Wrestling has developed a deep, rich history. But the sport's more recent times have been marred.

In the past few decades, many of its young athletes, sometimes coaxed along by misguided coaches and parents, have developed poor habits while attempting to keep their weight down.

Wrestlers have to keep their weight to a certain amount of pounds so that they can wrestle in their weight class. It is the process of keeping that weight down which has brought so much turmoil to the sport.

The problem has grown to the extent that some grapplers have suffered short-term and long-term ailments and illnesses.

Billy Saylor, Joseph LaRosa and Jeff Reese were exceptionally talented athletes who, by all accounts, loved their sport. They worked hard and did what people told them. Each had impressive desires for success.

But their habits off the mat made sure no one would ever know just how good they could have been or what they might have accomplished in their personal lives.

More important than any of the matches they never made it to, these three could have been fathers. Maybe they would have turned out to be pillars in the community. Coaching could have been in their futures. But no one will ever know. All three died in 1997.

LaRosa, a 22-year-old at the University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse, was the oldest. Reese was just a year younger at the University of Michigan. Saylor, a wrestler for Campbell University in North Carolina, was just 19.

They all died trying to cut weight so that they could compete in the sport they loved. It was just six years ago -- just a millisecond in the history of wrestling. But it is a time that reverberates loudly today.

"I guess you'd have to say excessive and improper weight cutting is rampant throughout the sport," said Charles Prebish, professor of religious studies at Penn State and former wrestling official.

Public discussion about the deaths helped bring about changes in the way high schools and colleges monitor weight cutting.

While many criticize some of the common weight-cutting methods, there are some who defend them. Shortly after Reese's death, Michigan assistant coach Marty Morgan commented to The Minnesota Daily about the attacks on the methods.

"[T]he medical world wants this (Reese's death) to be wrestling related," he said. "The way we cut weight, because for years they've wanted to ban this, and outlaw it and change it."

Morgan is no longer on the Michigan coaching staff and could not be reached for comment.

Prebish and Ken Chertow, a three-time All-American wrestler at Penn State, have strong opinions on the subject. Prebish says the sport needs to be stricter in ensuring athletes are taken care of. Chertow, while admitting some athletes still break the rules, says the sport has "cleaned up a great deal."

"Now things are falling into place," Chertow said. "Athletes are building up their skills instead of battling the scales."

Chertow runs camps for amateurs teaching them how to deal with the issue of weight cutting. He said he tells his campers the value of healthy eating and developing habits that will help them keep fit through good nutrition and workouts.

However, not all coaches have taken the precautions Chertow does with his wrestlers.

During his years as an official, Prebish saw many ways in which wrestlers endangered themselves by trying to drop lots of weight in short periods of time.

"As an official," he said, "when working weigh-ins from high school tournaments all the way through Olympic trials, I saw wrestlers, ranging in age from 14 to early 30s, engage in all sorts of practices in order to achieve victory without considering the horrible impact it could have on their health then and later on. I was essentially powerless to stop it."

Some of those practices included:

-- riding an exercise bike in a sauna while wearing a rubber suit to sweat off water weight.

-- using laxatives or diuretics to wash water out of the body.

-- sucking on hard candies and filling bottles and jars with their saliva.

Wrestlers even used menstrual cycle medicines to help reduce the amount of water in their bodies.

Prebish knows about the issue not only from his officiating days, but also from his own experiences as the father of a wrestler.

"As a parent of a wrestler, who was highly competitive," Prebish explained, leaning across his desk in Penn State's Weaver Building, "I caught myself being caught up in the excitement of competition and achievement. Although I knew weight cutting was harmful, I tended not to discourage it as strong as I should have. I knew it was going on, sometimes in my own house, but I chose not to stop it."

When Prebish tells the story of his son's battle with keeping weight, it is easy to see the pain in his eyes. But Prebish is lucky.

His son survived.

Prebish visited his son, Rober Prebish, over Thanksgiving break. He proudly talked about watching his son coach high school wrestlers. The younger Prebish is the coach at Spotsylvania High School in Virginia.

After his trials with cutting weight, Robert Prebish says he watches over his wrestlers to make sure they take care of themselves.

"[In] my experience," he said, "it was a kind of thing that coaches didn't care how you made weight.'

But he does care, and watches his athletes closely.

It is important, he said, that his wrestlers know he is available to talk to if they are having problems making weight.

"I try to stress keeping hydrated and working weight down slowly" he explained. He said it is safe for wrestlers to drop one to two pounds per week.

While much of the burden of monitoring wrestlers in their efforts to make weight lies with parents, coaches and the wrestlers themsleves, the governing bodies of high school and college athletics have changed the rules concerning weight cutting since the deaths of the three wrestlers in 1997.

Prior to the season, wrestlers must be certified to compete in certain weight classes. During this certification, wrestlers are checked for dehydration and body fat. Once an athlete is certified to wrestle in a certain weight class, he cannot drop to lower classes. A certified wrestler is allowed to gain an extra seven pounds for the season.

The NCAA requires wrestlers to have, at minimum, 5 percent body fat, and the National Federation of State High School Associations has required athletes to have at least 7 percent body fat.

"One of the more significant changes," said former Penn State wrestler and coach John Fritz, "is the change in the time between the weigh-ins and the start of the match."

The NCAA has ruled that weigh-in times were moved from the day before a match to just a few hours prior to the start of matches.

College wrestlers are also officially banned from working out in rooms hotter than 79 degrees. They are also forbidden to go to saunas.

The rules prohibiting wrestlers from entering saunas is important because two of the three wrestlers who died in 1997 were working out in heater rooms or saunas. Reese, who dropped 17 pounds in the previous four days, had been wearing a rubber suit in a 92-degree room when he suffered kidney failure and heart malfunctions. LaRosa was riding a stationary bike in a sauna when he collapsed.

Other rules concerning weight cutting include a prohibition on using impermeable suits and laxatives.

Athletes who break any of the weight-cutting guidelines are suspended for one match, but the new regulations may not change the self-destructive behaviors of some wrestlers.

"No doubt there are still some athletes that abuse their bodies," Chertow said.

Current Penn State wrestling coach Troy Sunderland admitted that the system could be improved but has helped the sport.

"There are some flaws and kinks in the system," he said. "But it's a lot better than before.

There is one indicator that athletes are being more careful or that the new regulations by the NCAA and other organizations are changing things -- there have been no fatalities since three deaths during the 1997-1998 season.