I always gave the wrestlers a chance to feel each other out a bit. Wrestling can be like a boxing match. Often the early rounds of a fight are tame compared to later rounds. Lots of dancing, holding, etc as fighters figure out their opponents. I think wrestlers should be given the opportunity to do this without fans yelling “stalling” 50 seconds into the first period.

High school periods are also only 2 minutes long. So first period stall calls didn’t come up often. However, if someone is clearly using the out of bounds to get away from a takedown or refuses to wrestle in the center after being warned then that’s a different story. Frankly you can take some pretty lazy shots or counters to make it look like you are wrestling but often that isn’t seen in period 1.

Stalling is subjective. I think good officials let the kids wrestle but do know when it’s likely a kid has motivation to stall. It’s easy to see in the third period of when a kids ahead and appears gassed. Here’s one example I saw a lot. Bottom guy is behind in third period and is struggling to get out. Fans start screaming for stalling on bottom. But what’s his motivation to stall? He needs to score to win. The only way he might want to stall is to prevent a major decision or a pin for bonus points. But if a guy is down 2 pts the usually are not looking to stall. The way you get hit with stalling on the bottom is if you aren’t trying to get to a base position. Lying there without attempting to improve your position and return to a base position is pretty easy to see. But most guys behind in a match aren’t doing that unless they are trying to avoid giving up bonus points.

A trip in basketball is almost a defined term. Guy sticks leg out. Makes contact with other guy. Those things are not hard to see. I think stalling is just more subjective. There’s a reason there isn’t video review of it but we do have video review of many other things that are more defined.

Frankly I think you develop a feel for it more than anything. Most officials i know don’t want to be the center of attention or determine the outcome. If you become the guy that’s always hitting folks with stalling you have a hard time getting away from that. Everyone will be screaming at you to call it. Frankly I think you know it when you see it after awhile. What I find interesting is you don’t see wrestlers complaining about it much. It’s often the fans. A good coach also doesn’t want to be the guy yelling stalling all the time either. Because it might bite his guys in the ass.

Stalling on top I think is actually not too hard to see. Usually it’s guys who ride legs and don’t try to turn the other wrestler. But if they are trying to increase control to lead to a turn I gave them some time to improve their situation. Holding someone down is tough work. If you stall or take a break usually the other wrestler takes advantage with an escape or reversal unless you are just riding legs or holding an arm bar without trying to turn. You know that when you see it though.

There are some really good college official s now who don’t make a lot of stall calls. So when they do they get the message across pretty quickly. Kind of like a grandmother who doesn’t curse. When she does you know you need to correct course quickly.

I think a good question fans can ask is “is the wrestler working to score?” Or defending against a scoring situation. Those are stall situations for that wrestler.

If they are resting, running away or protecting a lead that’s often where stall calls truly do show up.