State approves wrestling
Practice for the season is set to begin Monday
WOONSOCKET — The wait is over. After sitting on the sidelines and watching their fellow winter athletes complete their season, Rhode Island high school wrestlers were finally given the go ahead to compete on Thursday afternoon by Rhode Island governor Dan McKee. The state approved wrestling’s return to competition, with the sport set to embark on an 11-meet season starting with practices on Monday and ending with a state meet on June 26.
“I’m really excited for our kids to go out there and compete in their senior season,” Burrillville coach Vinny Micucci said. “A lot of these kids have worked hard since they were in sixth grade to compete this season, so it’s great that they have the opportunity. I was always optimistic we were going to have a season because I saw what they were doing in other states and finishing their seasons without an issue.”
“I’m excited for the kids,” Woonsocket coach Matt Morrow said. “They get to do what they love and for our program, it gives us a chance to prepare for next year when we should be a top-10 team. I really didn’t know what to expect, but I was hoping it would be approved. I started to get pessimistic as we got closer to the deadline, but here we are.”
Burrillville and Woonsocket will compete in a 12-team Division II, while defending state champion Cumberland is in a 12-team Division I. Central Falls, Davies Tech and Tolman/Shea co-op are competing in a newly-formed Division III.
R.I. Interscholastic League Director Mike Lunney is happy for kids to get the chance to compete on the mat this season.
“I’m very happy for that group. They’ve had to wait the longest out of everyone to get an answer,” Lunney said. “We set that goal and it would have been extremely disappointing if that turned out to be the only sport that we couldn’t offer. It took a lot of collaboration between all of us to safely offer this.”
Not every Blackstone Valley wrestling program will compete during the spring. Lincoln opted out of competing this season for a variety of reasons, according to coach Michael Tuorto.
“I was keeping my kids in the loop every week and we sat down collectively and discussed the different aspects about performing at a high level and the challenges we were going to face,” Tuorto said. “My biggest concern is for the safety of the student-athletes and seeing what the Lincoln football team has gone through with the games they’ve missed and quarantine really put a damper on this. At what cost do we continue to play high school sports in this situation?”
Tuorto, who is also the coach of the
North Providence softball team, said most of his athletes play a spring sport and because they didn’t get the opportunity to run track or play lacrosse in 2020, they wanted to focus on doing that.
The other issue is competing in masks. Just like every other R.I. Interscholastic League sport – except for swimming and gymnastics – athletes must wear masks at all times during a meet.
Micucci said he’s already found a mask, called Shock Doctor, that he said will make wrestling safe this season. Micucci said the mask will likely make kids a little reticent to shoot early in matches because of the fear of running out of gas in the third period due to wearing a mask.
The only other issue Micucci and Morrow have is how will referees and coaches identify if an athlete is bleeding from the mouth or nose during a match?
“I didn’t want anything that wrapped around the ears, so we went with this mask because it goes over the head and uses the head gear to keep it tight,” Micucci said. “We’re going to be practicing in them, so it shouldn’t be an issue when we have a match. The only thing I brought up when we had meetings about this is the risk of injury and breathing.”
Tuorto, who was a standout wrestler in New York during his scholastic days, said it didn’t make sense to him for kids to wrestle with masks on when they are already going to be tested for the virus on the day of the meet.
“I love wrestling, but if I had a son I wouldn’t want him to wrestle with
a mask on,” Tuorto said. “There are challenges when it comes to breathing and competing. There are a lot of gray areas this season, like how are referees going to handle a mask coming off during a pinning combination or bleeding from the nose and mouth. Coaching football [at North Providence] this year, it’s not the same product that we’ve always had. Kids are tired and gassed, it’s a hindrance. I wish those athletes that are competing a safe, healthy season.”
There are other changes the Interscholastic League is making that coaches are finding unique solutions to address one-time issues. Because the mat must be cleaned after every match, some teams are planning on using two mats for tri-meets. That isn’t an issue for Woonsocket, which competes in the cavernous Savaria Gymnasium, but Burrillville needed to find a different solution due to the cozy confines of the Broncodome.
The answer was to wrestle inside a hockey rink. It just so happens the Broncos have a hockey rink on campus and they will wrestle their duals at Levy Rink.
“There are a lot of advantages to wrestling there including the fact that we have plexiglass to separate the kids from the stands,” Micucci said. “It’s also a bigger venue so we have more room for two mats and we should have more room to allow more fans. We should be able to clean one mat and wrestle on the other and flipflop for the entire meet.”