Evaluation of Sleep among NCAA DII Wrestlers over a Competition Season

Introduction: There has been significant attention given to sleep deprivation in college students, especially within the student-athlete population. The demands of a competitive season coupled with academic responsibilities often lead to deprioritizing sleep. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to observe NCAA Division II male college wrestlers leading up to their national qualifying tournament to see what, if any relationship there is between their sleep patterns and their perceived level of performance during practice in order to evaluate how well they are recovering. Methods: This observational study used the Athlete Sleep Screening Questionnaire combined with two questions concerning their perceived level of performance and the perceived difficulty of practices throughout the week. These questions were answered weekly via online survey to record the sleeping habits of NCAA Division II college wrestlers (n=14) during the 6-week time period leading up to the Super Region National Qualifying Tournament. Results: Descriptive statistics from their sleeping habits were cross-referenced with their perceived performance and difficulty of the practices for that week to determine whether they were getting adequate recovery from sleep as it relates to performance. Conclusion: Entering the research, it was hypothesized that according to prior research that college students were not getting adequate rest and it would affect their performance; however, multiple Chi Square analysis in this study did not support that hypothesis. The amount of sleep, time to fall asleep, and whether they had trouble staying asleep appeared to have no statistical significance in the relationship to perceived performance.