I saw this in the news recently – a battle of two top ten high school teams in Oklahoma.


One was ranked 3rd in the state, the other was 9th.

Highly anticipated showdown!

So there you have it:  the buzz and excitement of a packed gym with two heavyweights of Oklahoma high school basketball battling it out.

Here’s what the crowd was treated to:

Final Score:  4-2.

You read that right, and it is NOT a baseball score.

These teams went into essentially the Four Corners.

It was a tactic made famous by North Carolina many decades ago to slow down a superior opponent, or stall out with a small lead.

This was before the shot clock in collegiate basketball, which ended all that nonsense.  

But in high school basketball, even to this day, only about 10 states in the country have a shot clock, as the national federation as never adopted it.

Can you imagine the disappointment of attending a highly anticipated match-up like that only to be bored to tears by a glorified game of keep-away?

Well, if you’re a wrestling fan – Sure you can.

Because we have our own version of the Four Corners.

It often plays out like this:

Two top ranked competitors face off against each other.

One drops to their knees.

The other follows.

Here you thought you were going to see two top wrestlers slug it out, and instead you witness two competitors crawling around the mat like babies.

At least basketball had the common sense to install a shot clock (at the collegiate level anyway).

Im my very un-humble opinion, we shouldn’t allow that in wrestling either.

Any action that discourages offensive wrestling should be penalized as stalling immediately.

If I were in charge of the the rules, that’s how it would be.  You drop to a knee, ref starts counting to three.  You haven’t attacked by 3, Stalling,  One Point (yes – like Wade, I believe in eliminating the warning, too.  One point Right away.)

A side note, when I was competing in college, there was an NCAA champ who would drop to a knee – but then attack quickly.

That scenario is not what I’m referring to.  If you’re attacking off it, go for it (hence the 3 second count).  But more often than not, that’s not happening.

We in wrestling put up with way too much boring action, and it is completely unnecessary.

I didn’t rise to 3rd in the NCAA by laying back, I did it by attacking opponents relentlessly.

And that’s what I teach in my Attack System Wrestling program.  When the whistle blows, you are putting them on defense immediately – and keeping them there.

Its an exciting brand of wrestling and you can start mastering the system this summer.

You can also train in the Olympic Styles of Freestyle and Greco wrestling through Club Simpson.  We take the same attacking approach to every style.

-Randy