Organizational Autoethnography

Observing Indiana Tech’s Wrestling Club

Jordan Beck

Ball State University

COMM 441

Marcy Meyer

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Organizational Autoethnography

Throughout this paper I will be explaining what I observed at the wrestling club at

Indiana Tech in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The club is the best one in Fort Wayne however the way in

which it is operated is the worst. I will be talking about different situations and giving my insight

on what happened during practices as well as how the situation could have been handled

differently. Lastly, I will be talking about how my bias could have played a role in what I saw and

observed.

For my Organizational Autoethnography, I wanted to do it over an organization that has

a lot of meaning to me. I decided to do it over a wrestling club I was a part of that was ran by a

local college called Indiana Tech in Fort Wayne. This is the highest competing wrestling club in

the city of Fort Wayne and you had to try out to wrestle on the travel team or you could just

wrestle in the practices. This wrestling club was built to get young wrestlers better equipped

with knowledge about the sport as well as bringing more intense competition for practice

compared to a regular school league. Out of all the wrestling clubs in Fort Wayne this one

places the most wrestlers into college wrestling as well as placement in the high school

championships. We had three twelve man rosters with kids ranging seventh grade to seniors in

high school. The team traveled to various wrestling tournaments in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and

Iowa. Besides the wrestlers on the team we had another thirty kids just for the practices. The

teams were ran by the college wrestlers for Indiana tech as well as the coaches of the college

wrestling team.

I got invited to join the team when I was in seventh grade and quit after my sophomore

year due to an injury in my back. I would have kept with the program however I had to retire

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from wrestling all together because of the complications. During my time on the club, I won the

seventh and eighth grade one hundred and forty-five pound tittles back to back years in my

middle school’s league. When I went to high school I made the varsity team as a freshman and

placed fifth out of sixteen in my weight class in our regional tournament. During high school

and freshman year of college I went back to my middle school and was at first the assistant

coach then later took the head coaching position.

For my autoethnography I wanted to figure out if Indiana Tech really held up to their

values and beliefs they preached. Sports in general are very useful because they can reduce

stress, anxiety and even depression in the athletes (Eime,2013). I feel as if this is very important

to study because I know there is starting to become an increase in the number of clubs for all

sports. In an article by Christina Felfe in 2016 she states “The high rates in sports club

participation may be in part due to rather low membership fees”. I know the price for the team

was very cheap around eighty dollars. Parents nowadays are starting to put their children in

only a few number of sports when they are young in order to eventually pick one to get very

good at. The level of competition in sports especially in wrestling, basketball and football has

increased tremendously from which I have been a part of or seen. I think sports are starting to

lose the average participant because they either aren’t getting enough playing time or equal

compared to the students who are involved in other clubs or leagues.

I also think this is very important to study because I think the life skills you pick up on a

club team is different than just a regular school team for better or worse. On a club team, you

are held accountable to a different standard and level of work ethic because you aren’t gifted a

spot on the team as you must earn it every day to be a part of it. On a school team, you are

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taught that there is no I and that it is all about what is best for the team and what you can bring

to make it better. I also want to compare how the different coaches handle problems with the

students as well as what they teach in terms of the sport and life skills. There is also many pros

and cons to joining a club like Indiana Tech. I feel as if most people just look at club sports as

the tool to get your child into the next level. When in reality, they have no idea about all the

extra things that come with joining. So, throughout this paper I will be seeing if they really

practiced what they preached. I think my educational background on the sport of wrestling is

very good and will help me in this paper considering how long I did it, being a coach and

growing up in a wrestling family.

While on the team I noticed a lot of things with the overall environment/ culture of the

club. Everyone who participated took it very seriously leaving no room for excuses or games.

This is where I feel as if my club was very different from most other clubs or sport leagues. You

showed up to practice, didn’t ask questions and wrestled hard for two hours. I rarely saw

people smiling or laughing as everyone just acted like this was their job. The belief was if you

trained with the program you would be a promising wrestler in the future. In reality, Indiana

Tech was right to a degree because everyone on the team already stood out enough to even

make it. With the instruction and coaching almost everyone could at least qualify for the semi

state championships.

In terms of the environment, the club ran on a “survival of the fittest” approach. This

means that everyone had to stand up for themselves and make yourself known if you wanted

any respect. Especially with the younger students who had to deal with the college wrestlers

because they would always say remarks to the students most of the time being negative or

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degrading. The wrestlers who weren’t as talented as the other ones got the most hate from the

coaches. Having thick skin was crucial to almost surviving in the club because if you were seen

as weak and not good they would just come at the student even harder. To the coaches they

probably saw it as motivation for us to do better. I feel as if they played favorites and only really

worked with the wrestlers who were on the travel teams because they would be the ones

representing the club at a tournament. I still don’t understand this because the whole purpose

of the club was to teach new instruction and work on perfecting moves.

A big belief I noticed while I was analyzing the program was that the Indiana Tech

coaches were always comparing the students to the college wrestlers. I have never wrestled in

college personally however I feel as if the practices are ran exactly the same when they

shouldn’t be. The coaches lost sight in that the club is for teaching and not for college wrestling.

At the college level the wrestlers are extremely talented or else they couldn’t possibly be on the

team. So, I feel as if they held myself and the other wrestlers to that college level standard

when they shouldn’t have. Young adults needed to be treated differently especially in a sport

setting than college students. The level of discipline and energy at practices are completely

different and should be. College wrestlers don’t need someone guiding them all the time as

they should already know what they are doing. However, a young wrestler is still figuring

himself out and seeing what he is and isn’t good at yet. For that reason, the coaches lost sight

of the whole purpose of the club and that is to make the wrestler better than what they were

yesterday.

I feel as if everyone at Indiana Tech meant to do good and help the wrestlers. However,

they just run the program in a way that only really benefits those who are better than the

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others. Kids need helpful instruction and that is truly one of the only ways you can really get

better. Screaming and tell the kid he isn’t good will only make him lose confidence in himself

and won’t make him want to keep pushing to get better. Wrestling is a very tough and

aggressive sport so emotions are always running high. The last thing a kid needs is telling him

he sucks right after he just got beat in front of all his friends and family who came to watch him.

The youth wrestlers were always crying and getting frustrated so they really just needed

someone to help them instead of making it worse. I just don’t know how the coaches never

changed their coaching style especially after multiple parents complained to them personally

after practice.

I feel as if my experience as a member of the wrestling club and my school team was

very unique for the fact that I got injured at the start of my sophomore year. At the time I didn’t

know if I was going to come back to wrestling so I basically just sat out that whole year with

both teams. As I was on both teams I noticed they were ran and operated very differently. In

terms of my club at Indiana Tech the belief was that if you are at this club you are already very

experienced for your age. There was almost a sense of pride if you were a part of the team

because you knew that everyone who was teammate is just as good if not better than you. So,

during practices they never really taught moves because we were already supposed to know

them and have them mastered. On the first day when I joined the club they had an event called

“King of the weight class”. This event is to tell who is the top three wrestlers in each weight

class in order to assign you to a team or else you are just stuck on the practice squad. I noticed

right away that the overall seriousness in the gym increased dramatically because everyone

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there wanted to be a part of the three spots in your weight class. I would say about half of the

kids who didn’t make the travel teams ended up quitting the next day.

Even though wrestling is an individual sport, your teammates is what makes you better

so you have to work with each other. However, at Indiana Tech I didn’t feel a sense of

teamwork one time. Everyone who was there was really only concerned about themselves,

arrogant and selfish. There were always fights happening between teammates, physical battles

and screaming. Even if Indiana Tech took pride in teamwork and preached it that is not the

definition of teamwork in my book. When you compete at a higher level I feel as if teams lose

sight of teamwork because everyone just wants to make it for themselves and not worried

about bringing anyone else with them.

A core value at Indiana Tech was also humility. We were all told by our coaches that

during the first week “we will see which of you are actually good and which ones are just here

for fun”. So, for those who weren’t the best they just got destroyed in practice by the better

kids. In youth wrestling, especially you can tell pretty quickly which kid is the better wrestler

because of strength or just overall wrestling background. I remember many kids throwing

temper tantrums during practice because they were just getting repeatedly beaten in their

matches. It also didn’t make it any easier on the kids because they have college wrestlers as

their coaches and lots of them didn’t take it seriously as they were required to show up.

Nothing is worse than having a college kid laugh at your or scream at you to do better after you

just lost in front of a whole high school gym filled with parents and fans. The amount of

pressure that is put on those athletes is way greater compared to someone belonging to a team

sport (Grant,2016). I still remember till this day after I lost one of my championship matches in

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Ohio a coach told me “Don’t ever embarrass our team like that again we needed your title for

the tournament standings”.

The coaches thought that humiliating and screaming would push me and other wrestlers

more however it just took the fun out of the sport very fast. I know of a few instances when

parents would stop in after practice because they said their son was being treated poorly at

practice. Parents have a right to ensure their child is being treated in a properly way during the

sporting event and practices (Misener,2020). However, most of the time the coaches wouldn’t

care and would just tell them to choose a different club if they don’t like how things are being

ran at Indiana Tech. In the club’s defense, they were the top club in the city so by having

someone critique them especially a parent usually went nowhere. The parent just wants what is

best for their kid and receive the positive benefits from participating (Neely,2014) I understand

the point of humility the coaches were trying to make however just because it’s a club doesn’t

mean we lose sight of building up your players and teaching/ explaining to them what they did

wrong and how they can fix it.

By writing this paper, I have learned and noticed many things I didn’t really pay

attention to while I was a participant. The first main concern was how the young wrestlers were

overall treated. I personally don’t think any sports club should be ran the way Indiana tech did

it. I understand that they want to win and have been doing it however so many situations could

have been handled differently. Screaming at kids and telling them they suck should never

happen at any level regardless of the sport. Every kid plays sports to get active, have fun and

learn. At Indiana Tech, there was no learning or fun at all because of how the operation was

ran. I feel as if you give college kids coaching power over younger kids they can easily run with

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that and bring down the program. They should have at least put the college kids with the older

high school kids. Having a college kid tell a seventh grader he isn’t good might be one of the

most humiliating things ever especially if they look up to them.

Another thing I noticed after typing this paper was how poorly run the practices were.

There was always so much negative emotion in the air because wrestlers were always arguing

with each other and getting in fights. The main problem was that the coaches just looked away

or didn’t care when an issue was about to happen. I feel as if they almost welcome that

environment in hopes it would weed out the non-experienced kids because they couldn’t

handle the intensity of the practices. The club is definitely not for beginners in the sport

however it shouldn’t be ran like people are preparing for a cage match in the Ultimate Fighting

Championships. The coaches forgot they are still dealing with kids/young adults so they

shouldn’t be letting them work out their problems and actually step in and break up fights.

With this study, I did notice a few limitations throughout as well as some areas I could

have had a bias or a personal standpoint on. The first is that because I was a part of the travel

team I didn’t really get yelled at that much. I was only hearing things that other people we

saying about the coaches. I knew some of the wrestlers on the practice squad from my school

so they could have easily been over exaggerating some of the situations they were talking

about. Some of the drama especially with the parents could have happened differently than

just what I heard and sometimes observed while I was at practice. Another bias I could have

had was that I used to be a coach so perhaps I just have a different coaching style than they do.

Some kids need that “push” regardless if people think it’s appropriate or not. I just think I would

have handled most of the situations differently so I could just think their teaching style is

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wrong. I could maybe see them running practice how they were with the high school kids

because they are basically adults if they aren’t already. However, I just think with middle school

kids that language or intensity has no place in any sport. The last limitation I noticed was that I

forgot that the club was closed club unless you were on the practice squad. With it being a

closed club the wrestler has free will to choose if he wants to sign up or not. So, if you are

deciding to join Fort Wayne’s best youth wrestling club it’s not going to be easy by any means.

The kids there want to win and joined because they want to be the best. So, if you aren’t

bringing your best effort every day the coaches are going to let you have it. If they didn’t, then

they probably wouldn’t be the best wrestling youth club in Fort Wayne. Even though parents

complained I could see the argument now that the coaches could make by saying ‘then don’t

join if you don’t like how we run things here”. I just think my past experience with coaching was

way different than how I saw my old coaches teach and handle certain situations. Overall, I

really liked going back and thinking about my time at Indiana Tech’s Wrestling Club because I

would have never picked up on a lot of the issues I noticed today.

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References:

1. Felfe, Christina, and Michael Lechner. “Sports and Child Development.” 4 May 2016. 

2. Misener, Katie. “Parent Well-Being Through Community Youth Sport: An

Autoethnography of ‘Sideline’ Participation.” Vol. 34, no. 4, July 2020, pp. 329–340. 

3. Neely, Kacey. “Parent's Perspectives on the Benefits of Sport Participation for Young

Children.” Vol. 28, 2014, pp. 255–268. 

4. Eime, Rochelle. “A Systematic Review of the Psychological and Social Benefits of

Participation in Sport for Children and Adolescents: Informing Development of a

Conceptual Model of Health through Sport.” 1 Jan. 2013, pp. 1–21. 

5. Grant, Stina. “Promoting Sport Participation during Early Parenthood: a Randomized

Controlled Trial Protocol.” 27 Feb. 2020, pp. 1–10. 

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