Wrestling to secure a foothold

Friday, February 14, 2014

Arkansas’ newest high school wrestling team works out in the football locker room in quarters so compact that a full-sized mat can’t be unfurled.

Little Rock McClellan had a mat to wrestle on, but not much else.

The team shared two pairs of wrestling shoes when the season began, and two sets of headgear. When the Lions traveled to tournaments and duals early in the year, they had to stop between matches so they could switch out shoes and adjust the headgear.

“My 113-pounder who wears a size 8 ½ was out there in a size 13,” said Ray Sessions, who was hired from Woodlawn last year to be the defensive coordinator for the football team and start a wrestling program.

McClellan ended the season with as much equipment - shoes, headgear, singlets - as it needed, thanks to the generosity of parents from Central Arkansas Christian and Little Rock businessman Greg Hatcher, the force behind establishing high school wrestling as a AAA-sanctioned sport six years ago.

And the Lions aren’t done yet.

Sessions’ first-year team will be one of 49 schools represented at the state high school wrestling tournament that begins today at UALR’s Jack Stephens Center, with two Lions seeded among the top six of their respective weight classes.

A handful of new schools have started wrestling every year since the sport was sanctioned in 2008, but perhaps none has started with less than McClellan.

The Lions won’t win a state title this weekend. They probably won’t win an individual state championship - heavyweight Trent Lewis is their highest seed at fourth - but Sessions, who led Conway to a state championship in 2011 before spending the past two seasons as head football coach at Woodlawn, said he is pleased with the results.

“I think we’ve had more success than we could have expected,” Sessions said. “For everything they’ve put into it, I’d love to see them have individual success [this weekend].”

Sessions grew up near the airport in east Little Rock,went to Central High School in the early 1990s and played football for the Tigers. He was an assistant coach at West Memphis for seven years, then went to Conway. Around 2008 or so, then Conway Athletic Director Buzz Bolding told him he was starting a wrestling program and Sessions was going to be the coach.

“I said, ‘yes, sir,’ ” Sessions said.

It took three seasons for Sessions to drum up sufficient interest, but the Wampus Cats placed nine wrestlers at the state tournament and won a team title in 2011.

Sessions spent the next two years at Woodlawn as its head football coach. He started a wrestling team in his second year, but numbers were an issue at the Class 2A school south of Pine Bluff. So Sessions jumped at the opportunity when Maurice Moody asked him to be his defensive coordinator at McClellan and start a wrestling program in his hometown.

“I relate to kids from the inner city a lot better than I can kids from the country,” he said.

The problems Sessions faced were normal for any start-up program: Snagging athletes away from offseason football conditioning and money.

The first hurdle he cleared rather easily. Moody supported Sessions’ wrestling efforts, and the two told all the football players that if they weren’t playing basketball in the winter they should be wrestling. Sessions said he crammed around 35 wrestlers into their make-shift practice area every day. They would split up and have the lighter wrestlers lift weights for 90 minutes while the larger kids wrestled, and then they would switch.

“It was a struggle,” said Lewis, who weighs 211 pounds but is 30-7 as a heavyweight. “We’ve come a long way.”

It was during a tournament in Bryant on Dec. 3 that parents of CAC wrestlers took notice. They asked Mustangs Coach Keith Almond if there was any way they could help, then rounded up around $900 to give to Sessions’ team. McClellan’s nine qualifiers will be wearing black Nike wrestling shoes today at the Stepehens Center thanks to their gift.

“I tell the kids that these guys are your opponents, but they can be your friends, too,” Almond said.

The story of McClellan’s first wrestling season includes some success, too. Lewis, a linebacker for the Lions, was finally convinced by his brother Marcell and Sessions to come out for wrestling after practices had already started.

“I didn’t know I could wrestle,” Lewis said. “Coach is telling me stuff. He’s like, ‘crossface, half-nelson.’ I’m like, what is he talking about?”

Lewis took to it quickly, though, and today he is the No. 4 seed at heavyweight in Class 1A-5A after going 30-7. Adrian Brown, at 160 pounds, has won six of his past seven matches and is seeded sixth.

Sessions, who has no assistant coaches, isn’t sure how his team will handle the biggest tournament of the season.

As a coach who holds pride in his hometown, he’d love for another public school in central Arkansas, like Central or Maumelle, to have a successful team in the sport he’s grown so attached to, but he knows that quest could be lengthy. He was encouraged by the 35 or so who stayed on the team through the entire season, and there are talks of starting a youth club at a local Boys and Girls Club in which McClellan wrestlers could serve as coaches while also using it as an outlet for offseason practice.

In a couple of years, he said, he doesn’t think it’s farfetched that McClellan can do what he did at Conway.

“I’d love to see the look on their faces when they get some success,” Sessions said. “I’m hopeful that here in two or three years we might be able to give [defending champion] Maumelle or Little Rock Christian or Beebe a challenge, maybe put a little bit of sweat on their eye brows.”

At a glance WHAT Arkansas State high school wrestling tournament WHEN 1 p.m. today, 9 a.m. Saturday WHERE Jack Stephens Center, Little Rock TICKETS $8 per day SCHEDULE Wrestling through championship quarterfinals will be completed today with Class 1A-5A on mats 1, 2 and 3 and Class 6A-7A on mats 4, 5 and 6. Championship semifinals Saturday for Class 1A-5A will be on mats 1 and 2, while Class 6A-7A will be on mats 5 and 6. Championship finals will begin at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

Sports, Pages 19 on 02/14/2014