Little guy wrestlers hit mats

A tow-day summer camp brings the young wreslters back to the mats

Last week, on Monday and Tuesday, the little guy wrestlers were back in the gym and back on the mats. While the next season of wrestling for the little guys doesn't start until next year, around twenty wrestlers were ready to practice some take downs as part of the third summer camp.

On Tuesday, wrestlers started by getting fitted into their shoes and then moved to the mats where Jason McLees took roll call. Next, the boys warmed up running laps and skipping before moving into tumbling lines to run through some drills.

One of the more challenging drills was the step drills in which wrestlers drive their leg out as they step down and come back up. Scott Kinney, who helps as an assistant coach, explained to the wrestlers that it is important for them to go deep and to push as if they were moving against an opponent. By doing so, they would drive into their opponent pushing him backwards.

Wrestlers also paired up and practiced knee grabs, head butts and take down drills. The ideas was to perfect these maneuvers that would ultimately lead up to the actual takedown of their opponent.

One of the most important things that was stressed during camp is that while a wrestler is moving through the drills and practicing these techniques is that he stays low all the time. A wrestler is looking forward and has a straight back.

"You guys are looking like you're ready to go to prom," Kinney called out at one point. "Prom's a fancy dance. You always want to be in your stance, low to the ground. You never want to stand straight up."

From the beginning of the day's activities, the kids were getting one-on-one attention and help from the coaches as they worked through the day's drills. The coaches helped to make sure the kids were staying on task as well as making sure that they were performing the moves correctly. Head coach Charlie Crabb said that one of the great things about the camp is that it includes the younger kids who actually can't wrestle with them during the regular season.

"It gives the real little kids a head start with us and gets them into our program. They won't have to start at square one," Crabb said. "It's nothing real fancy that we're learning, we're just introducing stuff."

Much like during the season, the goal of the camp is not only to introduce them to the techniques of wrestling, but to simply expose them to the sport.

"We want them to see that its fun," Crabb said. "We want to get them interested. The main goal here is to have fun and just to learn something along the way."

The younger kids were certainly having fun, smiling as partners head bumped them or grabbed up underneath their shoulder.

The main wrestling season is short, lasting only six weeks so not to burn kids out and usually around 40 kids wrestle. As well as teaching the kids to wrestle, coaches also hope that by participating in the sport that important life skills will also begin to develop. Their hope is that the sport will promote hard work and self-discipline. The coaches also hope that the sport teaches the kids to practice good sportsmanship and to learn that even when you lose that it's an opportunity to learn to fix what went wrong.

As wrestlers challenged each other Tuesday, they were also helping each other out whether helping someone with a drill or lending a hand to help them up after they'd been taken down.

Crabb said that although the camp is short that it does help the kids out later on and they remember learning some stuff when the regular season comes around.