This year the Wolverines wrestling team is roughly 13 members strong. Several are new, but many are returning, including head coach Tad Bremer, along side his wife Sabrina Bremer. This will be their seventh year.

“It’s all about the kids. I come back for the kids,” Sabrina said when asked what keeps her coming back.

“Every year, it’s a different group of characters,” Tad responded to the same question. “But they all have that same spirit, adventures. There’s a little bit of piracy in there, swashbuckling out to conquer new lands. We get to go to places some of the other sports don’t,” he said, like Bremerton and Aberdeen, and a few places further north as well.

Over the past years, many of the wrestlers have been new to the sport. There is a wrestling program now for elementary students, and Tad is beginning to see those wrestlers come up through the ranks.

There are three women this year, each one small yet fiesty, according to Tad. Chelsi Pittman has been wrestling for three years now and went to regionals last year.

“Honestly I hope to do better this year than last year,” Pittman told the Journal. “I’m really hoping I can make it to state.”

For those interested in taking up the sport, Pittman explained that wrestling is a good base sport and teaches athletes skills they can take with them when they play other sports.

“It looks scary but it’s not,” Pittman said. “If you have another sport you like and want to succeed in, wrestling is one of the better sports for that because so much goes into it”

Pittman herself also competes in track and has found wrestling to be a complementary sport.

While it may not be as scary as it looks, the learning curve for wrestling is long.

“Unfortunately, wrestling is a tough sport. it isn’t a short ride to success. You have to put in the work,” Tad said, telling the story of one student, who during Tad’s first year of coaching, not only started winning matches but made it to state.

“He was a senior, and I had no idea, but in three years he had never won a match,” Tad said. “That’s just the perfect culmination of what wrestling can be. You’re going to lose, that’s how life is. You’re going to lose things. We lose our minds, lose time, and a lot of people don’t know how to handle loss. It can become very crippling. You tend not to see that with wrestlers.”

To help these young wrestlers, they don’t not overwhelm them by teaching a slew of moves. Instead, Tad works with the students to hone one or two moves. Pittman, he said has perfected the a Half-Nelson into a pin. Grayson Mathews is getting the Fireman’s Carry down, while Dylan Lee likes the Olympic roll.

“Bruce Lee had a saying, ‘I don’t fear a man who knows 10,000 kicks, I fear a man that knows one kick very well,” Tad said.

The Wolverines’ next match will be at Aberdeen Dec. 21.