Scott’s Branch High School and Clarendon School District 1 health and physical education coordinator Curtis Holland is working hard on getting the school’s first wrestling team set up.
A first-year teacher from North Carolina, Holland said developing a wrestling team was “one of the things I really wanted to do for the district, and I told them that when I was first hired.”
“It gives something to do for the kids who don’t excel in basketball who still want to be active in a sport,” he said. “Whatever they put into it, they’re going to get that out of it. It’s non-discriminatory. Even if you have a physical disability, it doesn’t matter. Anyone can do it.”
Urged on by Clarendon 1 Superintendent Dr. Rose Wilder and high school Principal Dr. Gwendolyn Harris, Holland is promoting a fundraiser with Santee Automotive aptly called “Drive for Your Community.” Wilder and Cleve Dowell helped organize the event.
From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Scott’s Branch, every test drive of a Santee Automotive vehicle will get the school $20.
“We need about $11,000 for the wrestling mats, and we’ve raised $5,000 already,” Holland said.
The team will not start practice or matches until the 2016-17 school year, but Holland said time is of the essence now to get the funds raised.
“I got some great singlets picked out; that’s what they will wear during competition,” Holland said. “And they look really great. It’s amazing how much support we’ve gotten. But I’ve had individuals say, ‘OK, I will buy that singlet for the kids.’”
He is also trying to raise money to have T-shirts made for the team.
“But the main thing has been the singlets and the wrestling mat,” he said.
A University of North Carolina at Pembroke graduate, Holland said Summerton is much like the community in which he trained to be a teacher.
“It was a rural setting, so I feel like I’m at home here,” he said. “Rural districts have their challenges, and for me it was a good transition. I wanted a challenged and to make a difference. I really wanted to come here and build up something for the kids.”
He said the wrestling season closely parallels the basketball season.
“So, it’s from about Nov. 1 through the end of February,” he said. “We will also have summer wrestling.”
Holland said he wanted to raise funds for the team rather than sending a “requisition to the district.”
“I didn’t want to have to rely solely on the district, so we aimed to have fundraising,” he said. “Because we are such a small district, we’re able to accomplish things very quickly in the short term. Within 24 hours, we had all the singlets paid for, for example.”
He said high school wrestling isn’t like the WWE or professional wrestling shown on TV.
“You have positions top, bottom and neutral,” Holland said. “Neutral is on your feet. The purpose of high school wrestling is, obviously, you take them down. And then you keep them down and also pin them. Summer wrestling is the type like freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling that you see in the Olympics, and people think that’s more exciting, I think, because there are throws.”
He said folk-style wrestling is “always moving.”
“It’s fast-paced. You’re always doing something,” Holland said. “They can call you for stalling because you’re not doing anything when you’re on bottom, top or on your feet.”
He said the sport is probably “more diet conscious” than others in the high school setting.
“I’d say it’s similar to running in that respect,” he said “If you don’t eat the way you’re supposed to, it will dramatically impact your performance, maybe even more so than with running.”
He said an advantage of wrestling is “I don’t cut anyone.”
“I have to use my judgment as to who is going to play in the game because you want the team to do its best,” he said.
In wrestling, there’s no such judgment call, he said.
“You have two people in the same weight class, and they duke it out among themselves,” he said. “In wrestling, you have to also put in the effort. And it’s up to them whether they want to put forth the effort it takes or not.”
He said high school wrestling isn’t the most “popular sport,” but that he expects the team to be “quite competitive” once it gets a few years under its belt.
“It’s one of the oldest sports out there; it’s always been in the Olympics,” he said. “And once you fall in love with it, if your heart it truly in it, you can do anything.”
Holland said thus far in raising funds, Anthony Brooker and Summerton Drugs have been indispensible.
“Anthony Brooker gave me $3,000, and Summerton Drugs gave the commitment for $2,000,” he said. “With Drive for Your Community, we hope to add even more. It would take 500 test drives to raise $10,000.”
It is not the first time the district has partnered with Santee Automotive for Drive for Your Community. And a test drive does not commit one to purchasing the vehicle.
“We just hope that we get a lot of support on Saturday,” Holland said. “This is for the kids. We want to build something they can be proud of. We want to build a program that they can be proud of.”
