I have been teaching for 6 years now, 5 in Maryland and this is my first year back in PA. I am just amazed at the amount of students that I have (boys and girls) who are interested and wrestle. In Maryland I could count on one hand the number of students who wrestled but I have a ton now. It is interesting to see the difference between the two and what makes this area such a hot spot.
Can't speak to Maryland at all, but I would say in Western PA, it's a few different things.
First, wrestling is a generational sport -- I knew of a lot of families whose father wrestled, grandfather wrestled, uncle wrestled, and so on.
Second, I think the overall mentality/ethos/history of the area is at play; wrestling is a tough, arduous sport that requires strength, dedication, and will. These are qualities that are just part of the local culture of what it means to be a man and to be a competitor.
Third, I think it's also a lot more of a spectator sport here than lots of places; you can get known locally, head to bigger things, get scholarships, and so on. It's a viable pathway for a lot of great outcomes, all the way to the Olympics even, and the coaching across the board is stellar. Wrestlers get respected here. Not sure if that's the case elsewhere. That's how you get a school like McGuffey or Waynesburg have 40 kids come out for the team when the total male enrollment is about 200.
Maybe fourth and kind of distant is that Pittsburgh really just isn't a basketball area and hockey can be prohibitively expensive. As an indoor winter sport, wrestling can really carve out a strong foothold and particularly for athletes who also play football or run track/play baseball in the Spring, wrestling can help immensely with stength, acceleraton, body control and more.
