Roger,

I’m not sure what it is you think you know about Team Lightning and its relationship with the Hutchinson Wrestling Club, but I thought I should provide a little background for you. In 1988, I was the president of the Hutchinson Wrestling Club and was faced with a problem over the size of the club. The practice facility at Hutchinson High School was very small, and the club had grown to well over 100 members. It was increasingly difficult to provide quality practices for our kids, even with multiple practice groups coming at different times.

An option came available, as Buhler had just added wrestling at the high school level, and I decided to start a new club, affiliated with Buhler High School, to alleviate some of the pressure on the Hutch club. The split was entirely amicable; with the members of the Hutch club participating in my decision and donating the singlets to the new club to help us get started. Since I lived in the Buhler district, and since the new club was more in need of experienced oversight than the well-established Hutch club, I left to run the new club. Dick Becker, who had run Team Lightning as a freestyle/Greco club in the area for several years, provided some start-up funding and allowed us to take his club’s name.

Although there have been the typical squabbles over the years between the two clubs, fueled in part by the natural rivalry that comes from two closely situated programs, there has also always been a close tie between the two clubs. Over the years one program may wax while the other wanes, and both have had small groups within their membership who have split off to form short-lived alternative clubs, but in the end both clubs are in it for the kids and expect to be around for years to come.

Although my duties coaching at the high school for the past seven years have limited my daily involvement with Team Lightning, I have continued to follow them. The feedback that I get from the kids and parents speaks highly of Tracy and his contributions to the kids and the program. I know that Tracy is a frequent poster on these forums, and I don’t always agree with his positions, but I applaud his enthusiasm and certainly prefer it over ambivalence. Tracy is definitely not shy about expressing his opinion.

Obviously you have had some issues with Tracy in the past. I don’t know if these are strictly related to your disagreement with opinions that Tracy has posted on the forum, or if you have interacted with him in person. Either way, your decision to attack an entire club based on your feelings about a single individual does not seem fair or balanced. If you did not know that Tracy was affiliated with Team Lightning, it would seem that you have never even seen him working with the club and its wrestlers. I would ask you to reconsider your attack on Tracy and the club.