Area wrestling coaches have grudgingly accepted the shift in weight classes ordered last summer by the National Federation of High Schools.
"If this is the way the rules are going to be, we're going to make the best of it, but if I was ever asked if I'd like to see it changed back, I'd say yes," Walker Valley coach Alan Morris said this past week.
In its first major weight-class change since 1988, the NFHS eliminated a class in the middle weights and added the 195-pound class. In 1988, the group raised the lowest weight limit from 98 pounds to 103, adjusting other weights accordingly, and then in 2002 it added a 14th weight class when the 215-pound class became mandatory.
In 2002 the NFHS boosted the heavyweight limit from 275 pounds to 285.
"I'm not happy," said Soddy-Daisy coach Steve Henry, who also is president of the Tennessee Wrestling Coaches Association. "I've adjusted and I'm working within the boundaries, but I've talked with a lot of people in Indianapolis, North Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia and nobody likes the new weights. I feel it's something that got shoved down everybody's throat."
The National Wrestling Coaches Association recommended the changes, and the NWCA also is in charge of the cumbersome weight-management program endorsed by the NFHS. Henry used to be a proponent of the NWCA but now feels it is micro-managing.
"It's been a slow takeover, almost as if strategically planned, and I don't like it," he said.
Henry is one of numerous coaches who have had middle-weight wrestlers excluded from the lineup while scrambling to develop depth in the upper weights.
"With the elimination of the 140-pound class, I have at least three kids who have to wrestle way up," he said.
One of those is Jonah Smith, a 2011 state champion 103-pounder who had a growth spurt.
"He's now a natural 145-pounder, but when we have final challenge matches he'll challenge at 152," Henry said.
Smith has wrestled as high as 160 pounds and Henry said several of his wrestlers will be wrestling underweight at the state duals next week because of the NWCA-inspired weight-descent plans that he and many other coaches consider ludicrous.
"No coach I've talked with understands," Morris said of the new weight breakdown. "We've gained a weight class where we have a difficult time finding wrestlers, and we've lost a weight class that was a strength. The practical application of the intent has made it more difficult for our program."
Chattanooga Christian is still a young program at a relatively small school, and coach Josh Craft still has trouble filling all the weight classes.
"This year it ended up being a little helpful because of who we had coming back," he said of the change. "Our guys were spread out just right. However, if it had been last year it would have put a kink in where we were, and looking at next year we'll be cramped in those middle weights."
The obvious solution is to change the rules. However, TSSAA bylaws state that the association will abide by NFHS rules, and very few see the national federation revisiting the change.
Mark Reeves, the TSSAA director in charge of wrestling, said he has heard few complaints.
"There are two that come to mind and both feel the upper weights are weaker, that they've been diluted by the addition of the 195-pound class," Reeves said. "[The scarcity of complaints], though, is not an indication that everybody likes the new weight classes."
As long as the change is in effect, the wrestling coaches likely are going to be looking to football coaches for help.
"We wind up scrambling," Morris said. "We'll keep trying to recruit football players and hope that some of the bigger middle school kids that are wrestling will continue to do so. Trying to entice bigger guys into the wrestling program is going to be a challenge."
East Hamilton coach Ryan Cooper has something of an advantage in that both middle and high school are under the same roof, and in addition to high school wrestling he also coaches middle school football. It doesn't hurt that Ted Gatewood, the high school football coach, encourages his players to participate in other sports.
"You play the cards you're dealt and you make the best of it," Cooper said. "We're out recruiting the halls every day."