Wrestlers are ready to rumble
High school wrestling may be over, but if anyone wants to watch some more action on the mats, little guy wrestling gettting started.
Coach Charlie Crabb said that the team this year has around 35 youngsters partaking.
“That’s a pretty average number for us. We have a lot more younger kids this year than older ones so we don’t have too many returning,” Crabb said.
Crabb said that the team has already competed in two different meets this year. They opened up with a dual against Plains the weekend of March 19 and the older kids went to Mission this last weekend. Crabb said that they came out of Plains having done all right.
“We only had about three days of practice before jumping in,” Crabb said. “But it’s going pretty good so far.”
Crabb said that the season spends a lot of time introducing kids to the sport of wrestling in hopes that if they do decide to wrestle during high school they have an idea of how the sport works.
“We just want to teach them the basics,” Crabb said. “We’re basically sort of doing a lot of prepping. My main goal with the older kids is to get them prepared for high school. With the younger kids, I want to teach them a good stance and some simple moves so they’ll have that foundation.”
Crabb said that little guy wrestling is a lot different from high school wrestling. They don’t really keep results for most of the season until the qualifying tournaments come around during the first weekend of March. Of course, throughout the season, the coaches want the students to also enjoy themselves and have fun.
Several other lessons are also wrapped into the season. The sport promotes 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
The upcoming schedule for the little guy wrestlers include a home event on March 3 at the high school beginning at 6 p.m. They will also wrestle the following weekend in Superior, March 11 and 12. On March 19, the boys will wrestle in Frenchtown and on March 26, they’ll be in Missoula.
The season is short, lasting only around six weeks.