Westlemania is an event that we put on for the past five years. That was intended to get the general student body, interested, involved and to have some exposure to the sport of wrestling. Originally it was began as a fundraiser for both the wrestling program and the journalism program.

This was before I was a wrestling coach. So the idea was the journalism teacher wrestles the wrestling coach, but then I started coaching wrestling, and it kind of transformed into its own thing and we kept it going because it was a really, really good recruiting tool for the wrestling team because kids got to see wrestling and experience it and know what it was like. I mean, it gained a lot of interest for us and kids that thought that they might want to come wrestle.

I do think that there’s a direct correlation between Westlemania and kids signing up for wrestling. We have had, and maybe not as much this year, but definitely in years past in the day or two after Westlemania. Both Brown and I have been approached by handfuls of students almost every year who wanted to come out for wrestling because they got to see us wrestle our Westlemania.

Westlemania will live on in some way, but this is the last time me and Coach Brown are going to wrestle at it. So there’s going to have to be a lot of conversation between me and leadership, about what we can do, but moving forward, starting next year, we’re hoping to turn it into a event that’s bigger and better and highlights the students and puts their attention in the spotlight on them, rather than us coaches.