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Wrestling club fights to change first impressions

It’s about skill, experience, training, nutrition, attitude; not just your physical side

By SEAN MEYER, The Londoner - October 26, 2005

Mary Kate More (left) works out a wrestling move with Heather Wary during a practice session of the London-Western Wrestling Club last week in Alumni Hall. The club accepts both elementary and high school-age members with the idea of providing both an opportunity for young kids to learn the sport and offer an extra level of training for those already in a high school wrestling program. MENNO MEIJER PHOTO

Bill Perkins has coached wrestling in London – at both the high school and club level – for 32 years so he can say with some expertise what it is people think about when they envision the sport.

“They think of WWE, Monday Night Raw. I’ve asked parents what they have thought about having their children join the wrestling team, and these are educated, well-read people, and you still have people saying they don’t want people jumping off ropes onto their kids,” explains Bill, who serves as the age group director for the London-Western Wrestling Club.

“But once they come in and see what goes on they quickly realize that’s not what it is about at all. Once they see what the sport is about, how safe it is, how exciting it is, they often say, ‘This is fantastic’. They see how great the sport really is.”

The club was formed in 1974 as the London Amateur Wrestling and Athletic Club and currently has about 28 members, a level Bill says is about typical for the club since he started – along with his son Bo – in 1991.

“We are right about where we normally are. It’s difficult to swing a stick and not find a hockey fan in London, but we have more and more kids getting interested,” Bill says. “Last year we passed out 20 free memberships to the high schools, two to each school, for kids who couldn’t afford to join. If you want to wrestle, we encourage people to come out and we’ll find a way to make it work out.”

The club accepts both elementary and high school-age members with the idea of providing both an opportunity for young kids to learn the sport and offer an extra level of training for those already in a high school wrestling program.

“For many years, there was nothing available for younger kids who wanted to get into the sport,” Bill says. “My son for example was very interested when he was eight years old, but there was nothing. So he worked out on his own and by the time he was 10 or 12, the club had the age group program.”

The age group program allows for boys and girls as young as eight years old to join the club and participate through their last year of high school. The club also has a senior program for those over age 20.

“We do find it difficult to get the younger kids to join up. Probably because the profile of wrestling is not as high here as it is in other places,” Bill says. “There’s a little town near Ottawa, Renfrew, they have over 100 elementary age kids wrestling. In Renfrew, in the winter you are either playing hockey or wrestling. Here, there are so many different options available to kids. We need to better inform parents about what we are about, that will make a difference.”

Steve Rancourt was one parent who knew something about amateur wrestling, but even still, he didn’t think of it as the sport for his boys – at least in the beginning anyway.

After a hip injury ended his son Dan’s hockey career, Steve eventually looked to the wrestling club as something for him to not only do, but to help him regain his health as well.

“My son Dan was looking for something to do. I saw an ad for the club in the paper and called Bill. Dan came out, tried it out and he found he liked it. I was just happy to see him moving,” Steve says. “I remembered wrestling from high school, so I had some idea about what it was about. It was just so great. The club accepted Dan right away, he was welcomed in. Once people come in, get to see what it does for the kids - they are laughing and giggling - they aren’t getting hurt, they are learning proper techniques. And most of all, my sons like it because they have made friends here they wouldn’t have met otherwise.”

For Bill, perhaps the best thing about wrestling is how inclusive the sport can be, especially when divided by not just age, but weight limits as well.

“Wrestling is about skill, experience, training, nutrition, attitude; not just your physical side which is often the case in a sport like hockey where it is size and skill first. That’s what attracted me as a coach,” Bill says. “And in many sports that are divided just by age, you can have kids of the same age, but who might be physically very different competing against each other. Here we are divided also by weight, which makes the competition more fair, more safe.”

The club, Bill says, exists not to compete against existing high school wrestling programs, but as an extra support providing additional – and often very beneficial – mat time.

“We are here to support the high school programs. If there is a meet that is open to the high schools, then we tell our members to compete with their school. Otherwise, they are there with us,” Bill says. “The extra mat time is so important. At a meet, one of our wrestlers might have a record of 17-4 where if they were just competing in a high school program they might be 8-2. Our kids get more opponents, a variety of opponents. They can travel to tournaments. The additional mat time is a big thing.”

Eric McAlister, in his first season as head coach, agrees with Bill.

“We are providing something additional to the high school programs, but we don’t want to interfere with them,” Eric says. “We’re not better, just another program. We teach some moves, give the kids opportunities to go to national events, provincial events. It helps.”

Having kids as young as eight years old in the program, Eric says, is also a benefit – as is the openness of the sport.

“You are never too young to join. It can be an advantage. Not that you have to be young to start either though. It’s also there for everybody,” Eric says. “You can have the tough football jock or the skinny kid who does nothing else. It’s all mental attitude. That’s the deciding factor on how high you can go.”

Amateur wrestling and professional wrestling are quite different, especially in their rules, Eric says. For example, amateur wrestling uses a point system where individual moves are given a value and a score is calculated at the end of each of three rounds (assuming there are three rounds in a best of two-out-of-three match).

As for how he would describe the difference between amateur wrestling and the WWE’s professional stylings, Eric uses a comment from someone who has achieved the pinnacle of success in both endeavours.

“Kurt Angle is a former Olympic gold medalist who has won the WWE title several times. He has said the first thing he had to do when he joined the WWE was forget everything he knew about wrestling,” Eric says. “The only exception was that you still have to be a good athlete. But otherwise there’s really no connection between the two.”