Careers For Wrestling We Need Now
What is a Career?
At 17 years old kids know everything. That’s why we build such clear paths for them after High School. Graduate, pick a path, and live the rest of your life doing exactly what you chose the first time around.
When laid out like that it sounds ridiculous but oftentimes High School students are placed with this exact dilemma. It’s why giving kids options is such an important step. In high school, students are often only exposed to such a limited view of the opportunities in front of them. Even more so, the opportunities for them are limited to what’s around them, and even then is only limited to what people are willing to show them.
Our sport has a limited view of the opportunities in it. We often think coaching is the only opportunity to stay involved in wrestling. And although there is a massive shortage of coaches we have an even bigger gap for all other opportunities too. Opportunities that can help grow our sport and become viable careers for the individuals with the abilities to pursue them.
I want to lay out a quick buyer’s guide of different jobs in wrestling and some of my thoughts on what it would take to get there. Jobs that I see are needed for the success of wrestling’s future while at the same time provide viable opportunities for careers for a young student/athlete. I believe a career needs a few things to make it a viable option; you need to be passionate about it, you need to make a good living, and you need options. Wrestling isn’t just great to participate in, our sport has so many opportunities that are needed. You have the ability to obtain a lot of new clients building a needed foundation of trusted individuals in our tight knit community.
When people talk about jobs they will say something along the lines of “if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life.” I believe not only is this false it gives the wrong impression to kids pursuing a career for their future. Passion doesn’t remove hard work, it enhances it. It’s not that you’re going to remove the dull days, or the hard days from your job, you’re going to find yourself in the zone while working more often. When looking to build a career you can choose something you are passionate about. When that happens you’re not suddenly going to build this dream job that has no bad days. In fact you will have more of them. Furthermore, as you care deeper for a career you begin to realize it is hard to blend it into your life. However, because you are passionate about the work you do, you’ll find you don’t mind the bad days because they are a part of a process you find important and rewarding.
Beginning can be the hardest part. You’ve probably heard the Taoist proverb “the journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step”. Well, in our sport there are so many opportunities needed, that first step can be in many directions and can be easier to take than you think. I have some links below to different opportunities in wrestling.
Careers In The Arts
Art is not only subjective but it is useful, needed and lucrative when done correctly. Tying in your passions through art can help develop all kinds of opportunities. Wrestling is like any other promotion, it needs artwork and design both physical and digital in order to get the word out. Let’s break down some ways to combine your passion for wrestling with your abilities in art.
Website Designer
A domain is the only thing you own on the internet. There is nothing more important when it comes to online presence than driving people to a well designed website and building a strong first impression. Have you been to a wrestling website before? Oftentimes they are clunky, outdated, or even worse non-existent.
To get started you may want to master some basic website designers first like SquareSpace, WordPress or Wix. You can then start by helping out your local team. Providing a great base for learning and giving back. Once established, you can start reaching out to other teams and programs in your area.
Making this a career means capitalizing on opportunities and limiting one time buyers. Not only does website design have an initial cost upfront of building and designing a website but it comes with a maintenance fee you can keep clients coming back for. You will always be updating and maintaining websites for your clients. Communication is key. And with good time management you can build a great work life balance.
Media Manager / Content Creator
Have you been on a social media page before? Promotion is needed and programs need to have creative and well designed social media pages to help drive people to their websites. You can start by using programs like Canva to help build simple and easy designs that’ll make you look like a pro. Canva also helps you manage a team's brand, collaborate on projects and organize media for future use.
A Media Manager determines when things will be posted and how. Understanding algorithms, building marketing strategies, and delivering on time content. Content Creators are the ones making flyers, social media posts, and videos.
When building a career you will want to grow your abilities in both if possible. It is not always needed but having some abilities between the two goes hand in hand. Most Media Managers can make some low level content while most Content Creators will have a baseline understanding of algorithms. You can always start your career utilizing something like Canva to help you create posts and manage your clients brand. Then growing your skills making customized content utilizing tools like Adobe Photoshop. Other tools can be used to post to multiple social media pages like HootSuite or Buffer to help with time management.
Marketing Manager / Communications Manager
In a similar vein a Marketing Manager is going to help build your brand while a Communications Manager will help you talk about it. A brand is important to keep consistency throughout your program. The same colors, logos, and feelings are delivered to help build trust with your consumers.
Emails, websites, social media pages, your team gear, events all need to remain consistent so you stand out from your competition. A marketing Manager should have a deep understanding of your brand and the message you are trying to convey. Communication Managers are going to be able to take that message and send it out to the world.
Photographer / Videographer
Content is king! Starting out is buying a camera, usually something like a DSLR and a kit lens. There are a lot of options, and when starting out you can make some purchases to help keep your costs relatively low. But be careful here, things add up really quickly. Camera, lens, memory cards, batteries, and a monopod make it so you can run to a tournament or dual meet, be mobile and be present.
You will be competing with every parent out there who has a camera, but what you have is time, skills and consistency. Parents want to take photos of their kids and their friends, you will take photos that elevate a brand. You want to make sure the content you create helps create social media posts that are eye-catching. Tighter shots in wrestling are difficult to capture, but with practice you’ll be a pro in no time. Start by just taking photos and sharing them on social media. You can then begin building a website and utilizing print shops like Shutterfly or Mpix to help consumers purchase your work and have them sent to their homes.
Designer / Custom Apparel
Investment here is key. But teams are always looking to create new ways to get their brand and logo out there. Because things like 3D printers, at home workshops are way more convenient and possible. With a decent computer, editing software, and an investment you can become a one stop shop print shop.
Whether you’re just into drawing using a digital drawing pad makes you miles ahead of what others can accomplish! If you take it a step further you can start heat pressing or screen printing your designs. With a 3D printer your possibilities are endless and you can begin making awards for tournaments too.
Imagination is endless here and you can literally brand a team and help produce all kinds of marketing materials for them!
Journalist
The world moves fast and times are changing, but a kid getting their name printed is still the coolest thing ever. Grandparents are printing the articles and kids will remember the day they appeared in the paper forever. Today there are all kinds of newspapers and websites you can write for.
Or if you’re into the idea of building something yourself, create your own blog and build your own writing style. Teams can’t get enough coverage. You could cover a sport, a town or even just a team and be busy for months. With sponsors on a website willing to pay for local coverage you can begin to build a small profit. With time and the right effort you can begin to build some serious traffic. More traffic is more sponsors.
Event Coordinator
Location, time, effort and coordination. Most coaches are doers and not great details people. Which means they rely on volunteers to step up and put on events like dual meets and enormous tournaments. If you’ve been around the sport long enough you have seen the giant undertaking tournaments can be.
Build a reputation for helping teams put on these events and take a cut of the profits, or get paid up front. With huge numbers of people in one place at a time there for a long period of time the places for income are enormous. But not many people have the time to put towards these efforts. If someone could step in and build a template for event planning in tournaments and duals they could help grow the sport one registration at a time.
Careers In The Sport
Careers directly involved in the sport. You’ll probably need some experience having participated before getting involved. But it is important that you take that first step of getting involved. Find something you want to do and ask to help. Be the one to put your hand up.
Official
Few people walk out of events in sports with cash in hand. Are you patient, focused and decisive? Then you could be one of the few. Right now every sport has a shortage of Officials and without them no one gets to participate!
By dedicating time to the sport you can get the best seat in the house and be paid to be there. It’s not easy, one of the hardest jobs in the sport but it's one that can be rewarding in many ways. You’ll learn a lot about the sport, stay connected to it, and see some of the best wrestling there is. The opportunities in wrestling to officiate are endless and just require you to start.
The process begins with you joining your local officials group. In Massachusetts its the MIWOA. You can also become an Olympic Style Official with USA Wrestling. You’ll learn Greco-Roman and Freestyle. In that you can go from being an M1 official and with training called Official Education Programs (OEPs) you can move up through the ranks, eventually even reaching international level tournaments.
Personal Trainer
Does the idea of helping make the best athletes possible entice you? Pretty obvious when talking about sports. Become a trainer! But you could do this with wrestling in mind.
Our strengths are so specific and really need development. How do you train the body for longevity with the beating it will take? Can you identify the muscle groups needed to pull in a single, keep your head up under a half, how about throw your opponent for 5? Can you help someone make weight while maintaining safe nutrition?
Classes and certifications are online you can take. There are strength and conditioning courses and nutrition courses offered to help you get certified. And from there you can start helping athletes locally and regionally build the best methods to gaining the right strength.
Athletic Trainer
If college is for you take the personal training to next level. You’ll need a degree to become an athletic trainer but you could be at tournaments, duals and all kind of events making sure kids are safe while competing.
Athletic Director
If administration is your thing then look no further than Athletic Director. You’ll need to get a Masters in Sports Management and will most likely have to put in some time at a school as a coach first. It’s not as easy as it looks as you’ll be scheduling every sport, overseeing the facilities, understanding all sport rules and regulations and communicating with other schools. It’s a lot but if you believe in the benefits of sports then you’re in a great place to help kids be better people.
Coach / Program Director
A job that everyone thinks of first. If you have a great coach they can impact you for the rest of your life. It’s not an easy job though. Let’s not talk about being an o.k. Coach. If you want to be great you’ll be in charge of marketing, social media practices, practice planning, event management, staffing, team management, communication, and building a culture for success.
Starting as a coach can be as easy as helping your local youth program. A lot of times they just need good people. Most youth wrestling clubs require a USA Wrestling Leader Membership. That will put you through Safe Sport testing and a background check. Now there is also the Teal Program when coaching women. Other programs may have you just doing a background check or concussion protocol.
But like everything else you can always get better. And often times it’s on your dime. You will have to be passionate to deliver the best for your student athletes. Building a program is hard and building a great one is almost impossible. But there is no more rewarding feeling than watching one of your athletes succeed.
Careers In Technology
In today’s world technology is king. And as sports advance more and more technology has implemented itself deep into the world of sports. From collecting data, running tournaments, and giving coaches better tools to teach, technology is ever increasing its ability to improve what we do on a daily basis.
Coding
The very foundation of technology. If there was a universal language in technology this is how you learn. Through different scripts you can build programs, find glitches, build websites, and so much more.
Programs for coding start at a young age now and are taught in so many different ways. Whether it be more like learning a language and engulfing yourself in the technology or more like sports like programs for kids like “Code Ninjas”. Learning to code can start really early.
Adding in gadgets like a “raspberry pi” you can begin small with coding devices and building robotics, computers, or your own server. It’s endless possibilities to learn and the jobs and careers available to you are just as infinite.
Pairing Director
If officials walk out with cash in hand, pairing directors are the next level of people getting paid at events. High pressure to start and troubleshooting problems can be a lot. But if you love technology, wrestling and networking this is exactly where you need to be.
Pairing Directors run the tournaments. You work with great people to help program events, set up streaming, and make tournaments and events a better experience for everyone. Possibly the greatest impact to the sport of wrestling has been the technological advancements in running tournaments.
Depending on how good you are, the potential for growth is endless. You will need personal skills as people work with you to run the tournament they envision. Ultimately it's a great position for those who love the sport, love tech, and love the community wrestling has.
Information Technology Specialist
The great and almighty IT Specialist. Like a pairing director but more broad and working with less people. Degrees are needed, with a deeper understanding of networks and security. Everywhere you look technology has impacted more and more of our world. From coding, networks, and video an IT Specialist is needed to help data management be effortless. From helping schools, programs, and events, having a handy-man for their technological needs is necessary. They will impact your everyday life. If you have a great IT Specialist it will seem like you don’t need them!
Product Development
Everyday you see the next great advancement. From devices that can throw wifi connections, video devices that stream and record matches and buzzers that let officials know time is up. We are constantly in need of the next big advancement in our sport. Everything we do can be improved and someone with creativity, an understanding of our sport, engineering and a technological background can bring forward the next great invention.
Today there are so many DIY solutions, like 3D printing, learn to code classes and soldering kits that you can start in your own garage. Obviously be careful, but you really don’t need much more than access to the internet to begin. If you can connect to the web you have at your fingertips all the tools you need to learn and develop your skills with free videos teaching every step of the way.
Careers With Numbers
Financial Planner
Wrestling is behind the times when it comes to money. So many of us are willing to volunteer and do whatever it takes to run our programs that we forget it takes money to do great things. Everything we want to do for our team requires some money. Not everything can be accomplished with effort. Our goals have to increase from running a program year over year to really making an impact with a professional program that helps develop kids at the highest levels.
Coaches, programs, athletic directors all need financial advice for how they can spread their dollars and grow their impact. We need help going from year over year programs to ones that can attract people from all over and make massive impacts in the daily lives of those in our care.
Statistician
Stats. Baseball probably has the most intense statistical breakdown in sports. But being able to breakdown how, when and why you collect data is so important. We need more data to grow our sport and help develop practice plans and improve events. Decisions being made need data to support their outcome. Wrestling again finds itself behind the times as we have very limited data.
Everyone has heard of the stat that 75% of all first takedowns eventually win the match. But how does the 3 point takedown impact that? Is it now 90%? How does it effect tournament speed now? How do rules impact the techniques we show?
All of this is needed, and people who are great not only at collecting data but organizing and utilizing it are. Become a master with excel, building data points and creating insightful graphs and charts to help coaches better understand our sport.