2010-11 Roster

Here is the link to our roster for this season. Our season begins today!;-)
Our first tournament is the Lindenwood Open Friday, October 29th!

-Coach Hawes

Pre-season Begins - Day One Lifting and Conditioning

Yesterday the 2010-11 Trojan wrestling began their pre-season lifting and conditioning. Lifting started bright and early at 6:30 am. Conditioning took place after classes on Tuesday at the Hannibal Lighthouse Stairs.

Labor Day Camp Out 2010

On Labor Day weekend we were guest of Kevin and Teri Broeker at their home. The Broeker’s have a beautiful home and lake on their rural property just north of Durham, MO. The wrestling team, coaches and the coach’s families were able to enjoy a great, fun, and relaxing holiday at the Broeker’s. Last year on Labor Day we had a picnic at the Yurities’s home and had a great time! This year the coaching staff took it a step further and camped out in tents, cooked over an open fire, and had fishing and shooting tournaments. Bryce Alexander came out on top in the fishing competition with the largest catch of the holiday and Jerod Potter came out ahead in the shooting contest. Camping out was a new experience for some of our wrestlers who have grown up in the city, but they caught on quickly and adapted to the fun country environment. The time spent in the country was not without some educational moments. Sunday evening Kevin Broeker demonstrated for us how fluorescent light bulbs will light up on their own as you get closer to the huge electric towers that are at the edge of their property. Once again God blessed HLG Wrestling with a beautiful day and a ton of fun on this Labor Day!

-Coach Hawes

THANK YOU LES ANDERSON!

Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to talk some marketing strategies for HLG wrestling with Bryan Van Kley who is the Publisher of WIN Magazine. Bryan has been most helpful in helping me promote HLG wrestling to the masses through WIN Magazine. While we were talking about the topic of recruiting Bryan mentioned to me as an upcoming resource for recruiting at http://www.thewrestlingsite.com/ which was started by former Iowa State Assistant Coach Less Anderson. What caught my attention about thewrestlingsite.com was the indirect relationship I have Les Anderson. Now I have never met Les Anderson, but I had heard about him many times from my college wrestling coach, Ben Peterson. Coach Peterson is well known by his former wrestlers for telling stories about his time on the Iowa State team and his time wrestling in the World and Olympic competitions. Some of those stories told by Ben included Les Anderson. Although I was never coached by Les I believe some of his influence must have rubbed off on Ben and indirectly rubbed off on me. After listening to some of the testimonials of Gable and Peterson about Les Anderson’s influence in their lives and for our beloved sport, it hit me that in a way Les is like a wrestling grandfather to me. ;-) I know it sounds weird, but let me explain. Ben Peterson taught me a ton about wrestling and in wrestling Ben was a father figure to me. As college coaches, Coach Nichols and Coach Anderson were some of Ben’s wrestling father figures which would make me, in a sense, a wrestling grandson. So I decided to investigate what one of my wrestling grandfathers, who I never met, was still doing for the sport of wrestling. I looked around at some of the resources that were available to wrestlers who want to get better at wrestling. As I looked, I found some resources and articles aimed specifically at high school wrestlers and parents. Click on this link to read the articles! There is also a feature that is being developed for wrestlers to develop a type of wrestling resume. This way college coaches can find out about wrestlers who may want to break into college wrestling, but haven’t had the opportunity to be seen. I already utilize online recruiting sites, but thewrestlingsite.com is a wrestling specific site and may potentially be utilized by more high school wrestlers. In 2008-09 school year the National Federation of State High School Associations did a study which reported that there were 273,403 high school wrestlers. Wrestling has more high school male wrestlers participating since the 1980’s. When comparing the 08-09 high school participation figures to the 08-09 NCAA participation report which list only 6,522 wrestling participants there is a huge disparity in participants. I must point out that we could include NAIA school and Jr. College programs to this number to make it greater; however it doesn’t change the fact that there is still a huge disparity between wrestler’s participation in high school compared to college. We could spend some time debating whether or not half of the number of high school wrestlers could even compete at the college level, or if they would be academically fit for college programs, or has title IX taken away too many opportunities, which would all be good discussions. However, there are many college programs such as Hannibal-LaGrange College who could benefit from some wrestlers who may not be a D-1 wrestler in ability or academically, but could find a wrestling home in our program and have a great experience wrestling in college and even have a shot at a NAIA national title all the while accruing a solid college education. I think Les Anderson is trying to help bridge the communication gap between the 10’s of thousands of high school wrestlers who want a college wrestling opportunity, but haven’t heard of a place like Hannibal-LaGrange College where they can wrestle. I know as a college coach I would take advantage of a resource such as thewrestlingsite.com is trying to develop. I hope these resources provided by Les Anderson will be helpful for anyone considering wrestling in college especially those who are considering wrestling for Hannibal-LaGrange College! To someone I have never met and continues working to make wrestling better Thank You Grandpa Les Anderson!;-)
-Coach Scott Hawes

Freshmen Have Arrived!

Our new class of HLG Trojan wrestlers has arrived on campus and they have already been making a difference in the community as they were involved in the Helping Hands Community service projects across Hannibal. All of the freshmen wrestlers were involved in this community service project and they weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Freshmen Bryce Alexander told about his experience helping clean up a home damaged by a flood where they had to clean up a dead possum. What an experience! Classes started Tuesday and Open mat started yesterday. This weekend all the wrestlers will be enjoying a camp out for the Labor Day weekend. Tuesday will start the first day of lifting and condition. We will be posting our roster with photos by the end of next week. -Coach Hawes