Kent Malmros, Commentary But wrestlers? Who can be blamed for their sometimes absurd eating habits and weight loss patterns: starving and excessive working-out to make their weight class, then binging on food the minute they step off the scales? People often think about it, shake their heads and say it's a crazy sport. No one ever says anything more than that. Wrestlers are athletes, extremely well-conditioned. The muscle mass they carry is tough to argue with. At Penn, they are among the elite in the country. The weight games are seen as a part of the sport. Unfortunately it took death to make the need for change painfully obvious. The death of Jefferey Reese, a wrestler at the University of Michigan who died while attempting to make weight for a tournament, was the third at the college level this season. Joe LaRosa of Wisconsin and Billy Saylor of Campbell were the other two athletes that lost their lives while trying to losing weight. Reese passed away December 9 due to kidney and heart failure. He collapsed after a strenuous workout at the Michigan facilities aimed towards taking off the final couple pounds needed to make the 150 weight class. Though there is some debate over the number, the Michigan Daily reported that he needed to lose 17 pounds to achieve his goal. The deaths as a whole, and especially this one, have prompted a reassessment of the rules and regulations of NCAA wrestling. It is long overdue. Though these are the first three weight loss related deaths since wrestling became an NCAA sport in 1928, the sport has long been known for wrestlers adopting eating habits that are less than healthy to make weight. "His body just stopped. He had to make a weight and he was close," Reese's long-time friend and college teammate Brian Aparo told the Michigan Daily. The quote is telling. Aparo was still concerned with the fact that he almost made the weight. New NCAA regulations took effect yesterday. A guideline on hypohydration, defined as a negative balance of water in the body, will be set for wrestlers. That means no more rubber suits and a control on hot rooms (defined as any room over 79 degrees), both devices often used to drop weight. Penn wrestling coach Roger Reina, the president-elect of the National Wrestling Coaches Committee, has been involved with this issue personally. Reina feels that the question involved here is "what's new" and "what's different" about these cases. He feels that the banning of rubber suits is unfortunate in a sense, because they have been an effective tool for many people. The suits have been used for decades. The purpose has always been to extract as much water out of the body possible, in a fast fashion. Wrestlers have the ability to take off three to five percent of their body weight without running health risks, according to the Center for Disease Control. The problem? Until now, wrestlers have weighed in a day prior to competition. This allowed them to drop extreme amounts of weight quickly, and then eat and drink excessively to "recover" before a match. Reina is comfortable with his program's approach to weight maintenance. He said wrestlers focus on proper diet and exercise. While Penn may feel they watch their wrestlers closely, a bigger concern is the programs who don't maintain a close watch on the habits of their kids, who will do whatever it takes to make weight. The NCAA has installed rules to to avoid this. Weigh-ins are now only two hours before a match. Penn senior Mark Piotrowsky, who wrestles at 134 pounds, feels this will help people consider their diet in a much more serious fashion. The two-hour rule immediately affected the Wolverine wrestling team. Chris Viola, 118 pounds, was unable to make weight for any of the team's three meets last week, simple evidence that he was making weight by purging his body of water. Yesterday it was announced that wrestlers will have a seven pound pad to adjust to the new measures. In other words, for the rest of the season, Piotrowsky can make his 134 pound weight class at 141 pounds. The new cushion also requires that the wrestler had been in that class prior to January 7. The state of playing a sport, any sport, should not be one of life and death. The news rules are for protection of the athletes, not to make their lives difficult. These NCAA regulations are long overdue -- three deaths overdue.
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