Practice Schedule

The youth program is a way to introduce kids to wrestling in a fun and age-appropriate way, incorporating principles of the sport into games and other activities. We adhere to the long-term athlete development model of coaching (information on this can be found here). This means for kids at young ages, we prioritize means fun and love for sport, physical literacy, and a broad range of skills over competition and early specialization.

These practices are intended to prepare athletes for competition at the cadet, juvenile, junior, and senior levels, although we encourage participation from athletes whether or not they are interested in competing. We have wrestlers who come to practice for purposes of competition, but also to cross-train for other sports, to enhance their physical fitness and stay in shape, to benefit socially, and to just enjoy the sport of wrestling. If they are age thirteen or older, we accept male and female wrestlers at all levels of experience and ability.

The goal of the invite only practices is to focus on high performance athletes and allow for continued growth and improvement of athletes who have been training for some time with an emphasis on individualized technique and tactics for competition. Once an athlete has spent some time building a foundation of wrestling techniques and tactics, we can start to focus on refining individual strengths and improving identified weaknesses. These practices are much less structured than open practices, which is one of the reasons why we need athletes to be at a certain level of development to benefit from this style of training. We expect a certain level of investment from the athletes when it comes to this. While the coaches will often have ideas of things they would like to work on, we encourage athletes to self-analyze and take ownership of their wrestling game as a whole.