The Fallacy of Going Undefeated in High School or Youth Wrestling
For professional athletes, a win is a win. It doesn’t matter how sloppy or ugly the win is, it’s worth celebrating. On the other hand, in youth and sometimes in high school sports it’s the opposite. Particularly in youth and high school wrestling.
So much of winning in the sport of wrestling is based on matchups. What’s more, often coaches and parents can manipulate those matchups, or the local competition is just not on level. Either way, when coaches and parents let a young wrestler go undefeated, they are setting a trap for them long term.
In youth and high school wrestling winning every match reinforces bad habits. Every young wrestler has them. 10, 15, or even 18-year-old wresters are not even sniffing perfection. Additionally, there is no path to getting better if a wrestler doesn’t identify and fix each bad habit that stops them from being perfect.
Yes, it’s true that perfection is not possible. However, as John Wooden famously said, striving for perfection is not an impossibility.
Perfection is not measured in wrestling by going undefeated. Instead, it’s measured in technique, conditioning, and mental toughness. It’s far better to lose when losing is the only way to facilitate growth in these three areas.
Moreover, winning is counterproductive when a young wrestler gets so good that they think they know everything and don’t need to improve in these areas anymore. It’s in these cases where coaches need to bump up their undefeated wrestlers to a higher weight, age group, or travel nationally/internationally to find losses.
Simply stated, there should never be a case when a youth or high school wrestler goes undefeated for an entire season. The risk of success becoming the enemy is just too high.