Eager Eagles
The first part of the 2006-07 wrestling season has been a long grind for the West Valley Eagles, with long hours in the school’s temporary wrestling room working on the sport’s fundamentals.
The team’s first taste of competition under first-year head coach John Villaro came last week at the All-Valley Jamboree. Its next taste comes this weekend at the Inland Empire tournament at Central Valley.
The Eagles won’t wrestle a dual meet until Jan. 4, when they open the Great Northern League season at Clarkston. Until then, West Valley will wrestle tournaments at Yakima for the Sundome Classic and at Central Valley for the Tri-County Classic.
That means a lot of hours of practice and not a lot of actual outside competition.
“Most teams are into dual meets already,” Villaro said. “We’re still working away in the practice room. That’s a lot to ask of these young men, but they’ve been there every day with a great attitude. I’m proud of the way they’ve worked and the progress we’re making.
“I was thinking a little earlier that, if someone asked me where I thought we were right now, I’d have to say that we’re right where I’d want us to be.”
Still, Villaro and his team are eager to test their mettle against wrestlers in different colored uniforms.
“You need competition to see where you are,” Villaro said. “You get a sense of confidence in the practice room if you beat your practice partner every time out, but it’s a false sense of confidence. You need to test yourself in competition. That allows you to go back to the practice room and work on what went wrong and what needs to improve.”
With the team getting all its competition mat time at tournaments, Villaro and his assistant coaches Geoff Hensley, Villaro’s predecessor as head coach, and Nathan DeLeon will be spread thin keeping an eye on their charges.
“I have five great managers who take on a lot of responsibilities for us,” Villaro said. “They make sure wrestlers get where they need to go, they tape the matches and they carry a big load for us. That frees us up to just focus on coaching at a tournament.”
The time in the practice room has been put to very good use, the coach said. Villaro’s coaching style is to keep things simple, but effective.
“That’s how I experienced my success and that’s what I’m pushing these kids to do,” he said. “You have something that works, you go with it and you go with it. There’s nothing like that sense of confidence you have in something that works for you every time.”
Wrestlers are always clamoring to learn new moves and fancy techniques, he said.
“I was watching college wrestling last night and there were guys getting pinned with half-Nelsons and shooting double-legs,” he said. “It wasn’t all this fancy, swinging-single stuff, it was just good, hard basics.
“We’re giving them the ability to build their wealth of knowledge in moves. But at the same time we’re stressing a few basics and everything builds off of that.”
The wrestling team spent all last winter and the first month of this season crammed into a makeshift wrestling room in what was designed to be a storage area across the football field from the gym and locker room areas.
After this week, the team can come back in from the cold.
“The work on the field house and the new wrestling room are supposed to be finished by the 15th,” Villaro said. “If we can move in there next weekend, I will be such a happy guy.”
All four Spokane Valley high schools have won at least one state wrestling championship. West Valley’s title came in 1972, when coach Chuck Miller guided the Eagles to the Class 3A championship.
East Valley won the Class 3A title in 1997 and the Knights have been runners-up three times since 1993 – including a second-place finish in 2005. Central Valley won the Class 4A title in 1998 after a second-place finish in 1996. University won the Class 4A title in 2005.
“I want to bring back that sense of history with this program and return it to where it once was,” Villaro said. “We’ve lost a little bit of that luster.”
Hensley put a great deal of effort into making the school’s previous wrestling room reflect the team’s past glories.
Villaro intends to do the same in the team’s new home room in the new gym.
“Geoff saved all the stuff that was up in the old room and I intend to spend the weekend getting everything squared away in the new practice room before the team gets to go in there,” he said. “I don’t want to them to walk in to their new home and just find bare walls. I want them to walk in and see that history.”