The following is something I found on the Hitchcock/Azevedo Wrestling Camp website:

"Wrestling is perhaps the purest form of athletic competition to exist in the realm of organized sports. There are no bats or balls, or pucks or sticks, no team mates to point a finger at if one looses a match. There‘s no time to rethink strategy, regroup, or even catch your breath. When the referee says “wrestle” everything fades from your mind. Nothing exists beyond the four corners of the mat. It’s just you and your opponent out there, alone, locked in a battle to see who will become the victor. Your whole being becomes immersed in this struggle: your strength, your desire and your will to win all work together in your attempt to emerge the champion.
Wrestling is a very intense, highly competitive sport. It teaches the wrestler to pull from within themselves great power and strength, it forces the truly competitive wrestler to push themselves both mentally and physically beyond what they once thought possible.
Of all the sports, wrestling is perhaps the best sport for overall physical development because it involves all the muscle groups, and requires the greatest balance of athletic skill. During training a wrestler works on constantly improving their strength, flexibility, stamina, balance, speed and technique.
Wrestlers learn the value of preparation and hard work, and the role it plays in achieving one’s life goals. What wrestlers learn on the mat can be transferred to real life experiences. Wrestlers are self reliant, they are mentally and physically fit, they have a great work ethic, they are self disciplined, competitive and responsible. Wrestlers also are goal oriented and very confident."

I found this very motivating. I cannot wait until the season begins. We have a great group of young men coming back this year. We should also have a bunch of additional young men that are going to join the ranks. I hope all of you are as excited about our 2010 - 2011 season as I am. Start getting pumped, and ready for battle.

Dead period is here

We are now entering our dead period. This means that we cannot practice as a team until 3 weeks before the season. I encourage all of you to continue to workout for both conditioning and strength. If you need ideas, let me know. I can give you plenty of ideas to imporve during this dead period.

State Champion???

Who will be the first State Champion under our new coaching staff? By the way, the last State Champion for American Fork High School was in 1993, It was Andy Christensen. He ended up taking 2nd the next year to Luke Nehring from my high school. Lets break the streak of not having a State Champion in the last 17 years. WHO IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT STATE CHAMPION?

Weights and conditioning

Agian for all interested we are still doing weights every Monday at 4, and Tuesday and Thursdays at 6. We would love to have you. This is not just for those interested in wrestling. Anyone may join us.

Millard/Delta Camp w/ Terry Brands

On June 24th - 26th, 5 of our team members went with me to a wrestling camp down in Fillmore. It was held at Millard High School and hosted by both Millard and Delta High School teams. Terry Brands was the featured technician at the camp. He is the assistant coach @ Iowa University. His twin brother, Tom is the Head coach there. Terry is a very intense wrestler and coach. He has coached the US Olympic teams, and also won world and Olympic medals himself. He was a very focused technician. He taught the boys some very key points that will help them and our team as we continue the building process.

As a team we also took the word camp literally. We camped out on the school yard at the high school. We had a campfire, slept in tents (or under the stars), and had a great time. This was not structured like your traditional camp. It was a very informative camp, but also structured to have free time to bond as a team. This is the first time I have had boys say they cannot wait to come back next year. Tyler Horan even said it was the best camp he had been to. Hopefully those that did not make it, will realize what they missed.

In the following pictures you will see all five boys; Kaleb Dearing a Sr, and Brayden Rhoton, Tyler Horan, Trenton Kirkham, and Richard Bartholomew all Juniors. Some of the pictures are of the boys having fun playing around camp. Others are more serious like playing with a splitting maul, to actually wrestling in the mini tournament. The young men also got time to play cards, poison stump, and tug of war. I must mention that though a few of the boys got lucky in tug of war once or twice, I reigned as tug of war champion. BRING IT ON next year boys!! The boys were even lucky enough to have me cook them a steak dinner on Friday evening.

This is all of us with Coach Terry Brands.