community
february14
2012
11
Vernonia Mat Pack: Having Fun and Learning to Wrestle
By Scott Laird
Vernonia High School Wres-
tling Coach Chris Wolf is building for
the future.
Wolf has started the Verno-
nia Mat Pack, a wrestling club for
young boys and girls interested in
learning about wrestling. Just like
T-ball, soccer, basketball and Little
Guy Football, the Mat Pack starts
with kids as young as kindergarten
and starts teaching the fundamentals
of their sport. When these young kids
reach the age when they
can start to compete, they
will have a good solid
foundation and be better
prepared as athletes. It’s
how small towns and high
schools build their sports
programs and become
perennial league, district
and state champions.
“When I’ve gone
to tournaments with
the high school team,
I’ve talked to coaches
of successful programs
and asked how they got
there,” says Wolf. “And
they all say the same thing, that it
starts with the little kids. I look at
programs like Culver who are eight or
nine time state champions and that’s
what they do.”
The Mat Pack practices
Monday through Thursday evenings
from 7:00 to 8:00 PM; Mondays and
Wednesdays it’s K-2 nd grade, Tues-
days and Thursdays are the 3rd-5 th
graders. Coach Wolf
is assisted by current
VHS wrestlers Joe
Benes, Mikol Pihl and
Dawson Shay.
Benes, a senior VHS
team captain, has cre-
ated his Senior Proj-
ect around coaching
wrestling. In addition
to assisting with the
Mat Pack, Benes often
leads parts of the VHS
team practices. Benes
says he would some-
day like to work as a
School Administrator
and wrestling coach
and hopefully even
start his own wrestling
club where local athletes could work
out.
Underclassmen Pihl and Shay
will hopefully return next year and as-
sist Wolf with the Mat Pack.
Senior Center
Offers Tax
Prep Help
The Vernonia Senior Center has
secured qualified tax preparers to assist low
and middle income citizens this tax season.
These are volunteers for the AARP Tax-
Aide program and brings free tax help to the
above citizens. People do not have to be a
member of the AARP to avail themselves of
this program.
This service will be available at the
Vernonia Senior Center on March 14,
2012 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. They will
be scheduling 45 minute appointments. To
schedule an appointment citizens may call
503-429-3912. Space is limited. For more
information, interested citizens can go to
www.aarp.org/taxaide.
Vernonia’s Voice is published
twice each month on the 2nd and
4th Tuesday. Look for our next
issue February 28th.
“When I watch the older kids
wrestle it’s obvious which kids started
young, because they do more things
right” says Wolf. “When kids don’t
start wrestling until high school it
takes them a good two years before
they really understand the sport—un-
derstand the body mechanics and po-
sitioning.”
An evening observing the
Mat Pack is...well...maybe Coach
Wolf said it best when he called it
“chaotic.” I tried to clarify and said
it looked like “controlled chaos,” and
Coach Wolf replied with a laugh, “ex-
cept without the control!”
There is structure to Mat
Pack activities including some
stretching and warm up exercises.
Then the coaches teach a new wres-
tling move and the kids practice that
move. Sometimes there is some open
wrestling time, where the kids prac-
tice all they’ve learned; sometimes
there are games and other activities.
Some parents stick around
and observe; some fathers who know
a thing or two about wrestling them-
selves will offer their kids pointers
and advice.
After watching a lot of run-
ning around, high energy yelling and
rolling around on the mats, I asked
one parent if the kids sleep well after
a Mat Pack practice. She nodded her
head enthusiastically
and replied, “Abso-
lutely!”
“I want to see Ver-
nonia build a wres-
tling program,” says
Wolf. “I am trying to
get us where we need
to be and I know that
may take ten years.
But when these four
and five year olds
that we’re working
with now get to high
school they are going
to have a big jump on
their competition.”
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VHS head wrestling coach Chris Wolf (right) and
VHS senior Joe Benes (left) work with some
members of the Mat Pack.
Joe Benes shows a member of the Mat Pack the
correct way to do a take down.
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