Considering the long history of wrestling, dating back to
the ancient Greeks and Romans, the singlet is a relatively modern
invention. Statues and drawings from ancient
times show the wrestlers only scantily clad, if that. Thankfully, somewhere between the ancient
times and the 1920 wrestlers started to wear clothes. By the 30’s most amateur wrestlers sported
full length tights and something called an outside supporter called a "black tom".
The next evolution took place between the mid 30’s through
WWII. The outside supporter was replaced
with trunks. Shirts were still optional,
mostly depending upon where you were wrestling.
Most east coast teams, donned the shirt while the mid-west teams like
Oklahoma State, went shirtless. For dual
meets where an east coast team would be wrestling against a mid-west team, it
was the home team who got to determine if it was skins or shirts. It wasn’t until 1966 that the NCAA actually
required the 3 piece uniform which included the trunk, tights and shirts. No more shirt-less dual meets. (Is this when our attendance started to
drop? And we blame Title IX.)
US amateur wrestlers were introduced to the one-piece
wrestling singlet at the Rome Olympics in 1960 however the singlet didn’t hit
collegiate and high school wrestling rooms until the 70’s. Bullet wrestlers first started wearing the
one-piece singlet over tights in the 1974 yearbook. It wasn’t until the 1986 yearbook that the
tights totally disappeared from the pictures and we were left with the current
look.
While singlet styles change slightly from year to year,
there have not been any big changes for almost 30 years. Is there a need for a change and what would
we change it to? Are there any advantages
to changing the singlet from the fan or the wrestlers’ perspective? Would it help us grow wrestling?
Take our poll. Leave
a comment. Looking to hear some comments
on this one.
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