Ask Cael: Everyone around here almost automatically defers when they win the choice to start the second period. I believe that is counter-productive and want my boys to take bottom every time.

Story Published Friday, December 17th, 2010

name:                  Mike

question:              Cael, I never wrestled but our boys now do, I played football and basketball and have coached many sports.  I love to analyze and over the last three years have watched many matches.  Everyone around here almost automatically defers when they win the choice to start the second period.  I believe that is counter-productive and want my boys to take bottom every time.  This way they have a known plan, can score first in a scoreless match, and can get ahead, which I believe is better than trying to catch up.  What do you think? 

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Generally speaking it doesn’t matter whether you have your choice in the second or third period.  There’s nothing wrong with just choosing bottom every time you get the option.  There can be some strategy involved in deferring the call but ultimately it comes down to who wants to win the worst and goes out and scores points. For the most part if you are confident that you can escape from your opponent choosing down right away is great.   I agree with you that having “a known plan” does bring confidence and getting the first point on the board can be inspiring.  

The strategy of deferring the choice is more common in more competitive matches where one wrestler isn’t 100% certain what position they are going to choose. Deferring the call gives them a chance to get even more into the match before they have to make the decision. It buys them some more time.  Maybe it gives them a couple extra minutes to get a takedown so they don’t have to choose bottom if their opponent is really good on top.  Maybe wearing their opponent down for two more minutes will give them better chance to escape.  There are some really great top position wrestlers out there and it is best if you have the option to just choose neutral.  In a case like that, deferring is good.   My pride and stubbornness makes it difficult to have a wrestler choose neutral but sometimes it’s the wise choice. 

Early in my coaching days I thought it was best to always have a kid choose bottom, even if they weren’t strong in that position.  My mindset was that they need to learn how to get off the bottom and there is no better time to practice then in competition.  I quickly learned that that was not correct.  Kids need to have success in matches.  A match is not the best time to work on areas of weakness.  That’s what the practice room is for.  Confidence comes from success.  The old school coaching mentality is that it’s the coach’s job to point out mistakes and that’s how kids learn.  Kid’s rarely learn from mistakes in my opinion.  They learn from success.  That’s the “be positive” perspective.  Whatever you can do help the kid feel like he/she is having success is going to motivate them more than anything else.

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