Trinity Prep’s Athletic program offers 15 of the 21 Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) approved sports. Notably absent, however, is a staple of high school athletics: wrestling. While Trinity appears to have the resources to add it to our athletic department, the decision is not that simple.
According to The Florida Wrestling Room, 418 FHSAA schools in Florida offer wrestling for boys and 333 for girls. AP Chemistry teacher Nicholas Eliason, who also wrestled in high school, then served as wrestling coach. Eliason, who was a coach at various high schools in the area for 25 years, shared his thoughts on Trinity’s athletic program.
“I don’t know why we don’t have a wrestling program here,” Eliason said. “A lot of times (at other schools teams are created) because someone really liked wrestling and started (a program).”
The athletic department needs to limit the number of teams on campus, ensuring that each team has enough players. Athletic Director Travis Sanders must take this into account when determining the sports Trinity offers.
“We’re kind of always evaluating our teams and sports and trying to find what’s the best fit for our population, ” Sanders said. “It kind of comes with our size of our school. Like does it make sense to add a sport to a season if some of the numbers in that season are already low for other (current) sports.”
Part of the struggle to add sports is the lack of space and need for equipment, like mats and uniforms. When it comes to the winter sport season, teams already struggle to share spaces. “Wrestling usually needs a separate room and facilities, so that’s part of … the reason (Trinity doesn’t have a team),” Eliason said. “A lot of small schools don’t have a program because of lack of space.”
Despite not having a team currently, Trinity did have a Boys Wrestling team in 1975. More recently, Trinity had a wrestling club about three years ago. While these teams were not long lasting, they created new opportunities for student-athletes. Beyond wrestling, Trinity has widened their sport selection immensely since they first started the athletic program, adding sports like lacrosse, golf and bowling.
“If you look back historically … old folks will tell the story that back in the day, we had maybe a third of the teams we have now,” Sanders said. “We only had, just a few sports … so, we’ve slowly been growing over our time.”
Due to this trend from the past, our athletic department is bound to expand.
A wrestling team has 10-15 players, proving to be a smaller team than comparable winter sports. Since wrestling is a physical sport football players in the off-season could benefit from more physical contact. Freshman football and weightlifting player Kyle He would be interested in the team if Trinity offered it.
“I think it (wrestling) would help me with my tackling form (for football) and I hear the conditioning (for wrestling) is really hard so I could get my stamina up,” He said.
Wrestling is a sport built on overall strength and conditioning becoming beneficial for many other contact sports. Cael Sanderson wrote in the US Wrestling Foundation that wrestling builds great foundations for other contact sports. The physical skills it takes to wrestle applies to athlete development.
Wrestling is a one-on-one sport, which promotes character development for athletes. The mental aspect allows wrestling to have more individual benefits compared to other team sports.
“Wrestling does help (beyond the physical aspect) because it’s such a tough challenging sport that you’re on your own,” Eliason said. ”You have to really step up. So it’s a very competitive sport and so it helps people, you know, if you’d like to be competitive.”
As the athletic department grows, widening its selection of sports, wrestling remains a notable absence. Wrestling is a developmental sport,offering physical and mental benefits while also strengthening Trinity’s overall athletic culture.
“I think wrestling is great,” Sanders said. “I think it’s an emerging sport, especially on the girl’s side. I think that would be a sport that we would consider one day.”
