Middle schools in San Diego Unified School District cater to a diverse range of students.

Up until last year, SDUSD did not provide affordable after school opportunities the way wealthier districts in the county do. Because the district skews poorer demographically it is especially important for them to provide sports and activities that keep kids out of trouble and provide important developmental, learning and health benefits.

Wrestling is a sport that allows affordable participation for kids regardless of race, gender and physical or mental disability. Wrestling is the seventh most popular sport in United States with largest growth year over year of any other sport for girls and the only sport to grow for both boys and girls post COVID with a 2.5% increase in participation. This makes it a prime sport for San Diego Unified to offer to kids in 2022-2023 season. With 15 high schools in the district that offer wrestling programs and 11 high school coaches offering full support and commitment to the program including coaches and mats, it is a great choice in terms of economics and impact for San Diego to add.

While sports were once believed to be an optional activity that helped overall health, research shows that they also have an outsized impact on mental health outside the classroom and aid learning inside the classroom. Research has also been shown that sports have many other benefits including socialization, discipline, and learning to compete in a safe environment.

Kids who are involved in sports develop discipline, learn goal setting, leadership, and many other invaluable skills. Research has also shown that the GPA of students who do athletics goes up, colleges value athletics and many are able to get college scholarships. Needless to say that early introduction to a sport is a tremendous advantage for later success in that sport.

San Diego Unified School District recognized the inequity of middle school students in other districts having more opportunities as a result of being involved in sports. Changing that inequality by SDUSD is an important step in offering opportunities to learn a sport, while also provide an after school activity to keep kids out of trouble and providing a path to opportunities from which SDUSD students were not open to before.

This is especially important as kids in middle schools are especially susceptible to falling with the wrong crowd and in San Diego which has higher percentage of urban and poor, making it an especially large concern. In general, urban youth trail suburban youth in sport participation 10% for boys and 20% for girls. So middle school athletics are very important and one sport is in someways for San Diego even more important.

In a district that values diversity, equality and social justice, it is important to offer not just a few sports as there is a limit to each sport of how many kids can be on a team or for which sport their natural abilities and preferences enable them to have fun and be successful.

* Wrestling is an ancient sport with styles being a part of every culture on earth from Native Americans, to Greeks, Indians and Africans. Wrestling is an equitable sport without limitations on body size, economics, gender race or culture. Wrestling provides a way to gain self confidence and discipline. It is the only sport offered in public schools that offer kids the ability to learn self-defense. This has often resulted in wrestlers being heroes of many school shootings, being first to respond to an active shooter.

* Wrestling has no limitation on gender – in fact women’s wrestling is the fastest growing sport in the U.S., growing 25% per year with more than 6,000 girls competing in California alone. Wrestling is an inclusive sport where disability is not a factor with many wrestlers with disabilities as wide ranging as lack of limbs, deafness and blindness and have competed at the highest level with able bodied athletes.

* Wrestling is race blind. San Diego has the historical distinction of having the first African American wrestler to complete at the NCAA tournament (Harold Henson 1949, SDSU). Wrestling has provided college opportunities for many San Diego kids from minority groups such as Vista High School Anthony Meza and Lincoln High School’s Willie Jones.

* Wrestling is the most equitable sport because it has virtually no financial requirement from a wrestler aside from gym shorts and wrestling shoes. While the sport enjoys popularity in an urban areas, cities offer the least opportunities to kids to try the sport. However when offered, nonprofit organizations like Beat The Streets which provide wrestling opportunities in urban areas have shown huge impact of wrestling on lives of kids in underprivileged neighborhoods. While they don’t operate in San Diego, a program like Beat the Streets on a city wide population stands to have massive impact.

* Because wrestling is a team sport but the individual competes individually, the sport is often a magnet for neurodiverse individuals such those with autism and ADHD. And while watching professional wrestling makes kids more aggressive, practicing martial arts including wrestling makes kids less aggressive and less disruptive.

* Wrestling is the perfect sport to reduce aggressive behavior. While more aggressive kids are attracted to wrestling, research shows that martial arts like wrestling end up lowering kids’ aggression and enabling children to have better control over their emotions leading to a more peaceful conflict resolution.

* Wrestling in San Diego County is one of the most popular sports with 81 programs and over 1,500 students competing every year. San Diego is home to some of the best programs in the state and the country including Poway wrestling who are nationally renowned for their dominance. Many wrestlers in San Diego after graduating go on to wrestle for local colleges like Palomar and UC San Diego. Some have placed first in the nation and went on to wrestle for Ivy League schools like La Costa Canyon’s Ian Baker (Princeton) and Joe Curtis (Columbia), Rancho Bernardo’s Jaden Abbas (Stanford).

By elevating San Diego wrestling through middle school athletics, San Diego Unified can expand opportunities to many more kids, making the sport more equitable and diverse. This will have the benefit of keeping kids in school, making them better students, athletes and providing them a path towards college wrestling and college scholarships a reality.

For all those reasons, we the wrestling coaches and athletic directors of San Diego Unified submit the following proposal to introduce middle school wrestling for the spring 2023 season.

– Sam Litvin is the new head varsity wrestling coach at Patrick Henry High School.

Photo credit: Pixabay.com