Wrestling New High School Sport For The Whole Valley?

WAI T SBURG - Trenton Kitselman started wrestling when he was 12.

He was still living in Forks at the time. Then his family moved to Waitsburg about three years ago and he joined the Matbirds.

For several years, he immersed himself in the sport, attending practices three days a week and going to winter tournaments. It quickly turned into his favorite pass time.

But after the 2010 season, his competition in the sport came to an abrupt end.

The problem? He is too old .

Matbirds, which gratefully uses the elementary school's multipurpose room but isn't an official school program, covers ages 5 - 14, up to the freshman year in high school.

Kitselman is now 15 and just started high school this year, so all he can do is help the six wrestling coaches with the younger kids or watch from the sideline. Two other Matbirds, Jared Brown and Ryan Proctor, are in the same boat.

At least for now.

The three school districts in the Touchet Valley - Prescott, Waitsburg and Dayton - are talking about forming a high school wrestling cooperative, the first of its kind in this area. The idea is to share a training and sports venue, coaches and logistics, but compete as separate schools - Dayton and Waitsburg-Prescott, which is already a sports combine. That would keep the district teams from having to compete against much larger schools if they were to form a three-district combine.

Officials from the districts are hoping to make a decision on such a cooperative in early spring so everything can be ready for the 2012 winter season.

That's music to Kitselman's ear.

"I miss wrestling," he said, pointing out that he prefers individual sports over team sports. "I did basketball, but it's boring."

If it were to become a high school sport, wrestling would bring together strong interest in the sport from each district.

In Waitsburg, Matbirds has 45 members, spanning a decade of ages. The group, co-founded by Travis and Kari Newman, is an affiliate of the Washington Little Guy Wrestling Association.

Aside from the four high- school aged wrestlers, several more on the team will be freshmen in high school next year. Matbirds, a group that has doubled in size in the four years since it was founded in Waitsburg, will continue to generate athletes for a high school program, the Newmans said.

Now that the club has gotten so big, it has grown out of its britches. The mats it has for practices were already used when the group bought them several years ago and need to be replaced. Each of the three sections takes about eight adults to lift and haul away.

Matbirds is raising money for new mats, covering a 42 by 42-foot area, consisting of seven light-weight pieces that two kids could carry. It's about a $9,000 investment.

Matbirds has been talking to local service clubs about support and hopes its big March 5 wrestling tournament, expected to bring more than 400 kids to Kison Court, will generate proceeds to complement its other fundraising efforts.

Meanwhile, the Prescott School District is exploring the possibility of offering the balcony above its high school gym as a permanent training space for the club.

Prescott has its own reasons to promote a high school wrestling program. Almost all students who played soccer in the fall, most of them coming from the Vista Hermosa immigrant community, are interested in the sport, soccer head coach Rick Hamilton said.

The soccer program, which had its first year last fall, was a big success. Not only did the team rake in more awards and distinctions than anyone expected, the players' grades improved substantially during the season .

U nfortunately, those grades have slipped again, Hamilton and other district officials said.

"There may be some additional costs for us as a district," Prescott Athletics Director Jack Smiley said. "But the soccer program benefitted a large number of kids, and wrestling will have a similar effect. Hopefully, we can put it all together and pull it off."

A winter wrestling program would allow the soccer players, none of whom have an interest in basketball, and other student athletes to pursue sports activities almost year-round, Hamilton and Smiley said.

Dayton High School had a wrestling program until three years ago, school superintendent Doug Johnson said. When the district surveyed sports interests among its students in 2010, eight percent said they would join the activities if it were offered again, he said.

At a time when school budgets are tight, it may seem like it would be a hard sell to the school board, but the kind of cost-sharing the three districts are exploring - transportation, joint training venue and a combined coaching staff - may keep expenses down enough to make it work, he said.

Aside from capturing kids whose winter sports options are limited, it would benefit fall and spring activities by giving athletes a reason to stay in shape and emphasizing strength training that is particularly helpful to football and soccer players.

"We find that kids who are engaged in sports are also engaged in school," Johnson said, referring only in part to minimal GPA requirements. "It might be one of the best investments we make - meaning the difference to some students between graduating and not graduating."