Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
The recent wrestling Little Guys wrestling tournament at Waitsburg's Kison Court helped raise interest in the sport among middle and high school students in the area. In action here is Austin Kimmon, a Dayton member of the Waitsburg Matbirds.
WAITSBURG - After several months of surveys and discussions, the future of high school wrestling in the Touchet Valley looks mixed.
On Wednesday, April 13, the Waitsburg School Board is scheduled to vote on a recommendation from the Waitsburg- Prescott Athletic Combine's Advisory Group to add wrestling to the high school's winter sports season in 2011-2012.
The Prescott School Board late last month gave its green light for the combine to explore the concept of adding a wrestling program pending more research into the cost, transportation, equipment and so on.
Dayton High School, however, did not get enough interest from its students to be the third partner in a valley-wide wrestling cooperative that school officials had hoped could share costs and logistics for the program.
Still, Prescott High Athletics Director Jack Smiley said the WP combine's numbers were encouraging enough to make the recommendation to add a second winter sport.
"It's a big venture with the economy the way it is, but it's the right thing to do," he said.
Smiley said his district surveyed 73 kids from grades 8 through 11 and found that 43 of them had an interest in the sport.
Only three of those said they would favor wrestling over basketball, indicating little overlap with or impact on the other winter sports team at Prescott High.
A handful of the Prescott would-be wrestlers were girls, he said, indicating a growing interest from female students in the sport that now has a state tournament for girls.
Waitsburg's Athletics Director Stephanie Wooderchak could not be reached late Tuesday about the surveyed her district reportedly conducted of its grades 9-11.
Smiley said wrestling in the valley has become more popular in recent years.
It's got the interest of many of the fall soccer players from Prescott High and from members of the Waitsburg-based Matbirds team who have outgrown that age group.
Recently, curiosity in the sport reached a new high with the Matbirds' first hosting of a large, regional Little Guys wrestling tournament that brought hundreds of competitors from many parts of eastern Washington to Kison Court.
"As some younger kids come up through Matbirds in Waitsburg, it (wrestling) will continue to grow," Smiley said.
The combine reportedly recommends the sport be practiced on the balcony at the Prescott High gym, which means the team would be named the Tigers.
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