Leavenworth Times Article on the New Team
http://www.leavenworthtimes.com/articles/2006/10/02/sports/sports2.txt Spartans offer brighter future for local wrestlers
By DOUG MAGILL, Times Assistant Sports Editor
Published: Sunday, October 1, 2006 11:34 PM CDT
For Jeff Butler, Shawn Budke and Mike Flynn, the mission is clear.
“I think the motto is kind of catchy,” Jeff Butler, coach of the Leavenworth County Spartans said. “We’re trying produce champions for the game of life. It’s not really about winning matches, I think that’ll come with just practice and hard work and knowing what it takes to win. It’s more of what the kids are getting out of it personally.”
The Leavenworth County Wrestling Team — nicknamed the Spartans — is helping kids from all over Leavenworth County.
“This club here is a good feeder system,” Butler said. “We don’t want to be known as a feeder system to one club or one school. So the location of where we’re going to practice is extremely important. Ideally, if we had our own world we’d like to get our own place that way there’s no perception that we’re aligned to one school.”
“We’re not here to feed Leavenworth, we’re not here to feed Lansing, and we’re not here to feed Pleasant Ridge,” Butler said. “We’re here to feed everybody.”
In a perfect world, the three say, the squad would have it’s own facility. For now though, the team practices in the wrestling room at Warren Middle School.
“This is a good happy medium,” Butler said. “The Leavenworth School District has been excellent in trying to support us in that and we’ve gone to a lot of schools.”
The team held a preseason workout at Warren on Thursday. Official registration is from Oct. 17-18 and the 24th and 25th from 6-8 p.m. at the Youth Achievement Center at 314 Delaware St. Late registrations are accepted if athletes either Budke at 727-1300, Butler at 680-0663, Flynn at 727-1328 or Guy Nieman at 240-5337. Cost of basic registration is $50. Along with membership, that includes the rental of a singlet and headgear. It also includes a t-shirt and a pair of shorts.
“Once we get our registrations, we’re looking for all the newcomers,” Butler said. “That’s what we’re prepping for.”
They said after registrations, they are hoping for 40 to 50 wrestlers.
“I’m thinking this room’s going to be full,” Flynn said. “There’s another mat. So we’ll probably have two mats and I’m thinking 50 kids, and that’s a great amount to have.”
The team is looking to raise money for the team for equipment such as singlets, warmups and headgear. They’re also holding fund raising events to help offset the costs of the equipment.
“Now we can wrestle like this,” Flynn said, pointing to his shorts and t-shirt. “When it all comes down to it, we’re going to wrestle. But it would be nice to get the gear and all that.”
The team does have an ambitious fund raising campaign preset. This Saturday the team will be selling chili at a car show on the K-Mart parking lot at 4820 S. 4th St.
“There’s a car show that’s coming to town (this) weekend at the K-Mart parking lot,” Flynn said. “We’re going to have a chili table there. Then we’re going to do things on Fort Leavenworth. That’s really a combined advertisement plus fund raiser. It’s going to say donations are for the wrestling club but at the same time we’re trying to draw kids and coaches. Fort Leavenworth has about 1,200 Majors that come in every year, all college graduates. Out of the 1,200, there’s probably about 30 college wrestlers.”
They had a Pizza Hut sponsored fund raiser last Wednesday night and then another at the Eagles Lodge at 300 S. 20th St. last night. Money aside, the club is somewhat of a dream coming true.
“This has been good because there’s a group of six or seven of us that have wanted to do this,” Budke said. “What’s cool about is we all share the same vision. Everybody says that you have to win and you have to compete and stuff like that. But it’s the competition that’s important and not the winning or the losing. Because the competition is what allows you teach kids life lessons. The discipline, the work ethic, the teamwork, the sportsmanship. That’s what the focus of our program is, using wrestling as a tool to teach kids life lessons.”
It’s also a chance to give back to the community.
“I literally wouldn’t be standing here today if wasn’t for guys taking me to wrestling tournaments and being good role models and mentors to me when I was a kid,” Budke said. “Now that I’m getting ready to retire from the military, I want to be able to give back. I’ll never be able to repay those guys that did it for me, but hopefully I can to some of the kids.”
“If some day one of our kids, when they’re an adult, makes a right decision at a decision point in their life based off what we taught them in wrestling, then we’ll be successful,” Budke said. “And that’s about it.”
