UPDATED 1/14/17: An update on the wall project with some input from Andy Polhamus…
When I first came to the wrestling club almost five years ago, the wall was on the agenda. I don’t know how long it had been on there, but all I know is that in my time with the club, we have never been able to remove it from the minutes. We were able to do that before 2015 ended. What’s important to me and makes me proud of our club is it signifies the efforts of good people trying to do good things.
It was not cheap and when we first started discussing it five years ago, it was a $6000 project. It ended up being almost $14,000 when it was done. All of it was done through the efforts of many good people. By people no longer directly involved with the club, but had been in the past. By people who are simply fans of the program who would send money to the club toward that effort.
The wall signifies the culture of our sport of wrestling. The ability to stick with something that is hard to accomplish, but eventually through hard work and positive efforts it finally got done. That may sound sappy, but that’s what the wall means to me. In my experience, this is nothing that is specific to our club. I’ve seen it with other wrestling programs that went from a group of people trying to do good things for wrestlers to eventually having complete centers for kids to get better at the sport. It is something that is inherent in a wrestling culture and wrestling families.
A big thanks to those donors who helped contribute toward a new wall and new amenities for the wrestling room. Check out the gallery below to see what the updated room looks like. One major change that you’ll see is that there is now a wall where there once was just metal railings overlooking the gym.
