Every once in a while we drill down into the college weight certification data. For this past season, 2020 - 2021, we looked at 8,413 wrestlers rostered by 298 NCAA and NAIA wrestling programs. This data is from the week of 3/1/2021, just in time for the Big Ten and NCAA Championships.
You can explore the data on your own here.
From this initial group, 7,907 wrestlers had a certification weight above their Minimum Weight Class (MWC), meaning these athletes must lose weight to achieve MWC. Average body fat % at certification for this group is 16.2% with a range of 14% to 29% depending on MWC.
If all wrestlers in this group dropped to their MWC, the average body fat is 7.1% with a narrow range of 6.5% to 7.7% excluding the 285 weight class. As in 2019-2020, if all wrestlers (except 285 pounders) sucked down to their MWC the fattest weight class is 125 pounds at an average 7.7% body fat.
For NCAA Division I wrestling teams, average body fat % at certification is 15.3% with a range of 13.8% to 16.2% depending on conference.
Other Fun Facts
Average roster size: 28.2
Redshirts: 20% of all rostered wrestlers
1st year of eligibility: 41% of all rostered wrestlers
Average weight of all wrestlers at certification: 175.8 pounds
Aggregate weight of all wrestlers at certification: 739 tons
Aggregate drop to get to Minimum Weight Class: 66 tons
At certification and on average, a wrestler from:
Univ of Michigan weighs more than Michigan State by 2.7 pounds
Univ of Oklahoma weighs more than Oklahoma State by .9 pounds
Iowa State weighs more than Univ of Iowa by 1.4 pounds
Penn State weight more than Ohio State by 1.6 pounds
Army weighs more than Navy by 14.2 pounds
Air Force weighs more than Navy by 1.3 pounds