Dan"The Man" Russell's visits THS and shares more than just wrestling

This past weekend I was fortunate to host one of my personal heroes at my home. Coach Dan Russell visited Maple Valley last weekend to put on a clinic for our wrestlers and help prepare several of my boys for the pre season nationals in Iowa this Saturday. For those of you that don’t know coach Russell I should probably give a brief bio. Besides being a man of faith and pastor of the Four Square Church in Battle Ground Washington, he was a 4X NCAA national Champion for Portland State, Greco Roman World Champion, Olympian, and currently on staff with the USA wrestling national team. Additionally, he is one of the most gifted and animated clinicians in the country and I love watching him work. One of my goals as a coach in our community is to expose our athletes to national and world level coaches. I love the fact that our middle school and high school wrestlers in Maple Valley had the opportunity to not only learn wrestling moves from this world class clinician, but to listen to his stories about believing in your dreams and how to motivate yourself in during tough times. Dan tells great stories about his youth, college and international wrestling career and the tales always comes back to two essential questions that Dan thinks all athletes have to ask themselves: “Have I given my best effort in preparation for this competition and am I ready to go out there and do my best?” According to Dan, if you can answer yes to both questions you have already won and you are already a champion. I love the message related to the questions and one of my program goals this year is to get all coaches in the Maple Valley wrestling community to share the message and questions with our wrestlers. I want our wrestlers to not only take Dan's questions and use them to help prepare for there athletics, but for their challenges and competions off the mat as they prepare for life outside of school.


Though I have seen Dan put on clinics before, I have not had an opportunity to visit and converse with him until last Friday night. After sharing a meal with my family, we sat in the kitchen and shared wrestling and coaching stories for a while. Our conversation started by discussing the upcoming wrestling season and how tough THS wrestling is going to be. Coach Russell follows 4A wrestling in our state closely and wanted to discuss the process that the THS wrestling program has gone through over the past 6 years to be in a position to contend for a state title this year. One of the first things I identified for him is that fact that there is a lot of support for wrestling in our community and we have great programs in place for all ages and skill levels of wrestlers. As I answered his questions and followed up with questions of my own, I realized that we were talking less and less about wrestling and more about making gains and improvements at a systems level. At the end of the conversation, I was energized and excited about the direction of the Maple Valley wrestling program and about the work I am doing as a teacher and leader in our learning community. It is not enough to be a good coach or teacher if your goal is to make significant and lasting gains consistently; you have to have both program support and an effective system. I feel good about the fact that I am in the correct system and programs as a coach and educator in relation to the professional and personal goals I have set for myself.

The High School Wrestling Season is only 18 days away,

GO BEARS!