10-21-22 WRESTLING MEMO

IGHSAU Wrestling season is less than two weeks away! Below you’ll see a few items that can help answer some questions you as a coach or an AD may have in for the upcoming season. I am hosting a Zoom meeting at 2:30 pm on Monday, October 24th at 2:30 pm and Tuesday, October 25th at 7:30 am. Those links will be sent to all ADs and Girls Head Wrestling Coaches. Please don’t share these links with parents or outside entities. A recording of the meeting will be posted on our website later Tuesday for those who can’t attend to view. If you know you’ve got specific questions, please feel free to send them to [email protected]. As you can imagine, there is a pile of information to address!

ADs- Please immediately double check these three items:

1)     That you have entered your head girls’ coach into the Bound DIRECTORY. The directory can be found under the forms section in Bound. Even if you share a girls and boys head coach, they must be listed in both places to be pulled into our distribution list to receive necessary information and emails throughout the season! 

2)     Has your girls head coach been able to access Trackwrestling on the IGHSAU side? If not, email me. 

3)     If you intend to cooperative share with another program and have not yet done so- please enter this in Bound.

IGHSAU Guidelines for Competition

Please click here to view the  guidelines on high school competition. 

Remember: girls MUST weigh-in at the event, ON SITE, regardless of the event. They may wrestle at the weight class they weigh in at AND the weight class directly above it. Do not assign wrestlers to pools or brackets until after they have weighed in. Serious penalty may be issued to schools who do not follow NFHS weigh in procedures. 


Rules Meeting
The online rules meeting will be available on Bound starting on Monday, October 24th
. ADs, PLEASE make sure your head coaches have this complete by the start of the first competition, which could be as soon as November 14th. It is absolutely your job to make sure your girls’ head coach gets this completed. If you have a head coach that oversees both boys and girls programs, they only need to watch the rules meeting once. 

Scrimmages

For clarification in the definition of a wrestling scrimmage: A scrimmage does not allow for scorekeeping or collect spectator admission. It cannot be tied in with an event that does.. For example, if the boys are in a dual meet on one mat, the girls cannot dual another team on the other mat and count it as a scrimmage instead of a competition date. The intent of allowing unlimited scrimmage dates for this season is for girls from one school to be able to practice against girls from another school (or multiple schools) to get quality experience on the mat where it may not otherwise exist. Scrimmages are essentially practices with other programs. 


Weight Certification

Official body composition assessments began for female wrestlers on October 10th. All wrestlers must be weight certified and entered into OPC before they are eligible to compete. If you are working with an assessor who has not yet received an email login from the Trackwrestling system under the IGHSAU side, please have them email me. They are not to be entering females on the on the IHSAA side if they have a girls wrestling program. 

Iowa Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association Convention
We highly recommend becoming a member of the IWCOA and attending their annual convention. This will be an all-day event held in Des Moines on Saturday, October 29th. For more information on how to become a member and how to register for the convention, please visit the IWCOA website. 

Be sure to continue to check our website  for the MANY updates yet to come, regular season, and postseason details. We have also started a Twitter page: @ighsauwrestling to capture the fun!

Cheers!

Erin Kirtley

IGHSAU Associate Director

Wrestling Administrator