To hear the coaches tell it, Gilroy High’s wrestling program is
quickly approaching a point of no return.
Housed in a small portable classroom on campus that is tucked
between the football field’s snack-shack and an auxiliary
gymnasium, wrestlers, whose ages you could count on one hand on up
to teenagers, tug and sweat in a cramped, poorly ventilated space
that smells of … well, let’s just say it smells and leave it at
that.
To hear the coaches tell it, Gilroy High’s wrestling program is quickly approaching a point of no return.
Housed in a small portable classroom on campus that is tucked between the football field’s snack-shack and an auxiliary gymnasium, wrestlers, whose ages you could count on one hand on up to teenagers, tug and sweat in a cramped, poorly ventilated space that smells of … well, let’s just say it smells and leave it at that.
Throughout the afternoon the room is filled with Gilroy High’s junior varsity and varsity wrestlers, as well youngsters who are part of the Gilroy Hawks youth club. By the time the sun is setting and all practices are over, the doors are propped open to air out the humid musk, as if the classroom is exhaling after nearly bursting at the seams. Converted from a plain portable classroom into a space to hold P.E. classes while school is in session and the wrestling teams’ practices afterwards, Gilroy’s wrestling coaches are the first to say it is a facility that barely serves its purpose currently, and will be woefully inadequate in the future.
“To be honest with you, to reach the level that we’ve reached right now is phenomenal considering the facility that we have,” coach Armando Gonzalez said. “We are definitely getting the most out of our kids and most out of our resources that we can get.”
What the wrestling coaches fear, and all coaches in general fear for that matter, is that the progress could be capped. Or worse, that the program, which finished a school-best second in the state this year after finishing fourth in 2006, could find itself at a severe competitive disadvantage in the years to come.
There isn’t enough room to conduct competitive practices that include the varsity and JV teams at the same time, a vital component to improving for most wrestling programs, and the setting is hardly inviting to those interested in joining the wrestling program.
“I guess there’s always a possibility (of building a new facility), but in light of the budget cuts … building something different would probably be (impossible) for the foreseeable future,” GHS Athletic Director Jack Daley said. “Unless we found a donor that wanted to donate the cost of putting something in like that … the most likely scenario would be once Christopher (High School) opens the impact on our facilities would be less and something might open.”
There have been donors anxious to build a wrestling room in the past, according to assistant coach Mike Koester, but those proposals were never approved.
Al Fontes, one of the preeminent wrestling aficionados in the state of California and organizer of state and sectional rankings for TheCaliforniaWrestler.com, said state-of-the-art facilities or even rooms dedicated strictly to wrestling programs are rare at the high school level.
“The majority of schools have to use their own cafeteria,” Fontes said.
When told that Gilroy High practices in a portable classroom which limits the number of people who can take to the mat to 18 at a time, Fontes was surprised.
“I would have never known if you hadn’t told me that,” he said. “My perception was that they have a big, great program.”
The program is great, but not big. The question is can it last?
Gilroy’s wrestling coaches are not only under the strain of working in a less than ideal setting to optimize the talents of their athletes, but also must pay for almost all team expenses out of pocket, according to Koester. Listing off items such as transportation, uniforms, meals, trainer and janitorial fees and six CCS championship banners to hang in the school gym, the wrestling program is said to be wholly funded by the team working trash duty at the Garlic Festival, proceeds raised from the Mid-Cals tournament hosted by Gilroy and coaches’ personal salaries, with expenses going far beyond a stipend from the school.
It isn’t uncommon for coaches of all sports to give up their time and money for their athletes, but if Gonzalez, Koester and fellow assistant Greg Varela were to walk away from the program, say to Anchorpoint Christian or Christopher High, would Gilroy High wrestling survive? And if it did, would it be a shell of itself?
While the simple solution for space would seem to suggest moving the team’s practices back into the auxiliary gym, where practices took place before moving into the portable classroom during the 2002-03 school year, there is a reason this won’t work, coaches say. The time it takes to unroll the mats and mop them down following practice would take “a quarter of” a two-hour practice, Koester said, wasting valuable gym time. There is also the issue of not having a confined space that traps the heat in like an oven, which helps many wrestlers maintain their weight throughout a season. What seems like the most obvious reason why the program doesn’t want to move back into the gym, however, is that the wrestling program wants a space to call its own that isn’t falling apart. A place that can house future state and national champions.
A plywood board currently covers one of the wrestling room’s busted-out windows, and last fall, after Koester was diagnosed with MRSA, a staph infection resistant to many common antibiotics, school officials quarantined the room upon finding mold growing. There were no signs of staph in the room when tests came back but school administrators admitted that the facility was a mess.
“There’s no reason to keep the room closed because of staph but there are some other issues,” Principal James Maxwell told The Dispatch at the time. “The room needs repairs anyway. The walls look bad and the ventilation’s not good.”
There seems to be no answer on the horizon. The school’s flagship athletic program will be forced to continue on a path of resisting being mad by staying motivated.
“(The coaches) talk about it all the time, but the reality is we don’t have the money to do it or the space to put them in (somewhere) right now,” Daley said. “It’s a credit to them that they’ve been able to accomplish what they have in that facility. I feel for them.”
Fontes offered an insight that quite possibly relates to the recent success Gilroy has achieved, and would render a new facility as a luxury. Being Within close quarters, even those deemed subpar, can make a group grow stronger.
“I think having a bigger facility … I think it helps to build a program into a bigger program, it is nice, but I think what it really comes down to is being in a tough environment and doing the work on the mat,” Fontes said.
For now the wrestling program will be forced to take it out on opponents. The question is, how long will it be able to do so successfully?
