ROLLA, Mo. – Marty Hauck looks at the depth chart of his Rolla High School wrestling team in his office. Each name has a story. Hauck, who is passionately devoted to using wrestling to help build character, commitment and discipline in as many students as possible, starts rattling off the stories.
This boy is the state champion who travels nationally for meets and dreams of becoming an Olympian and majoring in biology. That girl convinced her skeptical Muslim parents to let her wrestle and hopes to start the sport for girls in Saudi Arabia when she moves back there soon. This boy never competes – he simply practices because it’s fun and worries he might get injured in a match that would impact his baseball season.
Those three on the depth chart? They moved out of their homes and live on their own due to difficult family situations.
“Some of these kids, when I ask what mom and dad did over the weekend, they say, ‘Well, they did a little meth,’” Hauck says. “‘What do you mean they did a little meth?’ ‘They’re not like a meth head, Coach. They just do a little to relax on the weekend.’ Some of these kids, it’s nothing for them to come home and the parents are smoking a bong and they want them to join. These kids are making choices bigger than I know.”
Wrestling practice is crowded at Rolla High School. (Photo: Courtesy of Rolla High School)
What stands out the most about Rolla’s depth chart isn’t any one story. It’s the sheer volume of names, each with his or her own story.
There were 113 wrestlers at the start of this season – a staggering increase from the 26 wrestlers on the team five years ago when Hauck took over the program and the most participants the school has seen since the 1980s. About 9% of Rolla High School students came out this season for wrestling, even more than football.
As of early January 2020, Rolla had around 80 wrestlers, because some come and go by their own choice during the season. That includes 35 females on the all-girls team in this rural Missouri town of 20,000 people located about 100 miles southwest of St. Louis, in an area struggling with substance-abuse problems.
Phelps County, where Rolla is located, is among the worst in the nation for opioid use with 84.4 pills delivered annually per person from 2006 to 2012, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency database. PhelpsCountyFocus.com reported that Phelps County’s per capita rate is tied for 101st nationally out of 3,242 counties or county equivalents in the DEA database.
“I think drugs are becoming more prevalent under the radar here,” says Mya Burken, a senior wrestler. “It’s harder to see opioids because we’re not being educated about them. Vaping is prevalent. Some kids you can see try to trade it discreetly in the halls. That’s hard to see because this is school, and it’s a chance we get to do something with our lives.”
Healthy Sport Index (Photo: Aspen Institute)
Healthy Sport Index Contest
Rolla High School is the Aspen Institute’s Healthy Sport Index award winner for high school wrestling. The Healthy Sport Index, developed in partnership with Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), helps the public make informed decisions about sport activities that meet the needs of youth. The Aspen Institute is searching over the next year for additional exemplary and innovative high school teams from many sports. The national search seeks teams that embrace best practices and innovate new ways to encourage physical activity, minimize injury risk, and support athletes’ emotional, social and mental well-being. High school teams may be nominated here.
Females have injected new life into high school wrestling nationally. While boys wrestling lost more than 25,000 participants over the past decade, the sport gained almost 15,000 girls (an increase of 244%), according to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations.
Burken participated in ballet for most of her life, along with tennis and track and field in high school. Nothing in her background suggested she would become a wrestler. But after seeing other girls try this demanding sport and being encouraged by coaches to give it a shot, she got hooked.
“For some people, they do it for the physical activity,” Burken says. “Some people come for the challenge. Some people come to win. I came to strengthen my mentality. Just to make it through a practice, that’s empowering. During a match, there’s a lot of stress and you have to keep going. I think it’s a good life lesson.”
How popular is the Rolla wrestling team among students? A couple years ago, one boy lied to his Korean parents all season that he was wrestling because they would have disowned him for participating instead of focusing on academics, according to Hauck. The boy’s elaborate plan included convincing his parents to sign the school’s participation waiver by telling them he was tutoring wrestlers, as well as obtaining doctors’ notes and insurance cards to make sure he was eligible.
The boy practiced all year but never competed until the final match of the season. When he beat his opponent in overtime, Hauck made him the team’s wrestler of the week. Worried that his parents would find out, the boy wore an old-school professional wrestling mask for his photo to hide his face. That picture hangs by itself on a wall in the wrestling gym under the words, “If you want something bad way enough, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.”
‘It’s cool to see them come out of their shell’
Rolla’s 90-minute practices with so many athletes are organized chaos. Wrestlers are divided into two groups – one for those more committed to wrestling (the All-Blacks group) and one for those who are feeling out the sport (the Maroons). No one is treated as more important than the others; it’s just a unique way to find space for anyone who’s interested.
The All-Blacks start practice in a classroom by getting mental training from assistant Kyle Meyer, a former Stanford University wrestler with a degree in sports psychology. This time is also used to learn about nutrition, record daily food log and practice goals, and do homework. Meanwhile, the Maroons work on the mats in the gym. The groups come together later for 20 minutes before switching rooms.
There’s rarely live wrestling at practice. Wrestlers work on technique, conditioning and learning how to take a proper fall. During the inaugural season for the girls team a year ago, about 90% of participants sustained a concussion, according to Casey Robertson, Rolla’s part-time athletic trainer. That statistic was much higher than for the boys.
“The girls just did not know how to control their body,” Robertson says. “We changed stuff up this year, so they learn the proper landing after a takedown. I’ve had a few with concussions, but nowhere near the numbers of last year.”
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Rolla High School wrestling team
Location: Rolla, Missouri
Team budget: Approximately $20,500 per year (athletic department budget is $112,000-$115,000 annually)
Roster size: Approximately 80 students (113 started the season)
History: In 2018-19, Rolla’s boys had a 16-3 record, and its girls were 16-1. The team finished eighth in the state championships and produced the school’s second individual state wrestling champion. The high school has had a wrestling team since 1969.
Coach: Marty Hauck
Athletic trainer: One part-time athletic trainer who works at a local medical clinic and is contracted by the school
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Shoulder and ankle injuries are also common for both genders. Nate Pulliam, the team’s star wrestler, recently missed 10 days with a labrum injury. Because Rolla has so many wrestlers, Hauck successfully got the school board last year to add a third full-time assistant. “We were unsafe given our coach-to-player ratio,” he says.
Hauck believes three factors related to physical and mental health prevent more youth from trying wrestling. First is the stigma around anorexia and bulimia associated with the sport regarding cutting weight. The Missouri State High School Activities Association uses a weight management program to determine the minimum weight class in which a wrestler may participate throughout the season, based on a minimum body fat measurement of 7% for boys and 12% for girls.
Second, Hauck says, some participants don’t want to wear the wrestling singlet because they’re self-conscious about their bodies. Rolla offers two uniform options to allay those fears – the singlet or fight shorts and compression tops.
And third, Hauck says, athletes are concerned about skin infections. Staff at Rolla mop the mats multiple times a day and do laundry daily. Wrestlers have an individual loop on their clothes for proper identification, so they don’t end up with someone else’s uniform.
Full-time and volunteer coaches run practice by projecting the schedule and short instructional and motivational videos onto a wall. They’re from a platform called Rack Performance, typically used in weight rooms, which Hauck adopted for wrestling.
When a bell sounds, wrestlers look at the wall to see what drill or video is next. This cuts out transitional time – the team has a 1 to 4 ratio of talking vs. wrestling – and allows the coaches to walk around the room and spend more time with athletes. They get to be teachers instead of just managing practice.
“What stands out on this team is you see kids who were quiet and didn’t play a lot of sports, and they open up when they’re here,” says Pulliam, who won a Missouri state championship last season. “With wrestling, you’re the only one out there on the mat, and you dictate the match, so you have to be your own person. Wrestling lets them figure out things for themselves for once instead of hiding behind teammates or their coach. It’s cool to see them come out of their shell.”
Sophomore Manar Alzahrani, who wears her hijab at practice, says she started wrestling this season precisely because her parents didn’t want her to participate. They worried last year when she tried basketball – she didn’t last long in the sport – instead of focusing on academics.
The basketball coaches “scream at you,” Alzahrani says. “They tell me to move to the left and the other person is telling me to move to the right. I got confused a lot. I wasn’t mad at them. I didn’t know the rules. Here at wrestling, when the coaches talk to me, they’re helping me. … I want to be a coach in any sport when I go back to Saudi Arabia, so I’m looking to do wrestling.”
Using wrestling to serve others
Rolla’s wrestling motto is REPS – Relationships, Education, Passion and Servant Leaders. Hauck, who coaches internationally with USA Wrestling, uses the analogy of a numerical system that he hopes will allow wrestling to positively give back to the entire community. The number one represents youth wrestlers, two is junior high wrestlers, three is high school wrestlers, and four is alumni and parents.
“If four doesn’t give back to one, then it’s not a circle, and we don’t evolve and change,” Hauck said. “It’s just insanity, and we’re doing the same thing and expecting different results. But if we get the adults, alumni and parents and now youth to give back, then they can help with the younger ones.”
Last spring, Hauck started the Old Dogs – a group of parents, alumni and former college wrestlers who come out and wrestle. Parents rolled around on mats and tried some basic techniques. Hauck thought it would simply result in some fun workouts for the adults. The weekly sessions went another direction: The Old Dogs started becoming youth coaches in the city of Rolla.
The Rolla Youth Wrestling Club, started in 1981, has 77 wrestlers, ages 3 to 15. Hauck helps oversee the club, but his approach of periodization and developmentally appropriate skill levels doesn’t appeal to everyone. The club has lost about 30 to 40 kids in recent months because of parents who want the athletes to compete in more tournaments.
“We had a parent come in who has taken their kid to 22 tournaments,” says Brendon Fox, a Rolla High School assistant who helps with the youth club. “That’s like 60 to 70 matches, at least. We’ve had some attrition, because we tell parents that if you want your kid to quit the sport by 12 or 13, keep doing what you’re doing. If you want to listen to a gold-level coach and a couple guys who have been in the sport their entire life, change what you’re doing.”
There’s a history in Rolla of talented wrestlers burning out. Dane Crutcher, the youth club president, remembers one wrestler in the early 2000s good enough to win multiple state champions. According to Crutcher, the wrestler was “bribed” $1,000 by his mom to compete in the youth club and became burned out by the eighth grade.
Crutcher says Hauck has pushed for a much stronger relationship between the high school and youth programs. “That’s the reason you have this high school growth,” Crutcher says. “Once they get the junior high program up, I believe the high school program is going to get bigger, because the regimen and terminology won’t be as near a shock as it is when they get to high school.”
Hauck recently asked the school district to add junior high wrestling in the 2020-21 academic year. The costs for the program are feasible with two coaches (roughly $10,000 total), plus transportation to meets and uniforms, according to Dr. Aaron Zalis, superintendent of the Rolla School District.
“I predict it will probably happen, in large part because of Marty’s enthusiasm,” Zalis says. “He’s a kid magnet. Kids come in, and there’s an immediate sense of belonging. He’s intentional about that. He pays attention to things that all great teachers do – relationships.”
‘You’re all going to have to deal with conflict’
At 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning before school starts, six wrestlers (four boys and two girls) sit in Hauck’s classroom. They show up early for the team’s periodical “Captains and Coffee” meeting – an opportunity for the wrestlers to talk about leadership, positive mentality, life and whatever else comes up.
On this day, Hauck starts the session by criticizing himself for having used negative body language at practice the previous day. Hauck says he kept mentioning mistakes that the girls team had made in a match the previous day.
The six wrestlers review a handout discussing how contagious positivity can be based on a person’s “light.” Green light means a person is optimistic, composed, determined and communicating. Yellow light signals frustration, distraction, questioning, blame, excuses and doubt. Red light translates to anger, pessimism, overwhelmed, hopeless and out of control.
Suddenly, slides of Hauck at various matches appear on a screen – some of him calm, others of him yelling. The wrestlers are asked to decipher whether he was green, yellow or red at that moment.
“Look at this one – it’s red for sure,” Hauck says. “Whatever I was saying there, my actions speak way louder than my words. Us coaches are the worst advertisers for our sport ever. The crazy thing is this picture was posted on Facebook – in a positive way by a parent about how much passion I have for their kid. But if I’m a new parent to wrestling and I see a coach screaming like this, I don’t know if I want my kid to join.”
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What We Like
Other innovative health ideas by Healthy Sport Index Contest wrestling finalists:
Grant Community High School (Fox Lake, Illinois): Like Rolla, Grant Community has a large roster size (usually no more than 70 per season). The program has a varsity team, two junior varsity teams, and two freshman teams — and there are no cuts. The coach, Leonard Grodoski, created a tiered intervention program called Operation Gas Up that specifically identifies ways for coaches to build up their wrestlers’ confidence each day.
Mitchell High School (Bakersville, North Carolina): At a school with 45% of the students eligible for free or reduced lunch, the wrestling team uses different styles of wrestling to teach athletes about different cultures. The team also participated in a charity walk that raised awareness about domestic violence, including creating posters to promote the event. “Domestic abuse is a real issue in this area,” coach Ed Duncan says. “When you think about wrestlers, the image is big, tough fighters. We’re not going to fight with women. We won’t beat up on women. We’re going to protect women.”
Richmond High School (Richmond, Michigan): A couple times each month, the team practices visualization techniques that are used at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. The techniques were introduced to the team by the former head wrestling coach at the University of Minnesota. “We ask them, ‘If everything goes right, how do you want to feel?’” says Richmond coach Brandon Day. “It gets them to relax and completely let all of the stress out of their bodies.”
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Hauck asks the wrestlers how comfortable they are talking a coach down from yellow and red. Some of them seem willing to speak up. Junior wrestler Hannah O’Connor, who is attending the leadership session, has found a way to calm down assistant coach Keith Peterson. “She’ll say, ‘Coach is just a teddy bear,’ and I’ll start laughing,” Peterson says. “I love it. It gets me back in my happy place.”
The wrestlers discuss how they reset themselves emotionally when they inevitably reach yellow or red. One likes to be goofy. Another listens to music. Another visualizes his match. One wipes his face to “wipe away the negativity.”
“You’re all going to have to deal with conflict at some point,” Hauck tells them.
Some of them already do. It’s striking that hanging on the wrestling room’s bulletin board, near all of the youth flyers, is a poster with a suicide hotline number. Hauck thinks it helped one wrestler open up recently about a parent’s suicide attempt.
Another wrestler, Adam Masterson, says the sport has been an anchor in his life. He started at age 4. When he missed last season as a freshman due to hip and shoulder injuries, Masterson says he fell into the wrong crowd and started drinking lots of alcohol.
He was set to return to wrestling this season – until he was suspended from competition for the year. Masterson says vodka was found inside a Gatorade bottle in his bag at a tournament.
He can still practice with the team this season. If he wasn’t allowed to, “I might fall back into trouble, but I don’t think I will,” Masterson says. “It depends if all those old people came back to me and I started hanging with them. But I would never do that, I don’t think. … Coach Hauck is probably the best coach I’ve ever had. He teaches all the stuff that I think I need to learn. He’s there anytime you need him.”
It’s easy to wonder if Rolla’s commitment to broad participation and the personal growth of wrestlers is tied solely to Hauck, the charismatic coach who’s always on the go. The school’s principal, Jim Pritchett, says he thinks about the program’s sustainability, knowing that no one – including Hauck – will be in one job forever.
“Yes, Marty is a dynamic personality and passionate,” Pritchett says. “But having the passion and commitment to put kids first is really the piece that’s most important. It can be duplicated. We don’t want to it to fall off just because the leader goes away. We want to sustain it, and I think it’s doable, but it takes more than just a head coach. It takes support from the principal and administration and everyone, along with the coach’s vision.”
If Hauck ever needs his ego checked, he gets a daily reminder by looking at the front door of his office. There he can see a random photo of a junior high wrestler from California on the cover of a magazine.
Hauck coached the wrestler in Budapest through USA Wrestling. When word got out that a magazine was writing a cover story on the wrestler, Hauck anxiously waited to see himself featured in the story.
“That’s my right leg right there,” he says, pointing to the cover photo, which blocks out his face entirely. “For that moment, it was all about me and didn’t have anything to do with my values. It hit me that everybody gets caught in that, and it’s a selfish tendency. I put it on the back of my door to remind me every day that it’s not about me, it’s never been about me, and it’s so much bigger than me.”
Jon Solomon, a longtime journalist, is editorial director of the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program. Email Jon at [email protected]. Follow the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program on Twitter at @AspenInstSports.
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