The Northern Arizona Wrestling Officials (NAW Officials) have, for a few years now, been enforcing “Fleeing the Mat” rather consistently. I will give just one example; two neutral wrestlers are at the edge of the mat and even though they may have genuinely been working for a take-down, if one of those wrestlers (not because the natural force of wrestling) simply walks out of the outer circle the NAW Officials, are calling Fleeing the Mat.
The NAW Officials have continued with the “fleeing the mat” procedures in response to AWOC emphasizing this in the statewide and local clinics approximately 5 years ago.
AWOC agreed to this because it had became a problem. You may remember we even considered asking the Federation to allow us to test the “Push Out” rule if our efforts as officials did not help in stemming this problem.
AWOC’s concerted effort did help in resolving this issue and we got better at it so it kind of went away. I raise this as a concern because it appears it may no longer be being applied consistently.
At our most recent clinic, the officials indicated that clarification was given during a session regarding “reporting to the mat”. If a wrestler reports to the table, picks up his colors then goes directly to his coach, seated off the mat area, that he should be penalized for leaving the mat without permission.
I explained that this is not the correct call. In this situation the wrestler is intentionally delaying the match, and a stalling warning should be called, because he is delaying the match. 5-24- 6.b.
Additional criteria was offered by Charlie Jones at the clinic that seems appropriate. If the official and one wrestler is on the line and ready to wrestle and the opposing wrestler delays the match by going to a coach or by kneeling down then apply the penalty. It is important to note, it does not matter the reason the wrestler intentionally delays the match.
The Date for this years AWOC is October 15th and will be at Cactus Shadows High School which is located in the Cave Creek /Carefree Area. Time will be around 7:00 am till 2:00pm with a BBQ to follow. Cost will be $25.00 or $30.00.
Please save the date and send me an email to let me know if you will be attending or not.
Came across this today while googling youtube. The thing that I like the most was the school spirt. Does your student body support you like this? Nice little motivational speech by the coach in the wrestling room.
Getting and staying in shape as both a wrestling or even an official is something that takes committment and motivation. Below are are couple of online articles on conditioning programs.
After watching this years 2016 NCAA Wrestling tournament, I was asked several times, “what does ride time mean?”
“Riding Time: Defined as being in control on the mat, for a long period of time, usually used in collegiate wrestling. If one wrestler has more than 1 minute more of riding time than his opponent, he is awarded 1 point at the end of regulation time.”
See the example below of the 2013 NCAA Wrestling National Championships D1 Kyle Dake (Cornell) vs David Taylor (PSU). The point for riding time comes at the end of the match at the 12:00 mark in the video.
Thank you for participating in the 2016 Terminator Tournament in Prescott, Az. I did get to watch the majority of you at one time of another and saw a lot of good things happening. Below are some of the good officiating situations that I noticed:
I saw calls of stalemates quickly, indicating to me you were watching the situation and recognized that each wrestler could not advance, stopped and restarted and not just letting the wrestlers sit there with no action.
I know the mats were short/small and I saw good out of bounds calls when no action or the action clearly took them off the mat. When there were some tight situations and a good scramble happening at the edge, you let them go a tad longer, within reason, where you recognized good wrestling and giving the kids the benefit of finishing a good scramble. I’m not saying we allowed them to go way out of bounds, but right there on the edge you were making the judgement of a good official to let good wrestling continue as long as you could and not stopping good wrestling.
I saw you guys making some very good calls in tight situations and ‘selling’ the call. You were also holding calls until the point(s) were earned.
One thing we all could do better in these situations is being a better communicator. In these situations indicating no control or that one wrestler was still in control, and then when control is lost or gain, or re-gained, we use our signals to indicate the outcome and let everyone know we were watching and aware of the ‘tight’ situation.
I think we did well with the situations that took us to the table and we handled it and went back out to continue the match. There were a few situations in which we might have spent too much time discussing it with the coach.
Thanks again Arizona Wrestling Officials.
Charlie Jones
