Introduction

Though still not as popular as hockey or basketball, high school wrestling is a burgeoning sport in Massachusetts. It is regulated by the Massachusetts High School Athletic Association. According to Wrestling USA Magazine, 3804 boys and 38 girls wrestled in the state in 2004.

1. The season.

Like all MIAA-sanctioned winter sports, the Massachusetts wrestling season officially begins on December 1. Teams participate in dual meets and tournaments until the second week of February, when the postseason begins. Currently, the official postseason is divided into four rounds, each occurring a week apart: Sectionals, States, All-States and New Englands (which is not overseen by the MIAA). Some leagues also hold their own tournament a week before Sectionals.

There are nine sections in three divisions: *D1 North, South and West *D2 North, Central and South *D3 North, South and West

Sections range from 13 teams to over 20. They are two-day tournaments with double-elimination brackets (once a wrestler loses his first match, he is bumped to the consolation bracket) and team scores are kept. Qualifying rules vary, but every weight in every section sends at least 5 wrestlers, and many send 6.

Division 1, 2 and 3 state championships take place a week later. The highest-scoring team in each division is recognized as a state champion. Only the top four placers in each weight compete in All-States. No team score is kept at All-States, and the top six wrestlers go to New Englands.

The MIAA has recently considered a realignment proposal which would dramatically increase the number of sections, setting it so that only the top four wrestlers go to States. There has also been talk of adding a dual meet tournament in the Wednesdays between the postseason weekend, as well as leaving New Englands. This is justified on the grounds that New Englands is unfair to Massachusetts wrestlers because they go through a tougher postseason than other New England wrestlers; furthermore, some claim that the six Massachusetts wrestlers do not proportionally represent the depth of the state.

2. The off-season.

Massachusetts has often been criticized in the past for failing to represent itself at major national tournaments. Recently, rapid strides have been made in this area. Aaron Polansky, head coach at Hudson High School, was named Massachusetts state chairman for USA Wrestling , a major national governing organization. Polansky has established several new off-season tournaments and clubs. Over the last two years, he has taken Massachusetts teams to the Junior National Championships in Fargo, North Dakota, the most prestigious high school wrestling tournament in the country. Several Massachusetts wrestlers have placed here, and Rollie Peterkin of Wellesley is a two-time champion. Though they still lag behind other states, Massachusetts wrestlers are well represented in college, competing for such top programs as the University of Nebraska, Edinboro University, and Franklin and Marshall College.

3. Prominent Massachusetts Wrestlers

• Mike Atlas (Burlington)
• C.J. Colace (Franklin). After winning a major national tournament in July 2004, Colace had one of the finest seasons in Massachusetts history. His total record was 48-0; until the New England tournament, no opponent made it into the third period with him. He was especially feared for his mastery of the Jantzen ride, a series of moves from the top position that very few wrestlers can defend against.
• Michael Parziale (Woburn). Parziale compiled a 173-13 record for Woburn. He won three State and New England titles and is now one of the all-time win leaders at Franklin and Marshall College.
• Michael Pedro (St. John's Prep)
• Rollie Peterkin (Wellesley). In three years, Peterkin was a two-time All-State champion and one-time New England champion. He is now a student at Blair Academy, the nation’s top wrestling school, and is rated as one of the country’s best wrestlers at his weight.
• David Shunaman (Tewksbury)

4. Leagues

• Dual County League: Acton-Boxboroug, Boston Latin, Concord-Carlisle, Holliston, Hopkinton, Lincoln-Sudbury, Newton South, Wayland, Westford, Weston

Wayland and Weston are the traditional powers in this league: they have won almost every title for the last 30 years. Traditionally, their Christmas Eve meet decided the winner of the league. In 2003-04, however, Lincoln-Sudbury won its first league championship ever; the next year, Concord-Carlisle won its first title in over a decade.

• Middlesex League:

• Merrimac Valley League:

• Catholic Conference: St. John's Prep, Catholic Memorial, Xaverian, Malden Catholic, BC High

5. MassWrestling.com

Founded by Weston wrestler Ted Chan in 1998, MassWrestling.com has become an integral part of the Massachusetts wrestling community. Chan set the precedent for the main features of MassWrestling.com which still survive today - rankings and colloquium. Chan featured rankings by Andy Starr, articles, event results, and a yahoo group discussion forum, which was soon switched to an UltimateBB cgi based forum. Remnants of the Chan-era site are available on the internet archives.

Mike Atlas took over in March of 2004 during his spring semester of his freshman year at Northeastern University. Ted Chan had graduated from Swarthmore College and was having trouble maintaining the site with his busy new career. Mike saw the potential for the site to take advantage of Open Source CMS-ware, and began work implementing the site in the e107 CMS. No longer was it necessary to FTP newly made HTML documents for every new tournament result, article, or rankings. e107 provided a way for the site to be maintained without ever editing files and uploading them - a web interface for adding content to the site made this easier than ever before. Old tournament results were imported into the results archive of the database and an intuitive layout was conceived to deliver the right information quickly to the users of the site - the Massachusetts amateur wrestling community.

During the first wrestling season under Atlas' direction, the site's popularity wavered. Andy Starr's rankings seemed to be missing in action, and results were not being sent in to Atlas to publish on the site, due to the break in ownership and loss of old contacts through Ted Chan. Towards the middle of January, 2005, a loyal user and fan in the community, Jason Ganz (username: Donny Jason), of Newton, stepped forward and started his own set of rankings, which were immediately deemed by Atlas to be the official rankings of MassWrestling.com. Soon, new users came flocking to the site again in droves to see and disuss the hotly contested rankings.

The wave of new users prompted Atlas to begin providing more features for the community. In February of 2005, Atlas debuted a boxscoring module written in PHP and making use of the MySQL database already employed in e107. Registered users of the site could now easily submit dual meet boxscore information to be displayed for the world to see. Users could now keep the community up to date with boxscores from their team's dual meets for the public to see - regardless of newspaper coverage. Shortly thereafter, a Wrestler of the Week module was deployed in a similar fashion as boxscores, and an Event Calendar fashioned specifically for wrestling events was also rolled out to the community for public consumption.

The most popular feature is the forum, which has hosted many heated discussions and attracted many distinct and memorable personalities. These include Hill Billy and eoghanjames, older wrestlers who often talk about the wrestling scene of their day and make cultural references incomprehensible to younger posters; Donny Jason, who posts the rankings and often incites controversial discussions; and The Birdman, an endlessly self-confident Wayland wrestler. The visitors of the site include parents, coaches, wrestlers, and fans from all over the state, New England, and abroad. Web traffic to the site during the 2004-2005 season peaked to about 9,500 unique visitors a month and a regular visits of about 1,000 unique visitors per day.

External links

MassWrestling.com

Mass USA Wrestling