National Collegiate Athletic Association

The NCAA News - News and Features

March 2, 1998

CDC examines wrestling deaths; NCAA joint meeting set for April

A report on the deaths of three college wrestlers says that the tragedies underscore "the need to eliminate weight-control practices that emphasize extreme or rapid weight loss."

The February 20 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined the deaths of the wrestlers who died last November and December while trying to make weight for competition.

The report's conclusions were:

  • A health-care professional should identify an appropriate competition weight and specify rates and limits of allowable weight loss for each wrestler.

  • Coaches and athletes should be trained in proper weight-control strategies and work collaboratively with a health-care professional to develop and monitor a weight-control regimen.

  • Use of intentional dehydration to lose weight should be prohibited.

  • Surveillance systems should be strengthened to evaluate effectiveness in preventing athletics injuries, illness and deaths among wrestlers.

  • A practical test to assess hydration status should be explored and employed.

    All three victims used vapor-impermeable suits and excercised vigorously in hot environments. "These conditions promoted dehydration and heat-related illness," stated the report, which noted that the body temperature of one of the athletes at the time of death was 108 degrees.

    The report focused exclusively on dehydration and heat illness and did not identify any other factors that contributed to the deaths.

    The report recognized NCAA wrestling rules changes that were put in place in January and also noted that more long-term solutions will be addressed beginning this spring. "The effectiveness of these changes should be monitored and evaluated," the report said.

    A portion of the report noted the victims' preseason weights and competitive weights, along with a 1990 study that provided the same information for all wrestlers. The report noted that the victims were trying to lose about 15 percent of their preseason weight, as compared to 10 percent for all wrestlers cited in the 1990 study. The report cited the figures "to highlight the extreme extent of absolute and relative weight loss" and noted that "particularly when dehydration is involved, there are no established limits for safe weight loss."

    Randall W. Dick, NCAA assistant director of sports sciences, cautioned against inferring that the 10 percent figure was necessarily an acceptable norm.

    "Some people might read that to mean that as long as you are within the average, it's not a health problem," Dick said. "But we don't know that. There is no exact science to dictate the exact amount and rate of weight loss for individual wrestlers."

    The report also noted that it is not known whether weight-loss and conditioning practices among wrestlers have changed recently.

    The next step in the NCAA process will occur April 9 when the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports and the NCAA Wrestling Committee meet to discuss long-term solutions to the problem of rapid weight loss in wrestling.

    Dick said the goals for that meeting are:

  • To eliminate from wrestling all weight-control practices that could risk the health of the participant, as stated in a resolution developed by USA Wrestling. To do this effectively, the incentives that cause athletes to use unhealthy weight-control practices must be addressed (for instance, wrestlers may believe that the competition on their own team is too intense at one weight level, so may try to compete instead at the next level down).

  • To determine if weight is the appropriate competitive-equity variable for the sport.

  • To emphasize the competitive element of wrestling and minimize the emphasis on making weight.

  • To create recommendations that are practical, effective, enforceable and cost-appropriate.

    Dick said that banning rubber suits and saunas is not the solution to the problem since student-athletes can use other devices to dehydrate.

    "The key is to change behavior," he said, "and that may start by analyzing the incentive to drop weight and then modifying the sport accordingly."