Youths try to get a leg up — and opponents down — with help from pros at wrestling camps

Adriana Blanton, 13, says her family is full of wrestlers so it was natural for her to become one as well, even if there’s long been a prevailing mentality about boys being stronger that has kept girls from participating in the sport.

“Everyone does the same takedowns, the same pins, everyone learns the same stuff,” she said. “I think maybe the difference could be girls are probably more flexible than boys.”

Blanton was among more than 50 youths who took part in two camps at the Juneau Wrestling Club this summer taught by professional coaches visiting from out of state. For the pupils — including adult coaches in Juneau’s wrestling programs — it was a chance to learn styles and techniques from other regions of the country.

“Alaska as a whole we’re all kind of like meat-and-potatoes technically, we all kind of do the same thing with very similar styles,” said Jason Hass, a coach at both the Juneau Youth Wrestling Club and Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé. “And so bringing these guys in I feel like their technique is more representative of what a lot of the down south clubs are doing.”

“So the hope is by bringing these guys in we’re learning new moves and new techniques that we’re not doing so much in Alaska, and ideally we’re kind of hoping to get ahead of the curve here.”

Blanton was matched up at one of the camps against Fiona McFarlin, also 13, who said she started the sport on her own on a whim.

“It was like an announcement one day at school and I was like ‘why not, I’ll try it out,’” she said.

Both said they did indeed learn some new techniques.

“I learned new scrambles, these new tilts we’re learning and just, like, misdirection,” Blanton said.

“I learned how to do the cradle differently,” McFarlin said. “I only knew how to do it one way.”

Hass, when asked what he learned during that camp, said “a leg pass — just a defense from a shot that is something that, again, we haven’t had here ever at all…as an older guy that learned how to wrestle 30 years ago (it was) completely different. It just felt super weird.”

The camp — the first of the two in Juneau, taking place July 26-28, was taught by Weston and Wilder Wichman, brothers who coach at the Askren Wrestling Academy, which according to Hass invented the “Funk” style of wrestling. The brothers said they try in a few days to offer new things for the local students and coaches to build on.

“A lot of it is kind of like at your job when you first started — a lot of club coaches have other side gigs or maybe haven’t wrestled for a while, where for me and Weston it’s kind of our life,” Wilder Wichman said.

Students aren’t likely to master the range of techniques taught during a three-day class, but can keep developing those moves once they know what they are, he said.

“I would say the biggest thing is typically the kid isn’t going to learn absolutely everything right away, but they can take a few things that we’re going to (teach) right, and then have a good handle on it and then they can develop that,” he said.

That camp, a co-ed session, had about 40 students, roughly 10 of them from communities outside Juneau, Hass said.

Among the out-of-towners was Zeke Coughran, a junior at Skagway High School who said he traveled to the camp to learn some new moves to help his team.

“I learned how to do a lot of these chokes that I wasn’t able to do before,” he said.

The second camp on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 was a girls-only clinic led by Mallory Velte, a three-time USA Wrestling World team member and two-time World medalist, according to an official bio.

“When I think back to the ones that I’ve been to growing up, I feel like you more remember personal anecdotes, like maybe one or two technical things,” she said. “So I coach mine differently, I like to do a lot of reviews so that they can remember all the techniques we go through.”

As for finding girls to coach, “I’m pretty sure it’s the fastest growing sport in the U.S. right now,” Velte said.

“I think it’s becoming more mainstream, a lot more people are getting into it,” she said. “There was a lot of barriers when I was younger to competing, with coaches not wanting girls in the room. But that’s not really the case anymore.”

Among the students participating in Velte’s camp was Abby Dolan, 11, who said she’s been wresting for three or four years, and learned moves she — and presumably others she competes against — haven’t encountered before.

“They won’t know how to get out of them,” she said.

Dolan said she also competes in skiing and youth football, and hasn’t felt strange wanting to compete in any of those sports.

“I think more girls should start playing football and wrestling, and just doing what they love,” she said.

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.