Next year

[duggerd1]

The season is at its end , and as a retired coach I greatly enjoyed the state tournament. Congratulations to coaches Logsden, Morgan, Henry, and Connell on their championships and runners up finishes. These outstanding gentlemen, as well as many others were insturmental in various ways, in my having what I think was a fairly successful run as the wrestling coach at Karns High School in the early '90s. They helped us by scheduling Karns when we were struggling, allowing us to enter tournaments when we were outclassed,not with enthusiasium, but with experience, and conducting summer camps at Karns High School.

 

When I started coaching at Carter as an assistant, because they needed one, I had never seen a wrestling mat up close. The next year I was sent to Karns to start a program. I had two jobs, learn to coach and introduce wrestling to "rasslin" fans. Everyone wanted to know where the ring ropes were. I bought every book I could find on coaching wrestling. Some of them were so out of date that the holds they taught were illegal, but I learned something from every one of them. I was never afraid to ask for help from anyone who came along. One of my best mentors was Pete Stafford. Pete told me once during a heated exchange, that when my wrestlers learned to wrestle then he would be a better referee. And he was right!

 

I always had numbers, usually in the 45-50 range, even though we had to roll the mats out in the commons and put them up every night. During this time every dollar we used had to be raised and if we needed money it could be borrowed from the general athletic fund but had to be repaid. The administration gave me their support by leaving me alone, as long as I didn't rock their boat, and that was fine with me. I had excellent parental support.

 

I had three of the four things that you need to have a successful program, numbers, parents, and a type of administrative support. The fourth one we achieved after a while but it took a long time, MONEY.

 

There are two things that would have made the Karns program successful sooner, a way to get advice about how to establish a successful program and money to do special projects, i. e. start a feeder program or bring in a top wrestling coach to conduct a camp for a small school or buy a mat.

 

It would be great if a foundation could be started that could make grants to wrestling programs to do projects with. It could also be a clearing house for infromation to assist struggling programs and to gain positive publicity for wrestling. We talk about the lack of popularity of our sport, but we don't appear to do do anyhing positive about it. It is time we got off our duffs and used the resource in our local community as well as our wrestling community.

 

The most important thing each of us can do is to let everyone know and understand what a great sport we have had the opportunity to be associted with.

 

Everyone have a great between season and I look forward to next year.

 

Dan Dugger