About Champions Wrestling Club

Club President: Diane LaMont

Head Coach: Craig LaMont. Link to Vitae.

Club Charter: USA Wrestling

Affiliations: Mapleton City Recreation, Springville City Recreation,

Practice Locations: Mapleton Memorial Hall, Maple Mountain High School, Springville High School, LaMont Gym.

Annual Tournament: Caleb Williams Memorial. Annually the weekend before Thanksgiving @ Maple Mountain High School.

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History: Champion’s Wrestling Club was started by Craig and Diane LaMont as a way to provide a quality club experience for all kids including city recreation kids and those with few resources. Starting in 2000, they have built the club from two dozen wrestlers to over three hundred. They have won numerous State championships in different age divisions and styles and have also won numerous national tournament and invitationals as a club.

Philosophy: Not just a feeder program for one high school, individual development, character development, focus on all three styles, creating a competitive room where a good work out partner can be found. See fundamental goals below for more specifics.

Who can come: Anyone from any age or gender may join the club.

Open Room: If any wrestler from any other USA sanctioned club wants to join a practice, they are welcome. We have an open room policy and we do not charge money to practice if you have already paid and registered with an active sanctioned club.

Fundamental Goals:

1) To help raise the next generation to become productive, successful citizens.

2) To allow maximum individual personal development for each participant in wrestling and in life skills.

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At Champions Wrestling Club, we believe that positions and moves taught should be those that are effective against the best wrestlers at the highest level of competition. It is easy to teach creative and fun moves to young wrestlers in High School and below that will work against a common opponent. However, the moves that work against nationally competitive wrestlers and college wrestlers are the moves we want to focus on.

In general we want to focus on body position more than a move. We want to teach wrestlers how to think about body mechanics, leverage, and positions more than memorizing moves so they can think and feel their way out and into advantage situations in tight matches.

We believe that focusing on and mastering basics are more important than learning variety of moves.

We believe wrestlers should try to obtain the following qualities in this order:

1) Character: Wrestling is a sport of honor and discipline. Personal characteristics like honesty, dedication, loyalty, spirituality, compassion, and sacrifice are the true secrets of becoming a master wrestler and the primary bi-products of this sport. It is the character development of young wrestlers that fuels the passion for the sport throughout the generations.

2) Intelligence: All things being equal the smarter wrestler will prevail. The ability to know position and moves is fundamentally more important than strength flexibility or quickness. A smarter wrestler can vanquish a stronger opponent. Learning how to think and gaining a greater knowledge of the sport is paramount to becoming a great wrestler.

3) Mental Toughness: This encompasses the primary skill of emotional management. A wrestler must be able to manage his emotions under stress and fatigue. They must learn to push through pain, face fear, manage anxiety, deal with hunger and thirst, think while exhausted, and study when tired. They need to be able to focus their minds when they can’t breath and move their body when they are numb. These are skills that are life preserving and without them, a wrestler cannot succeed at the highest levels of this sport.

4) Cardio-Vascular Endurance: Wrestling is a sport that necessitates both anaerobic and aerobic training procedures. The need to put maximum effort at times during a match and still last through an overtime bout is a combination most sports do not parallel. Training the body for wrestling necessitates intense training often.

5) Strength/Power: Physical strength is an advantage. It not only makes moves easier, but it decreases the likelihood of injury. Besides core body strength, neck and hand strength is particularly important.

6) Quickness/Explosiveness: Hand/eye quickness and coordination, the ability to move your feet and body quickly, and to explode with perfect timing are skills that help wrestlers.

7) Agility and Balance: The ability to move your body laterally, change direction while in the air and know where you are in relationship to your opponent and the mat are advantageous.

Flexibility: Like strength, flexibility helps to prevent injury. It is also key to defending moves.

9) Nutrition and weight management: The extreme training demands and the fact that wrestling is a sport that uses weight divisions require that athletes learn to eat healthy food, understand the importance of hydration, and master self control.

Notice that the topics at the top of the list are all things that have to do with the mental part of wrestling. The things at the bottom are more physical in nature. This is another great reason why wrestling can be a sport that anyone can succeed in. Not just the genetically gifted athlete.

It would be a mistake to think that if you are really good at the top three that you can completely forget the last three. Great wrestlers are great at all nine areas. They are listed as areas of importance because they are ALL important and essential.

Any serious individual or team should learn these basic moves and positions at a high proficiency:

Sportsmanship

Honoring others (parents, coaches, opponents, officials)

Focusing on performance and execution rather than match score or winning/losing.

Learning positive thinking, mental visualization of success.

Goal setting and realistic tracking of goals.

Embracing/ignoring pain (both acute and conditioning induced)

Personal victories rather than medals