by Oran Sorenson, Assistant Coach
On Thursday January 13th many fine things took place on the occasion of our last wrestling home event of the year. It was parent night where every wrestler, cheerleader, or statistician was met by their parents or guardians on the edge of the wrestling mat. We gave special presentations to our seven seniors, and then even took time to greet our youth wrestlers and coaches who then had their picture taken with the varsity team.
Still one more recognition took place when we took a step back in time to our wrestling origin in this school. “Will Marge Schleuter please stand or give us a wave from the bleachers! This fine lady is today the only surviving parent of all those kids on that first wrestling team that took to the mat on that inaugural year in this program under first head coach Al Bowar in 1969-70.” We also learned something that night that few had known previously. Marge, when she was just a young girl at Clear Lake high school, was one of two girls to take wrestling in PE class. Her coach was the legendary Warren Williamson, who went on to be the head wrestling coach at SDSU and is one of the beloved fathers of wrestling in the state of South Dakota. Someone was heard in our gym that night saying, “You mean Grandma wrestled!” And here the rest of us thought that girls wrestling in South Dakota was new just last year. I guess we never know what we’ll learn next.
