On a hot day of September 2022, I had my first meeting as the Patrick Henry head wrestling coach with Athletic Director Cody Clark. I arrived with a notepad on which I had my goals for my tenure with the Patriots written down so that he and I could work on those. Cody began the conversation. He said two important things: he wanted a feeder program and a girls team. Both of these were on my list. By the time he finished telling me his vision, there wasn’t much to say other than, yes.
A few weeks later I began a conversation with the Lewis Middle School Principal Justin Phillips. He was just as on board with the middle school program and invited me to look around the campus to see where we could store the mats and hold practices.
The other middle school in the area was a little harder to get to. However, during a home match, the official that day was Rob Bowman. He approached me and said that he works at Pershing Middle School and Principal Melanie Kray was interested in having a wrestling program as well. Within a few weeks, we met with the Vice Principal Will Hawthorne and we had a plan to move our old mats to Lewis and Pershing and begin holding practices at both schools. By April, we had dedicated coaches and 15 wrestlers, including two girls, practicing twice a week.
At the same time, our first article about Middle School Wrestling was published in the Mission Times Courier. Upon publication, Lonnie Jones from the San Diego Unified Middle School athletics reached out and discussed with me the potential for this program, assuming that we could get all of the wrestling coaches on board. The middle school club program would be a test run for our coaches and the schools to see how it might work.
Two years later, on May 18th, 2024, Scripps Ranch High School held the inaugural San Diego Middle School Wrestling Championships. The tournament was a culmination of two years of San Diego Unified wrestling coaches working together under leadership of coaches from Patrick Henry, La Jolla, Clairemont and Mira Mesa delivered a proposal to the district. The final creation of the program by the district with the help of the director of San Diego Unified Athletics Scott Giusti and director of San Diego Unified Middle School Athletics Lonnie Jones, was a program that combined boys and girls conference consisting of eight Western and eight Eastern league teams.
The conference would be unique in the state of California in that it would provide both a boys and girls teams. It would be different from the 14 weight classes in high school with 16 weight classes for boys and 8 for girls reflecting the interest and sign ups. The wrestlers would wear fight shorts and rash jerseys instead of singlets. They would match up every weekend for six weeks, with a final team tournament to decide the final rankings and an individual tournament to complete the season.
Nearly 300 boys and 50 girls signed up, most of them never wrestled before. Twice a week the middle schoolers practiced at a nearby high school learning how to take opponents down to the mat, how to escape from the ground and how to ultimately pin an opponent. They got in shape, learned a new sport and developed self defense skills.
On May 11th, the Team Championships were held at Clairemont High School for the top eight teams and Lincoln High School for the lower eight to compete for the first team championship in San Diego history. Mira Mesa Marauders secured first place with a score of 0-24 over Scripps Ranch Falcons. While La Jolla Vikings took third in a 48-36 match over the San Carlos Patriots.
The following weekend, May 18th, was the boys and girls individual championships. Marauders took first with 239 points, Falcons second with 195 and Vikings third with 159.5. Individual results were posted on the TrackWrestling website.
Overall, the San Carlos wrestlers and wrestlers from other schools did an amazing job of learning wrestling in four practices, competing against each other and other schools to a point where they could wrestle exciting four minute matches. All coaches were impressed and excited by the prospect of the program.
This is a big moment for the sport in San Diego, which is experiencing large growth since the COVID slump, last year having more competitors than at any other time. It is also important time for girls, especially since women’s wrestling is the fastest growing sport in America, with multiple colleges adding Women’s Wrestling to their Athletics every year.
According to Middle School Athletics Lonnie Jones “We are excited about the continued growth and development of San Diego Unified Middle School Athletics. We were able to build on the success of track & field, basketball, soccer, volleyball, & flag football and expanded in 2023-24 to include both wrestling and cheer. San Diego Unified School District continues to be recognized as a leader in California as it pertains to middle school athletics and we look forward to creating opportunities for our students as well as strengthening the vertical alignment between the middle and high”
Most importantly, it an exciting moment for San Diego wrestlers. San Diego Unified kids can start early to learn a sport, develop important life skills, and finally have the same opportunities to be champions and a chance at college scholarships as student athletes at the other schools with long histories of middle school athletics.
The articles published on Mission Times Courier can be found here:
San Diego Middle School Wrestling Pins Down More Success
San Diego Needs Middle School Wrestling
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