Wrestling preview: East Valley coach Craig Hanson leads Knights one more season; three-sport star Alonzo Vargas primed for big year

Craig Hanson has the energy and passion for wrestling as a man half his age.

Still, he concedes at 62 years old, it’s time for the right person to take over the East Valley wrestling program.

“I just think it’s time to find that new, young blood,” Hanson said Tuesday during practice. “I don’t want them to do exactly what I did. That isn’t the plan. But the plan is to find somebody that wants to be here for 25 years and make it part of their career.”

Hanson has made East Valley wrestling his career and home for the past 27 years, comprising the vast majority of his 37-year career as a teacher and wrestling coach. He has 14 league titles and one state title to his credit.

The original plan was for him to step back this season, allowing a long-time assistant to take over. But when that assistant took a position elsewhere right before school started, the plan changed.

“I wasn’t going to leave the program or the kids or anybody in a lurch,” he said. “I love doing this.”

He said he hasn’t decided if he’ll retire from teaching at the end of the school year.

“Even if I did decide to stop teaching, I’ll still be around,” he said. “I’m not moving away. I’ll stay away as much as need be. And I’ll probably be around as much as need be.”

The way

Not everyone would run a program the way the 2018 inductee into the Washington Wrestling Hall of Fame would, but Hanson wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve said for years, wrestling coaches kind of need to be ‘cradle to the grave’ kind of coaches. We need to be involved in those youth programs. We need to start working with those kids all the way through. And I have kids still after high school that we continue to support and stay in touch with – even financially we try to support them when they do their college fundraising. So, we try to support all the way to end.”

For Hanson, coaching is more than just a vocation.

“I think it’s important that if you do run a program you take that responsibility. You can always inherit some great athletes and have a good team one year. But if you’re gonna build a long-term program, you need to build it from the bottom and stay with those kids. It means you’re coaching – a lot. You’re coaching in the spring, in the summer, then you’re coming right back in the winter again.”

He could not have done it alone.

“I was fortunate. My wife was with me every step of the way,” he said. “We dated in high school, so this was nothing new to her.

“This is the way life’s gonna look. We’re gonna be a wrestling family.”

The team

Hanson likes the depth he has in some spots but is concerned that he won’t have seasoned wrestlers at all weights – though barring injury or COVID-related issues, he should be able to fill out each weight class this season.

“We’ve got a pretty balanced lineup,” Hanson said. “Though we have real young, inexperience at the (lighter weights).”

He thought the Knights might have rostered a girls squad as well, but he does have three female wrestlers in addition to the boys.

He’s a proponent of girls wrestling.

“If you go to central Washington, you’ll see 28 girls out for wrestling,” he said. “And then you get here in the Spokane area, and we still have coaches in the area who don’t think it’s a girl’s place to be wrestling.

“There’s great opportunity out there for girls. I’d love to see more.”

The big guy

One of Hanson’s most experienced wrestlers is junior heavyweight Alonzo Vargas. A three-sport athlete, along with football and soccer, his size belies his agility and quickness.

“ ‘Zo’ looks like he could be a state placer for us,” Hanson said. “He’s really physically grown over the last year – even from last year’s short COVID year … until coming back this fall, not even a year. So physically, he’s just a lot stronger.”

Vargas grew up playing soccer. But despite reaching 280-plus pounds, he hasn’t grown out of it.

“It’s a good thing for other kids to see,” Hanson said, “that you don’t have to grow out of it – just continue to play.”

“My brother got me into wrestling,” Vargas said. “I just wanted to follow my brother’s footsteps.”

But his brother did not play football. A middle school football coach saw Vargas in the hall one day and called over to him.

“‘Hey, you’re pretty big,’ ” Vargas recalled him saying. “ ‘Come out here and play for me.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.’ And I just fell in love with it.”

An interior lineman for the Knights’ football team, Vargas doubles as the team’s kicker. On Nov. 5, his 43-yard field goal helped East Valley beat West Valley as part of a three-way tiebreaker and advance to the state playoffs for the first time since 2013.

“Wrestling kind of helps with football,” Vargas said. “Soccer is just for fun now. It was my main sport, but now I play for fun.”

Hanson is all for multisport athletes.

“We encourage it,” he said. “It’s not like he’s just out for another sport. Football got a lot out of him. We are getting a lot out of him. And soccer already was getting a lot out of him. He’s a contributor in everything.”

The school

“It’s been fun being at East Valley this entire time,” Hanson said. “I know we’ve had our share of whatever that goes on. We haven’t always had all the stuff. But our kids have embraced that.

“It doesn’t matter if you have the stuff. What matters is what we put into this thing and walking out of here having given it my best. I think that’s something we’ve always prided ourselves on here in our program. We’re gonna give a lot to the program and what we really get out of it is, ‘In the end, I was part of that program, and I am proud to say I was part of that program.’ ”

Hanson acknowledged there are some built-in challenges for the school, but part of the satisfaction comes with overcoming them.

It’s the communal aspect of small-town high school sports that Hanson thinks maybe East Valley misses out on sometimes.

“(It’s) not an easy place,” he said. “The nice thing about being in a town is that the whole town is right there. We don’t even have a whole lot of stores. We have to drive over the highway to get to the stores.

“It isn’t the same type of thing other small communities get. That’s the tough part about being here.”

Still, he wouldn’t change a thing.

“I’m not trying to get out. I really love doing this,” he said. “I love every aspect of wrestling and what it does for kids. It’s just that time now, where it’s time to maybe move on and try to find the right person.

“I’ll still be around.”