MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Throughout the changes made for winter sports in the midst of a state still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, one sport has seemingly lost the attention of the general public: wrestling.
It could be because the general public looks at wrestling as a given that it would be the first sport postponed for a highly-infectious and deadly virus, but University coach Ken Maisel would disagree.
“We get a five-week regular season and that’s with the two days between events,” Maisel said. “Basketball doesn’t have to do that. I don’t know why, but they don’t. Yes, we’re very close contact, no question, but you hear from the CDC that most transmission is within three feet for 15 minutes or more. We wrestle a six-minute match with one person. Basketball plays for an hour with at least five on the other team, you rotate people in it’s more than that, so I dare to say we’re safer.”
Don’t misread what he’s saying, though. Maisel isn’t here to argue that health guidelines or the WVSSAC rules should be disobeyed. He understands the severity of the virus and is on the side of safety.
“That being said, we get five weeks but – I think the quarantine period is 10 days – I’m looking at my regional and I go back 10 days and I don’t think I”m going to schedule anything in that window,” he said. “What if somebody, not even tests positive but is in a family with someone who tests positive? They have to quarantine, I want to make sure they wrestle in regionals. Now you’ve taken me down to a four-week regular season. But, I guess I have to do that to make sure I get all my guys to go wrestle in regionals.
“It’s crazy. It’s something I’ve never experienced.”
To note, the CDC’s options for reducing quarantine periods are 10 days without testing or after Day 7 with a negative test. However, the CDC is still “endorsing” a 14-day quarantine as a reduced period does have a small chance of spreading the virus should someone be carrying it.
So how is wrestling going to work? There are options in Maisel’s mind as he looks over the WVSSAC’s guidelines for the sport, but at the end of the day, he’ll do whatever is necessary for his guys to have a season.
One way wrestling can work is the easiest option: how it’s always worked. It’s no secret that other viruses have spread through wrestling’s history, like herpes, and schools and teams must take precautions to keep athletes from contracting them. With that, COVID-19 prevention is identical.
“The WVSSAC, way back when, they came up with guidelines for wrestling. The funny thing is, most of those guidelines are what we were doing anyway, like mopping the mats, taking a shower, using body wipes when you can’t take a shower,” Maisel said. “The wrestling world, as much as it’s a super-contact sport, we were doing things well before COVID that were proven to mitigate other diseases as well.”
There are some “interesting” guidelines, according to Maisel.
“I’m on our WVSSAC Coaches Committee, and we’ve had several meetings with the WVSSAC to set up things,” he said. “Initially, the rule was going to be duals, tris and quads only, no tournaments. Then, one of the smaller schools wanted to put in a rule saying, we make it a number of people instead of just a quad. So someone came up with, let’s make it 56 competitors – four teams, 14 weight classes, 14 times 4 is 56. That way, if you have a couple of small teams, maybe you can have five teams, six teams, as long as your total athlete number stayed under 56. I was OK with all that.”
According to Maisel, someone decided to take it further – “as they always do,” he said. – and lobbied that, if there could be 56 competitors at one time then tournaments could be held. The WVSSAC pushed back initially but eventually approved this measure.
“We’ll have an eight-team tournament, we’ll do seven weight classes on Friday, seven weight classes on Saturday. Now the rule is, you can have duals, tris, quads and tournaments, but you’re still limited to the 56 competitors.”
Additionally, the weight classes that wrestle on Friday can’t come on Saturday and vice versa. Coaches would be allowed to attend both days.
With this, it comes full circle to the scheduling issue. Because of logistics, it’s likely UHS will only go to one tournament before regionals. Further, due to a rule noting there must be two-days between matches, according to Maisel, he would be unable to schedule a match on a Wednesday before a tournament other than his heavyweights, meaning he’d have to try and fit a team in on Tuesday.
With all this, it’s likely to take a toll on a student’s mental health. And while wrestling is an ultra-physical dueling sport, wrestlers also have to be mentally tough. When asked if he thinks this is true for his grapplers, Maisel agreed. He coaches both the body and mind, but ultimately, he’s trying to get it across to his athletes that this situation is out of his and their hands.
“They seem to be handling it very well. They know I’m very type-A with this stuff and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is totally out of my control,” Maisel said. “We talk a lot to the guys about controlling what you can control and so I’ve got to take my own advice and control what we can control. Hopefully, it’s rubbing off on them and [that they are] ready for Feb. 14 when we can start practice.
“I’ve got to keep the expectation that any season is some season. If they come out tomorrow and say, ‘Look, you can’t have a regular season. You’re going to just have regionals and states,’ then that’s what it is,” he said. “There’s no fighting it.”
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