Weigh in #1 will be a satellite weigh-in administered by the coaches during a practice the first week or two of the season. This is a nice change from the past when we had to travel to the Gary Arthur Community Center for something that took less than 5 minutes to complete.
This weigh in is used to categorize all wrestlers based on age and weight so that coaches and complete match ups for dual meets and tournaments in a fair and efficient manner.

Practices start promptly 6:30 and end at 8:00.
Please try your best to have your son ready to practice at 6:30. Our practices are shorter than many programs, but both Coach Munsey and Coach ???? feel like 90 minutes is more than enough if you're running the practice right. We don't play a lot of games or have filler activities, so we make the most out of our 90 minutes. We also don't hold the kids after. 8:00 is late enough for some of the young kids, so we rarely, if ever, go over.

Some hygiene issues:
1. The kids should not wear their wrestling shoes outside of the wrestling room. The Paint Branch and Springbrook HS coaches do an excellent job of keeping the mats clean for us, so we want to do our best to keep outside dirt and bacteria off the mats.
2. All wrestlers should shower immediately when they get home from practice. Even though the HS coaches do an excellent job of cleaning the mats, skin infections are minimized if we shower right after practice. That being said, please notify the coaches if you notice a suspicious area of skin on your son. Knock on wood, we have not had any skin issues the past two seasons, but when we do suspect something, we want to be extra careful about it and keep wrestlers away from the mat. Last year, we noticed a spot on one of our wrestlers and we pulled him from a tournament, and it ended up only being eczema, but we take the cautious approach.
3. Make sure you clip your son's fingernails weekly. They need to be clipped short and will be checked by referees before every match.
4. Mouth pieces are required for any wrestler with braces.

Competitions:
1. The Howard County Rec league schedule is available in the 'Handouts' menu item on the website. At this time (Oct. 31, 2014), the dates of competition are set, but the actual time of the dual meets will not be finalized until the number of teams is official.
2. Our first obligation is to the Howard County League schedule. The league generally provides each kid with the opportunity to wrestle about 12-20 matches during the season. There are also other optional events for more ambitious families that are certainly encouraged. We usually have coaches present at these optional events, but we cannot guarantee coaching support for all optional events. Some of these optional events include the MSWA Novice tournament series (for 1st year wrestlers and 2nd year wrestlers with minimal success their first year), and about 4 other tournaments (for wrestlers with more than 2 years of experience).
3. We strongly encourage full attendance for all HCW events, but if there is a reason that your son cannot attend a dual meet, please send the head coach of your son's team an email as soon as you know your son cannot attend. Even if it is a last minute illness, please send and email or text.
4. For dual meets when we wrestle the early time slot, we need a few parents to show up about an hour early to assist with setting up the gym. Historically, we have always represented well with this, and I hope for this to continue. I may request a parent to set up some kind of schedule for this so it is not the same people helping out every week.
5. Also for dual meets, when we are the home team we are responsible for having 2 parents work the scoring table. We have been fortunate in having quite a handful of former wrestling dads in our program, but some of those dads have moved on to the beltway program, so we really need some new folks to step up this year.