The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every high school sport – but wrestling’s predicament might be toughest

Football was played on chilly February nights with snow lining the fields. Basketball players are taking to the court wearing masks. Every sport Washington state high schools offer has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Only wrestling has faced a near existential threat.

Despite shortened and delayed seasons devoid of culminating statewide competition, athletes still turned out in typical numbers for team sports. Track and field wasn’t as popular a choice, but still produced state and national leaders at Thurston County high schools.

Wrestling’s squad sizes have shrunk drastically, with even some top performers staying away.

Olympia’s girls program has just four wrestlers, all seniors. Even Yelm’s powerhouse boys team has suffered, with 22 athletes spread out in a wrestling room sometimes packed with 70. Only one of five returning wrestlers who placed for a Tornados team that finished third in Class 3A at Mat Classic in 2020 chose to compete this year.

“The pandemic’s been devastating to turnouts,” said Yelm coach Gaylord Strand, now in his 47th year.

The reasons for the drop off are varied.

“Wrestling’s a hard sport to begin with,” said Tumwater coach Tony Prentice, who has a squad of 12 where usually there are 40. “From what I hear anyway, a lot of guys didn’t see the point if there wasn’t going to be a state tournament.”

Since wrestling is a one-on-one contest based on constant contact, many athletes and their parents were genuinely concerned about the possibility of COVID-19 transmission. Others were turned off by the ongoing protocols put into place just before the season by the state.

Athletes must attest to being free of symptoms and fevers daily.

“Kids have to be tested for COVID twice a week, once on Monday and once on Wednesday before our league matches. So that’s one more thing wrestlers, parents and coaches have had to deal with,” Strand said. “Then you’ve got to practice and wrestle with a mask on.”

Sure, basketball players are doing the same, but in the middle of a workout in an enclosed wrestling room, masks become a challenge, even for the best wrestlers.

“Conditioning is hard,” said Yelm’s Gage Nelson, who was the runner-up in 3A last season at 126 pounds and is set to compete at Big Bend Community College next season. “It’s like trying to breathe with a bag over your head.”

Yet Nelson is there, carrying out what he sees as a senior’s responsibility.

“I’ve been part of this program for a long time,” he said. “I have an obligation to carry it down to the guys below me, to help them keep the program strong.”

Strand pointed to other returners, such as Jeffery Myers and Slade Edwards, for also providing stability. At Tumwater, Bruce Greenwell and Philip Severson have stepped into the role. Sabrina Eang has done so with her senior teammates at Olympia.

There have been bright spots for the sport.

Yelm girls coach Amy Earley, who guided the Tornados to consecutive state championships in 2017 and 2018, says she’s made lemonade out of lemons.

With girls wrestling contested statewide as a single classification, Earley wasn’t constricted in scheduling by the 3A South Sound Conference schedule Yelm’s boys are bound by. The girls team has found matches with Olympia and W.F. West and Rogers.

Earley volunteered for extra work to ramp up what might have been tedious forfeit-filled dual meets between short-handed teams.

“I invited myself to other public schools’ meets and offered to set up the lineups,” she said. “I’ve got some tough girls on my team this year who would have made it to state. I made sure I found some good matches for them and good matches for my beginners. I’m not going to throw one of my studs in against a girl brand new to the sport. That’s a waste of time for both of them.”

The result? Yelm’s girls will average between 10 and 20 matches by season’s end when many boys in the area will be lucky to have met a handful of opponents.

“I was reaching out to the girls all year long saying, ‘Hang in there, we’re going to make this work, so don’t walk away,’ ” Earley said.

The Tornados girls will still feel the absence of a postseason. A group of seniors, led by veteran state competitor Dasha Burnett, were likely to reach Mat Classic. Freshman Madisyn Erickson, at 120, drew comparisons from Earley to former Yelm star Phoenix Dubose, now wrestling at King University in Tennessee.

“Madisyn was a possible four-timer, but not now,” Earley said.

Several coaches saw benefits, though, for the athletes who are wrestling this spring.

“Our emphasis is on trying to get better,” Prentice said. “It’s not an intense season, it’s an opportunity for our younger kids to improve at a slower pace than normal.”

Strand has been happy for athletes who had once been lost in the crowd.

“That’s a plus,” he said. “Some of these kids have been knocking on that back door for a long time. They might have even gotten to districts, because we can send two in each weight class, but they’d get no further.

“This is their turn to be varsity wrestlers. I’ve seen a lot of them step up, a lot of growth.”

None of the coaches disagree with the reason safety measures were installed.

“The biggest drawback to having a state tournament would be kids getting COVID at the last big gathering right before graduation. Nobody wants that,” Strand said.

Still, few see the crisis inflicted on their sport by the pandemic as vanishing once testing and masks recede into history.

Olympia girls coach Ryan Pittman will be rebuilding from scratch, with all of his current wrestlers graduating and the local club team which fed the Bears’ high school squad dormant for most of the past year.

“That’s everyone’s biggest fear,” he said. “How long will it take to recruit girls back to the sport? They have to trust the process of staying safe and healthy and learn a brand new sport.”

Experienced female wrestlers, usually drawn from that club Pittman helps coach that has included Black Hills and Tumwater athletes, will be harder to find.

“The pandemic has really killed our club program,” he said.

Earley, with her relatively healthy high school program, saw a drop off in competitive opportunities as programs like Olympia’s, that has had as many as 17 participants in past years, struggle. She fears schools that once offered girls invitational tournaments won’t in the future, with teams still competing hard-pressed to find replacements.

Strand, who has no plans to end his nearly half-century long coaching career in the foreseeable future, nonetheless says he doesn’t want to endure another season like 2021.

“It worries me,” he said. “We had one freshman and I usually have between 12 and 20. I’ve lost a whole class this year that should’ve been on the mat learning. So we’re a year behind.”