Recently, wrestling camp came to Big Sandy. Kyle Rodewald held a four-day wrestling camp in the city hall. It was scheduled at the school, but the electrical company decided that was the week they were coming to town, and all the electricity at the high school would be turned off. The wrestling mats covered the city hall floor well, but it did get hot in there towards the end of the day. Kyle told me, "I think the youngest is kindergarten up to seniors," for a total of 34 kids. They came from Harlem, Chester, Chouteau, and Big Sandy.
"The first two days, we had Buck Watkins again from Pennsylvania. This was my fourth year having him come out. He was the head wrestling coach at Freedom High School for about the last seven years. He coached a four-time Pennsylvania State Champion back here this past year. I bring him out here for the technical stuff, because he's right in the middle of all the division one wrestling programs. And he's about 30 minutes away from five different division one colleges back there." I enjoyed watching him teach the wrestlers. No one here in Big Sandy would know I'm from a wrestling family, and I was impressed with the new technique he was teaching them. Of course, wrestling has changed a lot from when my brothers wrestled, but the changes have been good.
Kyle expanded the camp into a four-day camp this year, bringing in the Women's Head coach and his graduate assistant from Dickinson to work with everyone on Wednesday and Thursday to show us more of freestyle technique. They brought the women's program coaches out of Dickinson, "something more for the girls. That way, we can get into the freestyle stuff, which is more on-your-feet type wrestling and folk style. So it's good for the guys to get better wrestling at their feet, and then, freestyle-wise, it's introducing the girls more and more to the freestyle-type roles. They're in their second year of having a women's program at Dickinson State." I heard the coaches from Dickinson say that Dickinson is committed to women's wrestling. They have 44 women on scholarship.
They are trying to get the kids geared up because the Montana High School Association has adopted new rules for this next coming season, going more towards a college style of things. "There'll be three points for a takedown, and near fall will be two, three, or four points. So it's a really quick pace. We've been getting kids thinking a little different mindset as far as realizing that it can be real quick change, where you could be either down to eight, nothing, or up to eight. It will really change the pace.
Kyle said the wrestling program has enough wrestlers at Big Sandy to warrant both a boys coach and a girls coach and is asking the school board to appoint a coach for each program. They would, of course, "do it all together. In the last few years, the changes to include a girl's program and to allow eighth graders to wrestle varsity are making a huge difference in all the smaller school programs where kids have that opportunity to retain them because it was always a point; basketball was always allowed to bring up eighth graders. So you'd get them the wrestlers through a little guy program and junior high, and they get to eighth grade, and then they quit and change to basketball. Basketball just for the fact that they thought they could play varsity. So it's just really exciting to see them change the rules for that reason.
