Sun's out, mat's out. Erie-area youth wrestling clubs keep training going during summer

Beach 7 is filled with wrestlers.

This isn’t normal, wrestlers training on the beach. It’s not even wrestling season. And the balmy backdrop of Presque Isle State Park suggests relaxation, not the sand-soaked sprints the wrestlers are running.

This, though, is how Rambler Wrestling Club trains in the summer. Instead of rolling around on mats, they work out at the beach on Thursday evenings before sharing a cookout.

For Rambler WC, and the other youth wrestling clubs in the Erie area, the season doesn’t start each November and end each March. It’s a year-round cycle that requires them to wrestle under an alternate set of rules and travel across the county to compete.

Summer wrestling isn’t for everyone. Those who do it, though, aren’t in it to see results in August.

They’re already training for March.

A culture of commitment

There are 78 clubs within a 100-mile radius of Erie that are registered with USA Wrestling.

They vary in size and hail from three states, but their premise is the same ― to create a home for wrestlers beyond their scholastic programs. When folkstyle season ends in March, the wrestling calendar resets and preparations for the following year start.

“The results in February and March will reflect what the kids did over the summer,” said Mark Harrington, head coach of Rambler WC. “We’ll see who put in the extra work and who was sitting at home.”

Harrington’s group is hardly the only club running through the summer. Reapers Wrestling Club and Ragin’ Raisins Wrestling Club are both also based in Erie County, as is Erie Sports Center’s T3 Wrestling Club.

Many neighboring communities have their own youth clubs, such as Wattsburg WC, Waterford Youth WC, Scotsman WC and more. Once Pennsylvania Junior Wrestling state tournaments and the Keystone State Championships ― youth state tournaments of equal prestige ― are completed, their focus shifts from folkstyle wrestling to freestyle and Greco-Roman.

“We have the same outlook as all the other huge programs in the state ― freestyle and Greco are a must,” Harrington said. “You have to do it. It has to be a cornerstone if you’re serious about this.”

These styles of wrestling are commonly found internationally, including in the Olympics, whereas folkstyle wrestling is the standard format of American high school and collegiate competition.

“(Freestyle and Greco) change the way your brain works while you wrestle,” Harrington said. “If you just do folkstyle, you kind of get into the same habits of, ‘I’m going to hit this one move.’ When you’re in the others, it’s super-fast-paced, so you get accustomed to scoring at a quick pace. If there’s a lull in the action, they stand you right up, so you need to keep going and dig deep.”

Two trips mark the end of freestyle and Greco season. For wrestlers 14 and under, it’s to Kids Nationals, which was June 26-27 in Farmington, Utah. For the high school-aged, it’s to the 16U and Junior National Championships in Fargo, North Dakota, regarded as perhaps the nation’s top high school tournament.

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“Is it fun driving 30 hours? No, but it’s worth it for the kids to get out there and be on the biggest stage in the country,” Harrington said. “That’s the level we want our kids to be on. We want them to be used to it and not just get a shock when they get to college.”

Camps, clinics and companionship

Melvin Crosby founded Reapers WC in 2015.

His club is now based at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, 312 Chestnut St., where he runs a free introductory program each summer for new wrestlers.

“In the summertime, we can concentrate on one move for a week,” said Crosby, a PIAA champion for the former Academy High School in 1988. “During the season, you can’t do that because most kids already know it and you need to move on. Summer is a slower pace with less wrestlers in the room, and kids who don’t know anything about wrestling will know a lot more by the winter if they start in August.”

The MLK Center helps Crosby’s club with travel costs, including transportation, overnight rooms and food while on the road. Like many other clubs, his numbers fade at this time of year because of other sports, such as football, which takes the Reapers from two dozen in-season wrestlers to fewer than a dozen at summer practice.

Wattsburg WC boasts more than 90 members in season but averages closer to 20 for its tri-weekly practices in July.

“Right now, we mix wrestling drilling with strength and conditioning and sometimes get them outside to run and make conditioning fun,” said Troy Zacherl, president of Wattsburg WC. “They’re getting a jump-start on the next season and get to drill a lot of basic wrestling skills. It’s a lot more one-on-one time with coaches, so kids can work a lot more on their own individual concerns, which is a little harder during the regular season when there are 50 kids in the room.”

Camps and clinics are popular offseason stops, whether they be two hours or two weeks in duration.

PennWest Edinboro ― Erie County’s only NCAA Division I wrestling program ― hosts all five of its camps in late June and early July, some simultaneously. The campus has long been a summer destination for local wrestlers, dating back to the days of Bruce Baumgartner and Tim Flynn.

“The Edinboro campus is an amazing place for wrestling camps with convenience,” said Matt Hill, head wrestling coach at Edinboro. “The facilities are all within a two- or three-minute walking distance, from the cafeteria to where we wrestle to the dorm rooms. We want to make opportunities for more wrestling and more education of wrestling in the area.”

Young athletes might be best suited for the Small World Biddy Camp, whereas competitors may be drawn to the 3-Day Takedown and Turn Camp and those most serious to the College Style Intensive Camp. The Boro Built Team Camp and Fighting Scott Technique Challenge Camp also present unique settings for wrestlers.

The majority of Edinboro campers come from Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, Hill said, and many are novice or intermediate-level wrestlers. The five camps are attended by roughly 150 total wrestlers, a number the Fighting Scots hope to bring closer to the 800 or so they got during the Baumgartner days.

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“A lot of (wrestlers) come to our camps to learn a lot of basic wrestling techniques and develop basic skills and training methods,” Hill said. “They’re here to learn wrestling more than the grind and the grit of it.”

Elsewhere, camps and clinics are sporadically scheduled throughout the summer.

College stars from Erie such as Carter Starocci and Paniro Johnson have hosted their own clinics already this summer. Starocci, a Cathedral Prep graduate and three-time NCAA Division I national champion at Penn State, has another planned for Aug. 27 in Warren. Zacherl’s group traveled to Port Allegany in June for Team Bruno Wrestling Camp, a weeklong stakeout that featured guests such as Jason Nolf, Bo Nickal, Roman Bravo-Young and Nico Megaludis.

Attending a camp or clinic can keep wrestling fresh in the minds of athletes who don’t train consistently in the off-season.

“I think the most important thing about summer wrestling is trying to keep your mindset always ready to compete,” Hill said. “Don’t take a lot of steps backward in the summer; you want to take steps forward. Learning is really important.”

'A good thing for kids'

Multiple clubs reported a surge of new wrestlers in the past year.

Of Wattsburg WC’s 90 winter sign-ups in 2022, Zacherl said, roughly two-thirds were new wrestlers. That number included 37 girls, and as many clubs see an explosion in female membership amid the national growth of women’s wrestling, Wattsburg WC predicted it could have as many girls as boys next season.

“There were some clubs who didn’t even operate during the pandemic, and I think it created a bottleneck ― novice wrestlers really exploded,” Zacherl said. “It’s a foundational sport to develop athleticism. The skills and athleticism you develop in sports like wrestling and gymnastics translate over into other sports.”

Novice tournaments are held year-round as a competition format for new wrestlers. Zacherl said many of his club’s parents have reported positive behaviors in their children since wrestling, such as overcoming fear and anxiety.

“I think a lot of parents know that it’s a good sport to start with,” Zacherl said. “Kids get less bored at wrestling. I’ve had kids play soccer or basketball and there’s a lot of standing around, waiting your turn to take a layup or do a drill.”

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Summer practices sometimes draw non-wrestlers who are attracted to the grueling cardiovascular conditioning. The crowd at Rambler WC is often a mix of kids from Erie, Venango, Warren and Crawford counties, plus whoever else shows up on a given night.

“We want these kids to be brothers and sisters,” Harrington said. “Does running a mile on the beach suck? Yeah, but it sucks for everybody.”

Harrington’s group will resume bi-weekly practices at the Cathedral Prep wrestling room Sept. 5. From there, a new season begins, from winter folkstyle to spring freestyle, and eventually back to Beach 7 next summer.

“Just come down, make some friends and get a little bit better at wrestling,” Harrington said. “Don’t just sit at home and watch Netflix for six hours. We’re trying to just be a good thing for kids, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.”

Contact Jeff Uveino at juveino@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter@realjuveino.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie-area, PA youth wrestling: Summer training vital for area clubs