The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

PRESCOTT - After the Prescott School Board approved allowing eighth graders to wres- tle on the WP varsity wrestling team, the WP Combine commit- tee denied the request so the high school team can grow and be- cause of budget concerns, school officials said.

At the Prescott School Board meeting in late October, school board member Sara Fletcher said the combine was looking at al- lowing eighth graders to wrestle for WP this year with coach Lanny Adams. The high school wrestling team is going into its second year and it had four men participate last year.

Fletcher said allowing eighth graders to wrestle would likely only take four eighth graders out of the junior high basketball program. She said she had heard there are also more eighth graders in Waitsburg who don't play winter sports who would like to wrestle.

Fletcher said eighth graders could participate because wrestling determines competition by weight class, not by grade level or skill level.

However, after the board unanimously approved eighth graders to wrestle on Oct. 25, on Oct. 29 the combine committee voted no.

"The WP Sport Combine did not approve it due primarily to budget concerns and the fact that this is just the second year of wrestling and we are trying improve the high school program before we extend it to the junior high," said Stephanie Wooder- chak, the athletic director for Waitsburg High School.

Adams said there had been a lot of talk of allowing eighth graders to wrestle if turnout was going to be low again for high school wrestling. Unfortunately, he said the numbers still aren't clear because football season isn't over. He has even heard some Jubilee Youth Academy students may participate on his team this season.

"We really don't know what the numbers are going to be for high school," Adams said.

But, Adams added he has mixed feelings both ways on whether eighth graders should join his team.

"It would have created some unique challenges," he said.

Adams is focusing on grow- ing his team. He said it will likely take four years to do so.

If he'd had eighth graders, it would be positive because those athletes would have more exposure to the higher intensity level of high school wrestling, Adams said. Wrestlers who have competed in the youth wrestling league, like Mat Birds, often find it challenging to learn to manage their diet and weight at the high school level.

"It's pretty strict," Adams said, because high school wrestlers weigh in the day of the meet and compete according to that weight.

In addition to exposing the eighth graders to the weight aspect of wrestling, Adams said it would also be beneficial to al- low the athletes to have an extra year of high school wrestling experience to help get their jit- ters out. At the state wrestling competition in the Tacoma Dome every year, Adams said the entire floor of the Dome is covered in wrestling mats, which can look awfully intimidating.

Also, adding eighth graders and boosting the numbers on the WP team would provide more wrestling opponents for WP to practice with. Adams said often in the last season he was wres- tling his athletes because there simply weren't enough bodies in the room.

The concern Adams had regarding letting eighth graders wrestle with the high school athletes was that he didn't know if his younger athletes would be able to handle the intensity mentally as well as the older athletes.

"It was a shock last year," Adams said of his four athletes in 2011-12.

He said coming up from youth wrestling, high school wrestling is just not what his athletes expected and was much more intense. But, he said in the future he's excited about all of the opportunities that come around that might enhance his program.

Dayton School District Su- perintendent Doug Johnson announced at the Dayton School Board meeting, Nov. 7 that he had denied the request for a wres- tling program at this time.

"This is something that requires more than three or four weeks to try and turn around," Johnson said.

Johnson said he told Athletic Director Rick Hamilton that he can form a committee to decide what the program would need as well as how and where it would be housed and how it would be funded.

"Then we need to go through a hiring process for a coach and work out transportation issues if we are in fact going to make some kind of connection with Waitsburg-Prescott," Johnson said.

Johnson said the program proposal needs to be put together in the spring before the budget process starts for the 2013-2014 school year so the program can be added into the budget and the district can determine how much funding the program can be allocated.

Johnson said there were 13 co-ed students who expressed an interest in a wrestling program.