Growth Through Grit: A wrestling club started by an East parent brings East coaches and wrestlers together

Then-freshman Grey Robinson shrugged off his blue and white headgear and dismounted the sweat-dampened wrestling mat, fatigued from the intensity of his first state match.

He didn’t know it at the time, but that match made him the first East freshman in eight years to win a match at state. He attributes his success to the head start he gained from the Indian Hills program and club wrestling since kindergarten.

Grey trained with the Kansas City Wrestling Club — a program East parent and wrestler Walter Woofter started for wrestlers from kindergarten to eighth grade in 2003. The club held practices at East and Shawnee Mission West which gave Grey early access to East wrestling by allowing him to meet his future coaches and teammates before high school.

Though the club’s attendance has decreased since the pandemic, the club’s coaches still hold rare, unofficial practices in their basements. Grey doesn’t have time to attend anymore as he’s busy with the high school season, but he still keeps in touch with the coaches and they text him good luck before big matches.

“All the guys who I wrestled with at the club still talk and we’re [all still] friends, and that family is all together still, but it’s different,” Grey said.

Two of the three seniors on the wrestling team Luke Clayton and Ethan Jenkinson became good friends through KCWC and the middle school wrestling program. As seniors, they feel they’ve put in the hours of training and conditioning needed to lead the team — whether it be watching tapes of previous matches or running a few miles after practice. 

“KCWC was just more mat time, more conditioning, just more reps to help you,” Luke said. “Because if you can get all those things down, you’ll be really good. The more time you spend wrestling, the better you’ll get.”

“Knowing the guys definitely helped me because I knew how they wrestled and I knew Coach [Ufford],” Robinson said. “I had a connection there and that helped me have a relationship with some of the guys on the team.”

And since they aren’t affiliated with a specific high school’s requirements, KCWC can prepare the wrestlers for more intense matches by taking them to large scale tournaments outside of the district.

Coaches also simulate full tournaments with live matches where two wrestlers attempt to win the match by pinning the other down — mimicking the style of wrestling in a tournament. The extra tournament-style practices trained wrestlers for high school competition. 

“The scheduling options are wide open,” East assistant coach, KCWC coach and 2002 East graduate Erik Woofter said. “You can wrestle on a Saturday and a Sunday. You can seek out as much competition as you want, wherever and whenever.”

With organized practices and tournaments for young wrestlers, coaches are able to follow students through their high school seasons. 

“It just makes [the relationship] stronger,” Erik said. “It’s the continuity factor, and I think there’s benefits of long term coaches being around for both sides. The student and the coach both know what to expect to have a good relationship.”

In 2019, the club earned a banner for being one of the top 50 wrestling clubs in the country because it had over 100 wrestlers. The banner, a representation of the club’s connection to East, now hangs in the wrestling room as a reminder of the number of students KCWC once had.

KCWC hopes to return to the club it was before the pandemic by gaining more coaches and students through yard signs and word of mouth.

“It’s not dead,” Erik said. “There’s a need for it, and I think we just need to find someone that could step in and help coach and get it going back up again.”