By Jacob Dimond/[email protected]
When Total Sports Development’s new wrestling program launches this November, it will feature a coach with extensive experience at multiple levels of the sport on his resume.
Total Sports Development announced June 2 that longtime local wrestling coach Ben Hawk has been hired to lead the organization’s “TSD Toro Wrestling.” The team invites kindergarten through eighth graders to participate and begins at 6 p.m. on November 4 at Yelm Middle School.
Hawk, a wrestling coach with 20 years of experience at the club and youth levels, brings a wealth of experience to the TSD Toro wrestling program. He has won 12 Washington State Wrestling Association state championships in three age groups and is a three-time winner with championships in folkstyle, freestyle and Greco-Roman in the same year. His coaching experience includes over 20 collegiate wrestlers, two international wrestlers on Team USA, a national champion in junior women’s freestyle wrestling, two national finalists in junior women’s freestyle wrestling and three multiple All-Americans in junior freestyle and Greco-Roman. Hawk has also coached over 100 state medalists and over 30 state finalists.
Registration for the program began August 5 at totalSD.org/tsd-toro-wrestling.
“After the levy failed, TSD did a good job of getting the whole community involved. I just really trust the people involved in this,” Hawk told the Nisqually Valley News. “There will be internal competition. We have teams from Spanaway, Eatonville, Rainier, Tenino, Tacoma, Puyallup and Hoquiam that have already committed, and we will have team duels where we’ll pit Yelm against Rainier, or we’ll have multi-level games for the participants.”
Hawk and TSD intend to create a relaxed atmosphere with the community wrestling program.
He said the junior wrestling leagues in the area are very large and that the final tournament last season was held at the ShoWare Center in Kent, which he does not support.
“This is a high-stakes, high-intensity situation for 5-, 6-, 7-year-olds — young kids. I don’t think that’s the best way to get young kids wrestling in the Junior League community. I was also looking for a solution where we hold all of our competitions indoors and people come and wrestle with us,” Hawk said. “My expectations are to reach out and engage kids who are burned out and didn’t feel like spending two or three matches in the gym. We want to keep those kids involved in wrestling so they learn the skills. This community program will address the problem of pushing kids so quickly into competitive atmospheres where they don’t develop the skills they need to compete against the competitive wrestlers.”
He wants young wrestlers of all experience levels to learn how to properly “step up to the mat, shake someone’s hand and wrestle with them.”
He added that the community-based program will be about learning how to wrestle, learning new strategies and eventually starting to compete against other similarly gifted competitors. The competition team will participate in U.S. tournaments.
“Anyone can try wrestling. Anyone can do it. Get on the mat and roll around, anyone can do it. Big, small, fast, slow – it doesn’t matter. It’s the most inclusive sport in the world,” Hawk said. “I’ve seen deaf wrestlers. I’ve seen blind wrestlers. I’ve seen wrestlers with one leg. Anyone can wrestle and I really hope the people in Yelm realize the great lessons they learn from wrestling.”
