South Fayette's athletic department is organizing a springtime meeting to continue discussions regarding the future of varsity wrestling at the school.
The date is to be announced.
An initial gathering in December attracted about 30 parents with a variety of opinions on how to keep wrestling an option for the South Fayette junior high and high school students, according to Joe Farkas, school athletic director.
Some want the school to bring back its own wrestling program, which was dissolved in the late 1990s for lack of interest.
Others hope the school with form a partnership with longtime rival Fort Cherry.
A few parents vowed to lobby the WPIAL to change to rules that are likely to force an end to the inter-school agreement that allowed South Fayette athletes to wrestle at Chartiers Valley during the past few years. That would be a convenient solution, but the WPIAL isn't likely to budge, Farkas said.
"A lot of people agree that it's been a great experience with CV," he said, "but we can't change the laws or what's going to happen. I spoke to one state official who said 'never say never,' but she didn't see that happening."
Since 1999, South Fayette students who want to wrestle have competed for Chartiers Valley's team. The arrangement gave South Fayette wrestlers the chance to be a part of full, competitive team, while saving the school the trouble of overseeing a sport with student minimal interest.
This year, seven high school and seven middle school students from South Fayette travel to CV after school to practice and compete.
But it looks like South Fayette's skyrocketing enrollment will force the program to a close. For two schools to form a co-op, one must have a high school male enrollment below 225. Given current projections, South Fayette will pass that number after next wrestling season.
The school's options now are to bring back a South Fayette wrestling team or try to form a co-op with neighboring Fort Cherry, which is smaller than South Fayette. The two schools already have cooperative swimming and tennis programs.
The third option is to simply end wrestling and let students compete in tournaments on their own.
South Fayette had its own varsity team until the late 1990s, when the program was dissolved because of low participation.
In the last years, there weren't enough wrestlers to fill half of the 14 weight classes, Farkas said.
The quality of South Fayette's wrestling was never an issue - the program's final year yielded three state qualifiers from a nine-man team.
Toward the end, the school put custom mats in the practice year and tried to make wrestling more appealing, but the interest never materialized, Farkas said.
It got to the point where it took longer to set up the mats than to have that evening's five or six matches.
"We've had some good wrestlers here and we tried to push the sport but we just didn't have the participation," he said.
The school's youth program still draws a decent number of students in grades K-3, but that drops off from fourth grade and up, Farkas said.
If the feeder program for the varsity team can't keep its numbers up, it doesn't bode well for the future.
"If there were proof we could have a program, I think the school would jump on it," Farkas said. "But when they start getting around the fourth grade they start leaving the program. They try hard to keep them but for some reason that's been the history."
The school board will have to make a decision by the end of this year.
The school has started preliminary talks with Fort Cherry to see if the school is interested in cooperating.
