The Mingus Mountain Wrestling Club hosted more than 50 boys from kindergarten through eighth grade at its fall camp last week in the wrestling room at Mingus Union High School.
During the camp, Coach Klint McKean, an assistant for the high school wrestling team at Mingus, taught the boys the finer points of folkstyle, freestyle and greco-roman wrestling.
The camp was free and open to everyone, and McKean said he was happy with the turnout.
“Last year was our first year as a club and so we were at about 15 to 20 kids last year consistently,” he said, “So I was shooting for 40 kids at the camp and we had 50 who came every day. All told, we had upwards of 60.”
The camp was an introduction of sorts to the wrestling club, which starts its training camp Monday, Nov. 4, and begins competition on Saturday, Nov. 23 — a schedule that will run through February.
But more than anything, McKean said he just wants the kids to have fun and learn about the sport of wrestling.
“It’s not a highly televised sport, and a lot of people don’t know what it is,” he said. “It’s getting more attention now with MMA and [ultimate] fighting.”
McKean said he went around and talked to youth football players and told them it would be a fun thing to do over fall break.
“It doesn’t mean they’re coming out for the team, but it might be,” he said. “Maybe they’ll like the sport. So part of it is just giving them something to do over fall break, and the other part is just exposing them to what wrestling is.”
For the full story, please see the Friday, Oct. 23, issue of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
