By Danielle King & Chris Parker
The area has found a lot of success on the wrestling mat throughout the sport’s history as a MSHSAA sponsored sport.
This year, two of the area’s best small-school athletic programs are looking to make their mark in the sport.
Strafford and Fair Grove both are sponsoring wrestling for the first time this season with good numbers out.
A common theme for both programs is seeing many faces in the wrestling room that don’t participate in other sports.
“One of the big things about wrestling is it pulls a lot of kids in who don’t do a lot of other things,” Fair Grove head coach Chris Holt said. “We have a lot of kids who don’t play any other sport besides this one. They’re not involved in a ton of extracurricular activities besides this, and so it just kind of pulls in a brand new a person.”
“Most of our girls, if not all of our girls, either don’t play a sport or haven’t gotten into a sport,” Strafford head coach Nick Burghardt said. “Not only are they (some of the girls) new to wrestling but some of them are new to sports in general and you throw them into what I believe to be the hardest sport in the world, and they love it. They love to get challenged and they are coming along.”
The Strafford boys team has several multi-sport athletes coming from cross country and football.
“Most of our boys are either in cross country or football, so that helped develop that relationship to be able to recruit those guys that weren’t going to play basketball,” Burghardt said.
The support of both head football coaches has helped with Fair Grove head football coach Bill Vorhis serving as an assistant wrestling coach while Strafford head football coach Tim Hester actively encouraged more athletes who weren’t playing basketball to get on the wrestling mat.
“I think he (Hester) just went up to guys and (said) if you’re not playing basketball, you better be in wrestling shoes and I love that,” Burghardt said. “I love his (Hester’s) intensity, fire and passion for his team.”
Burghardt has experience starting a wrestling program. He was a three-time All-American for Maryville University and helped start the Drury program.
There are some marked differences from coaching college athletes to high schoolers who are new to the sport, but many things stay the same.
“You go from teaching guys that are trying to be national champs and All-Americans that have been wrestling their entire life and kind of fine-tuning technique to teaching kids every little thing,” Burghardt said. “It’s really rewarding. I believe that’s one reason I’m on this earth is to develop kids and use wrestling as a vehicle to help them be successful not just in wrestling, but…make sure they’re successful human beings. That hasn’t changed. That is the same in college as in high school. It’s just a different avenue to be able to teach these kids and to be able to meet them to where they are and take them along to newer heights.”
Holt jumped at the chance to help start the Fair Grove program.
“I wanted to be a part of something new,” Holt said. “I’ve never been a part of starting a brand-new program for anything. The opportunity came up and it was fun to get it going and be part of that history that comes with it.”
Both programs only have one wrestler on the roster with experience coming into the season, but a lack of experience hasn’t hurt the numbers overall.
The Strafford boys roster lists 27 names with another 16 on the girls roster. Burghardt said the girls team was in the single digits at the start of practice, but more athletes came out throughout those early practices to boost the numbers up.
“Strafford has a lot of athletes, so we just try and get them in as many sports as possible,” Burghardt said. “The numbers were a lot better than I expected, and that’s something that I continue to grow. Strafford is an amazing basketball town, but with basketball and wrestling being there if they’re not playing basketball, let’s get them in some wrestling shoes.”
Fair Grove has 24 boys and 17 girls listed on their roster.
“We have a lot of kids that came out. We were really surprised about how many numbers we had this year being at the first year,” Holt said. “They’re working really hard. It’s a work in progress. Wrestling is not something that you can just kind of walk into and be really good at. It takes time and experience, and they’re and they’re getting the experience. Time comes later, but they’re doing really well.”
The two programs participated in their first conference tournament on Wednesday night in Buffalo.
On Feb. 14-15 both the Stafford and Fair Grove boys and girls will travel to Nevada for their first postseason action in the Class 1 District 3 tournament. The following weekend, both boys programs will travel to Butler for the Class 1 District 2 tournament.
State takes place Feb. 26-27 at Mizzou Arena in Columbia.
