My name is tom stone and yes Hiawatha does have a wrestling program for kids, and we go by the team name of team hawks and the reason we use that name is because a few years ago we had two ladies that though they could run the wrestling club and so Bridget and I started a diffent club and we go by the name of team hawks and by the way the other club lasted two years and lost all the kids but there own. My son Donnie was the middle school coach for two years and had 20 kids out then and he moved out of town and has a new job and most people will understand that is few jobs that pay good in Hiawatha.
That leads us to the middle school wrestling they had a new coach and for what ever the reason the numbers have fell off real fast and the school took wrestling out of the school for what they say is a money saving deal. well we both know that wrestling does not come before football or basketball and if you new our A.D. that does not ever go out of town to a wrestling meet you would understand then that for him it was not hard to say cut it.
Hiawatha was a charter member at the Eudora wrestling tourmament for years and my oldest son wrestled in 1980-81 and so its hard to understand why we cut Eudora out last year after a person told the school that he would pay the bill and he was turned down. When you have no idea what it means to wrestle in a tourmament of that size even if you get beat its still great to see how good you have to be to go on to state later on. A lot of you know my grandson who wrestled for Hiawatha last year and set some school records and he placed all for years at Eudora and my other grandson place two years and Ryan Carlson his junior made the finals and the school took him home because the weather was getting bad, this shows you how bad our school wrestling has gotton and with no help from the boster club its going to get hard to keep the club and school team going. Ryan junior year I wanted to get new singlets for the high school team and asked the school if I could buy them and the A.D. said he would have to ask the boster club and I said I was going to pay for them and I did not need to ask them, well any way we bought them and the team liked them because they picked them out.
Back on the club we are sending seven kids this weekend and hopefully a few will make it to state next weekend. You will find that wrestling clubs have parents that don't get along and times change and just take a look at Holton they split this year and things will work out there to, but I would like to be able to tell you that the middle school will have wrestling next year but thats a dream of a lot of people like yourself and I can tell you one thing we will play football and basketball no matter if were broke or not.