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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 4,327
Member
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Member
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 4,327 |
Tonight I am utterly embarrassed for our state. For almost every year I have been involved in Kansas wrestling dating back to my days as kids competitor in 70’s, USA Wrestling has offered a summer camp to prepare kids for the Southern Plains tournament. I believe we moved from the Northern Plains group to Southern Plains in 1977 so forty plus years. There have been many coaches and board members volunteer their time and we have subsidized this camp to bring some of the best coaching available to Kansas. I personally have lined up clinicians from Kansas College programs, Isaac Jordan (a 4x NCAA D1 AA from Univ of Wisconsin), Alex Dieringer from Okie State, and this year is no exception with 2016 Olympian Jesse Thielke (who is also a Jr. World medalist). Only 6 wrestlers make the US Olympic team in Greco Roman wrestling and he was one of them!!
We offer the camp at less than cost and offer rides to camp and to the SP Tournament in order to NOT exclude any Kansas wrestler who wants to improve. This tournament has been hosted in various places throughout the years and this year we went to Newman University with the assistance of their coach Ryan Smith and the Pratt CC Coach Ken Kepley. I just received word that just 18 wrestlers showed up for this camp. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?! I know that it has been tough to get HS kids with summer football starting today but there are 225 high school programs in this state and we could not get 50 kids to camp? We have over 8,000 USA card carrying members and we couldn’t get more than 20 to show up to get instruction from an current member of the Olympic team?? We should be collectively embarrassed and I have no idea how to explain this to Jesse. If every board member got two kids to sign up we would have had 20 so this number just seems flat out in explicable. We had our BEST Fargo team finish in Kansas history largely because of Jesse’s commitment to Kansas wrestling and this is all of the support we could muster for him? Flat out embarrassing.
I would really like to call out District 2… You can stay at home and hit all of the practice sessions for three days and it would cost you just $155… There is NO WAY that cost is an issue for this opportunity!
I hope someone can offer some logical explanation. I welcome any and all feedback. I am in this for the kids and they could seriously benefit from attending this camp regardless of their goals for the summer or next winter.
WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THIS?? How about showing up at Newman tomorrow morning and signing up for the remainder of the camp? Show Jesse some respect for his generosity to Kansas Wrestlers!
Feel free to call me if you have any constructive advice.
Will Cokeley (708)267-6615 willcokeley@gmail.com
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Entire Thread
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Kansas wrestling community should be embarrassed..
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Cokeley
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05/31/17 12:33 AM
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