My 12-year old has been at it for 4 years. I know very little, as well. He typically shows an aversion to "competition" -- he doesn't love meets, but he tends to shy away from score-keeping, standings, etc. in most sports. (It's tougher as he gets older, and he's adjusting.) He loves the practices, but between the all-day tournaments where he wrestles twice (spend 6 hours and wrestle 12 minutes) and then general anxiety, he's not big into the competition. He competes in 3/4/5 meets a year. He's in a feeder program, so the HS coach runs it, and coach has his work cut out for him by balancing the desire to keep my kid in the program with the need for competition to get him better. Unfortunately, he has only two more seasons before it's high school wrestling. But no matter the future, wrestling has served him and us well.
I agree the competition makes him better. In practices, he has, over time, gained on his peers who were more advanced at the start. Seeing them twice a week and paying attention to the coaches will do that. Without wrestling strangers frequently, when he does, he gets surprised and too often has to battle from behind. The coaches are convincing that more competition means a better ability to recognize and react quicker.
But, working up a sweat twice a week during the dead of winter is never a bad thing. And learning that getting your ass kicked (pinned) isn't the end of the world, or even the end of the day, is a really, really important lesson. Not many other sports dole out defeat so decisively.
(We've also gotten two skin infections -- ringworm and impetigo. We scrub him in the shower after every practice, so I assume we've just been unlucky.)