I attended the National Wresting Coaches Association Convention over the weekend. A great event as usual. Mike Moyer is as passionate a wrestling person as you will meet. Out-going NWCA president Jim Beichner was right when he talked about how Pat Tocci and Tammy Tedesco have become nearly as driven as Mike. They work hard at what they do and they run a nice event. This year it was at Delray Beach, FL. The Marriott was immediately across the street from the beach, had a large and beautiful outdoor pool/patio area and, for the family types, was just around the corner from a huge playground.

The presenters were all pretty solid. I particularly liked Dr. Coyte Cooper’s talk about social media. He hit the nail on the head about why and how to use these tools. I like to think that I was equally as efficient in communicating the same ideas in a different way. As usual, I focused on the boots-on-the-ground approach of step 1, step 2, step 3 so that coaches could figure out how to implement what we were talking about when the get back to the office on Monday.

Although we did have some discussion about marketing and promotion, I believe that these topics should be the central organizing theme of wrestling today. It is a highly marketable sport, proven by the fact that there are dozens of college programs that have events each year with 5,000 attendees or more and the NCAA Wrestling Championships are the 5th most profitable of any sport (and the NCAA hosts something like 88 championships (all divisions) in 23 sports).

But I digress….
My hope is that coaches are able to take away practical, actionable items to implement this week, this month and this season.
Here are some actionable items that may be of use to you:

What is being said about your program.
Summer Reading List
Running a Tournament Just got Easier
Free Downloadable Riot E-Book
Why Everyone is Wrong