  Also known as, when’s my son gonna wrestle?  If there’s anything consistent about wrestling season, it’s that there’s no discernible pattern to anything.  Much.  And it drives me a little crazy most of the time.  Who knows?!  This drives me nuts….NUTS!  I can’t stand not having an order, consistency, a pattern, something!  Sometimes, they seem to go in order by weight class, but never completely.  Sometimes one wrestler will have two matches before another has wrestled at all.  Some will wrestle twice, some three times (and I don’t mean because one is winning, therefore, continuing to move up in the ranking…that would be logical–a no-no in wrestling, apparently).  At the last tournament, GK was told he would wrestle twice, regardless of the outcome.  He wrestled around 9 am.  Everyone else on the team (about 30 kids) wrestled twice.  They made announcements regarding semifinals and consolation rounds and then varsity finals.  He wasn’t mentioned.  Finally, around 3 pm, our son was called up to wrestle his second match.  It made no sense to us, but they had not done 4-5 weight classes until that point.  Bottom line, who knows when your wrestler will wrestle!  Take away:  Make yourself at home in whatever gym you find yourself.  You’ll be there awhile.

Tip 11:  Don’t leave!  After that last tip, you may be planning ways to get some errands done or otherwise occupy your time between matches.  Nope.  This happened to me.  The announcement was made that they would pause the tourney for lunch until a specified time, say 1:00.  I drove to a nearby spot and got lunch.  I got back about 10 minutes before the time they said that wrestling would resume.  When I walked in, GK was literally walking off the mat.  He had just wrestled, and I had missed it.  I worked hard not to cry right there in the gym!  Lesson learned:  don’t listen to anybody with a microphone.  And don’t leave.  Plan to pack a snack, grab a concession (but time it right after your kid has just wrestled or risk him wrestling while you step out), or go hungry…but don’t miss the match!

Tip 12:  Wrestle-offs.  These are done at practice, usually a day or two before a meet or tournament.  This happens when our team has wrestlers in the same weight class, and they compete (wrestle) to see who will get to represent the team in that weight class at the meet/tourney.  The loser will still get to compete (sometimes), but will probably have to wrestle in a higher weight class.  Big disadvantage in terms of weight, but each match is good experience building (I suppose).  If the next up weight class is already occupied, that wrestler may not get to compete in the coming meet/tourney.

Tip 13:  Weigh-ins.  There are weigh-ins before any kind of match/tournament.  Wrestlers want to be at the top of their weight class, without going over.  The main reason I see is that your opponent may weigh as much as you but not more.  Every little bit matters in wrestling.

Tip 14:  Weight classes.  OK, technical stuff here.  Based on their official weigh-ins before any match/tourney, wrestlers are put into weight classes.  These are 6-7 pounds apart, so for our area, that means there’s a 106 class, 113, 120, 126, 132, and so on.  Again, no logic.  Seems like they would all be x number of pounds apart, but this is wrestling!  Wrestlers can wrestle in a weight class above their weight if their coach decides to do this for the good of the team, but they can’t wrestle below.  For example, if your wrestler weighs in at 131, he could wrestle 132 or higher, but he could not wrestle 126 at that meet/tourney.

Tip 15:  Cut weight.  This is a term that I hear a lot.  Some guys, I’ve heard, were “encouraged” to cut, or lose, 10 pounds.   We have been fortunate that this hasn’t been our experience so far.

Tip 16:  Snacks.  Kids usually won’t eat at a match or tournament until after they’ve weighed in.  And then they’re starved, unless they’re too nervous to eat. Our team usually provides granola/protein bars, halos, bananas, and small turkey sandwiches.  And lots of water.

Tip 17:  Pack well–for yourself.  So, I now have a short, but important list for meets/tourneys:

  • portable cell chargers (I tend to pinterest while I wait)
  • snacks
  • water
  • cash (there will be a charge at the door and concessions probably won’t take a credit card)
  • layers:  a jacket/sweater because gyms can be drafty or steamy.  You just never know.

And there you have it.  My complete brain dump on the subject.

{Download the tips in a helpful pdf, here.}