A Part of the History
Kids Wrestling Club has proved vital in turning Emporia into wrestling haven
By Michael Ashford
Saturday, March 24, 2007
When Sal Tovar joined the Emporia Kids Wrestling Club 11 years ago at age 5, he remembers feeling a bit awestruck as he wrestled next to the Emporia High wrestlers who would join the squad after their high school seasons were finished.
The EHS wrestling program had been so good for so long, having won numerous State team titles and churning out individual State champions left and right, and to the younger wrestlers in the Wrestling Club like Tovar, their high school counterparts were seemingly larger than life.
“They were like our role models. We wanted to be like them,” Tovar said. “We just wanted to be a part of the history.”
Tovar now is a high school sophomore coming off a fourth-place finish at the State high school tournament back in February. Since the end of the high school season, he has continued wrestling with the Kids Wrestling Club, and will join 19 other Club members at the State meet today in Topeka.
For Tovar, the roles have reversed. He is now one of those revered high school wrestlers, one who achieved the goal of every Wrestling Club participant — he earned a spot on the high school varsity squad. He has gone to State twice in his two years at EHS, and his name adorns some of the State banners in the wrestling room at Emporia High, signifying his place in EHS history.
The younger wrestlers now look to him and the other high school wrestlers in the EKWC as the example of what they hope to become.
“Our school has a good reputation in wrestling,” said Bryce Dakin, an EKWC member in the 12-and-under age group whose older brother, Jared, is a sophomore varsity wrestler at EHS and a fellow EKWC member. “I’m trying to do my best here so when I get to high school, I can do well and make the varsity team.”
Year after year since it first started back in 1972, the Emporia Kids Wrestling Club has helped produce many athletes like Tovar — the ones who started wrestling at an early age who worked their way up to find success at the high school level.
Even Emporia High’s wrestling coach, Greg Buckbee — one of the Club’s original members and an individual State champion for Emporia High in 1983 — said he never would have achieved the success he did without the Emporia Kids Wrestling Club.
“It’s so hard to get the fundamentals and the background that you need in just a few short years if you don’t do something like this,” Buckbee said.
Perhaps its not surprising then that with the rise of the Kids Wrestling Club came the success Emporia High School has experienced over the last three-plus decades. Before 1972, EHS had three State wrestling champions. Since then, Spartan wrestlers have accounted for 39 individual State champions and nine State team titles, with the Wrestling Club acting as a sort of feeder system for the EHS program.
“You don’t build a tradition and a program like the one at Emporia High School without a strong kids wrestling club,” Buckbee said. “It’s nice because I don’t have to spend a lot of time teaching the basics when they get to high school.
“I can go on to more advanced things a lot quicker. We can refine little things and little problems in their technique and go on to more sophisticated things a lot quicker.”
When he took over coaching the Kids Wrestling Club 10 years ago, Matt Collins took it a step further. He made sure the techniques and workouts he used with the Wrestling Club mirrored those being taught at the middle school and high school levels.
“They (the wrestlers) just flow from one step to the other,” Collins said. “They improve their skills along the way and it becomes second nature to them. When they get to high school, it’s not just drilling and spending time on stuff they already know. They can work on polishing them up.”
The effect has been cyclical. As the EHS program thrived, more and more young boys wanted to wrestle, thus making the EKWC an even greater asset to wrestling in Emporia.
“I always came and watched the high school team wrestle,” said Bryce Dakin, who joined the Wrestling Club when he was 3 years old. “I guess I just liked it. It looked fun, and I just thought it would be fun to try it.”
This year, a best-ever 20 Wrestling Club members qualified for today’s State meet. Eight of Emporia High’s 11 State-qualifying wrestlers this past season are a part of the Wrestling Club this year, with six — Jared Dakin, Mark Kolmer, Zeb Peak, Tovar, Josh Rodriguez and Justin Rose — making it to the State meet at the club level. Tovar will try to defend his State title from a year ago, and Collins is hopeful that this year’s group can surpass last year’s eight State placers.
“The big-number clubs in the big cities, they’re getting like 34 qualifiers, but they’re pulling from huge populations,” Collins said. “I’m real proud of what these kids have done to get to the State portion of the year.”
Each year, new members join the club from what seems like an ever-present talent pool of young and willing wrestlers.
The younger wrestlers, like Buckbee’s own son, Gabe, who wrestles in the 8-and-under age group at 46 pounds, along with others like Isidro Trujillo and Damian Herrera at 8 years old and Max Detwiler and Braxton Marstall at 10 years old, ensure that the Emporia Kids Wrestling Club will continue to thrive well into the future.
“It’s sometimes surprising how many new kids we get each year; it’s more surprising that they come back,” Collins said with a laugh. “It’s going to be hard to get away from it. One year, I will have to step away from it, but it’s going to be hard.
“They’re just wonderful kids, and they take the discipline of the sport so well. It’s a really good thing for these kids.”
Emporia Kids Wrestling Club State Qualifiers
Gabe Buckbee
Isidro Trujillo
Damian Herrera
Max Detwiler
Braxton Marstall
Trey Francka
Bryce Dakin
Michael Sturm
Dylan Samuels
Nicolas Dikin
Logan Gaskill
Nico Rodriguez
Lorenzo Serna
Jared Dakin
Carlos Playa-Casiano
Justin Rose
Sal Tovar
Zeb Peak
Mark Kolmer
Josh Rodriguez
Kansas State Wrestling Championship Tournament
Kansas Expocentre, Exhibition Hall
Wrestling starts at 8:30 this morning and continues through Sunday. Wrestling begins at 8 a.m. on Sunday. Doors open at 6:30 a.m. both days.