Some of the most important changes in a sport are the ones that go unnoticed by the spectator. If these changes go unnoticed, then the teams and individual players go unrecognized for their time and efforts that they are putting into the sport.

This is the same case for the 2017- 2018 high school wrestling year. Starting this year, the Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) has made a change to Rule 5-11, better known as the Pinning Rule.

To be pinned, both of the opponent’s shoulders must touch the mat simultaneously or they must be held down for five seconds. In prior years, this process could only take place in-bounds but this year, that changes.

When this rule goes into effect over the season, there will be questionable judging because of the blurred difference between a takedown and a pin with this new rule.

“In high school, the way the rule stands is your knees have to be touching the mat. Doesn’t matter if your feet are in bounds, your knees, your thighs, or your hips have to be touching the mat for you to get a pin. Now your feet only have to be in bounds for you to get a takedown, so that’s where the confusions going to happen,” varsity wrestling coach Scott Loveless said.

Even though Loveless believes there will be confusion in how the actions are called, he also believes that the problems are going to be temporary and non-invasive. He also points out that the rule change will help our team because of the amount of work the wrestlers put into the sport.

“What it does is it forces kids to continue to wrestle. A lot of guys when they get close to the edge or the time starts to get closer to the end of the period, people let up and good wrestlers will attack at that point because they’ll feel the let up and see an opportunity to score points. So that’d be the only area that’ll hurt those guys that let up, but that’s not how we train. We are training to be the guys that attack right there,” Loveless said.

Varsity wrestler and Senior Koby Troia agrees with Loveless in the way that it will only help the team because they work harder and wrestle until the very end.

“For most things, you can score out of bounds, but I think it is probably better you can pin somebody out of bounds. Most times they’ll be cheap and try to crawl out of bounds, trying to get out,” Troia said.

“I think there’s just going to be more pins,” “It’ll make it easier to get pins and harder to get out of them in that situation,” Varsity wrestler and Senior Tristan Welborn said.

The only true discrepancy in the rule change is how it will be called in round. The general belief is that the rule change will only be a slight issue in the very first tournament and will in actuality only be an opportunity to get more points. The first chance to see the rule change in action will be at their first tournament on December 1.

RULE REVAMP 2017-2018

Rule 5.11.1 – the shoulders or scapula of the offensive wrestler no longer must be inbounds to earn a fall

Rule 7.1.5 – front flips and front hurdles over opponents an illegal maneuver

Rule 4.1.1 – each team can choose if they would rather wear a two piece compression uniform rather than the traditional one piece singlet (MN is opting to keep the singlet)