By Casper Nelson and Jordan Tuttle
Wrestling is a sport where two combatants go head to head on a mat and grapple, grab, flip, toss, and pull their opponent around in order to get a pin on them. It’s a sport that requires not only strength, speed, flexibility, but also critical thinking as it’s a technical sport. With Minarets being in its tenth year as an active high school, it’s finally seeing a wrestling program being brought to light by two gentlemen: Coach Marr and Coach Larsen.
While Coach Larsen has just begun his K-8 level of the Wrestling Club (their first registration/practice happened Monday, November 6th), Coach Marr is to start up the Wrestling Program at the beginning of December for the high school level. However, according to Coach Marr, “There is no official start date for high school as we are just running a club right now we are just learning skills during weights and conditioning class.” He does hope that by the next school year the school will have wrestling as an official sport. The purpose of having the club right now is to “focus on learning techniques and conditioning. So for next year when we make it an official sport, we have some athletes more confident in their skill sets.”.
In regards to what the club will do for the school, Coach Marr said, “I hope that the wrestling club will just bring some awareness to what the sport actually is. It is not like WWE and jumping off of ropes it is a real sport that people of all sizes and body styles can be very successful in.” He also wishes that the wrestling club can participate in “a tournament or two” that are non-CIF as to allow the club to participate. It took to get something such as wrestling up off the ground and for takeoff, and Coach Marr’s answer as to why is, as stated, “Getting any program takes time and energy and at a small growing school the right amount of interest.” But with the school having more students than previous years and ever-growing still the same, nothing but the best is wished for this new Minarets Wrestling Club to transform into a popular sport on campus.
Be on the lookout if you are interested or speak to Coach Marr for further details.