I see real data has been posted, but without taking time to peruse that data, here are my observations from being a participant in the '70s and having sons participate in the '90s and '10s. I think participation numbers are still fairly strong although they seem to vary more in recent years than in the past, but strength/depth seems to be down.
When I was in school, most of the people who stayed in wrestling longer than a week or two seemed to at least have a grasp of the sport. When my youngest son wrestled in HS (2011-2015), it seemed like a larger percentage of kids couldn't get out of their own way on the mat. This seems very odd, because now there are more and better quality clubs, and kids are tending to start earlier than ever. My co-captain and I, our junior year, started a 5th and 6th grade program, which became our local kids club of today. Prior to that, 7th grade was the earliest you could wrestle in our town, and we were 3A. Very few schools had pre-junior high starter clubs in our area at that time, and the ones that did, dominated in HS.
I could be off in these observations, but I just feel the quality (in depth, not necessarily at the top) of Iowa HS wrestling has fallen from where it was 30-40 years ago.
