Wrestling History

The vision of EVERY wrestling coach at Florence-Carlton High School and our youth Little Guy Program, was to have a dedicated and permanent wrestling room.
We've rolled out the mats every day in temporary locations that ranged from the lunch rooms, hallways, off campus rented rooms, a garage, and even the cemetery's old community center.
We needed a place that we didn't have to roll the mats up everyday and give way to another group who also needed the space.

This room was built in 1993, with the intention of it being the permanent home for wrestling. That didn't quite go as planned. It has served many purposes over the years, from the "mezzanine", auxiliary classrooms, storage room, and most recently as the weight room.
However, it is now finally as was originally intended, the WRESTLING ROOM!!!

As the athletic/activities director for two years from 2020-2022, I worked diligently during the recent construction project to secure a location for the wrestling room. There's a lot of pushing & pulling, and give & take. It took a good pitch, negotiations, promises, and follow-through behind the scenes for this to happen. It took persistence. In the spring of 2022, we had confirmation that a wrestling room (the old weight room) is officially secured! FOR REAL!
The transformation was underway. In June, we snaked the mats around a tight corner, through the doors and up the stairs into our new wrestling room. They have painted walls and put up wall pads. It looks like a wrestling room. And it feels like one. And now, after today, it probably smells like one too. 🙂Today, to start the first practice of the year, we held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially open this room and kick off the 2022-23 season.

Florence wrestling now has a home. It's a multi-use room but it's "ours".
It's a place for wrestling, but also very useful to the cheerleaders to practice stunts and to PE for tumbling, etc.

I'm so happy to report that the wrestlers do not have to roll the mats up every day. The team doesn't have to lift the heavy mat sections (several hundred pounds each) up onto the stage and load them in the boxes every single day (IYKYK). They can come in and have open-mat whenever they have supervision. YEAR ROUND.

It's more efficient for them. It's more time on task for practice. They can come and go without having to worry about somebody else's gym time slot before or after them.
It's a beautiful thing.

In attendance today are former FCHS head coaches:
Doug Vulcan (1976-1984, 1996-2000),
Myself, Scott Stiegler (2000-2011),
Skip Rosenthal (2011-2013, 2021-present), and
Bryan Volkman (2016-2021).

Not pictured: Jamie Muir (2013-2016) and Little Guy Wrestling director/coach/parent/referee and mentor, Mike McChesney 1993-2018 (rest in peace).

I would like to dedicate today's ceremony to the memory and efforts of Mike McChesney, and EVERY Falcon coach, wrestler and parent who was part of this long-time vision for a wrestling room.

If you ain't brawlin', you're stallin'.

Scott Stiegler