Senior high schools opened wrestling camps on April 9 to prepare middle school students for wrestling at a high school level.

Wrestling coaches Bryan Kenney and Eric Semifero are hosting one camp for future Plano East students to introduce them to the basics of wrestling and offer experience prior to joining a school team.

“It’s going to help everybody,” Semifero said. “When the freshmen come in next year, hopefully most of them [will] have had six weeks of experience already.”

The wrestling club is run through the Plano Sports Association (PSA) and led by the coaches of the Plano senior high schools. Students work with the coaches for six weeks and four nights a week, for one hour every night. After the course, the three teams compete against each other to decide a middle school champion.

“With opening [wrestling clubs] up to six graders, in two [or] three years we’ll have kids that have wrestled three years with our style of wrestling, so they know our offense [and] defense once they come in here,” Kenney said. “It’s not starting from square one; we’re starting [with] a three [or] four year wrestler once they get into highschool.”

Kenney worked with PSA and the district athletic directors to give middle schoolers the opportunity to try the sport before they enter high school. He has organized similar clubs in Richardson, Frisco and Tampa Bay, Florida. This is his first year teaching in Plano.

“I’m excited,” Kenney said. “There really wasn’t a kids wrestling presence in Plano until this.”

Allen, Richardson, Wylie and other districts in the Collin County area include wrestling as an option to middle school athletes, but Plano ISD currently does not have school wrestling teams below a highschool level.

“With being a first year wrestler competing in varsity, in the toughest district in the state, it [is] one of those things where either they quit or they [get] good quickly,” Kenney said. “Our guys really stepped up this year and we threw a lot of them into the fire.”

The girls team took first place in district this year, receiving gold in every weight category but two. Next year, Prosper High School will compete in the same district as Plano. Their boys team won first at the UIL District Championships and then went on to place second in the state.

“Our district went from being difficult to extremely difficult in the matter of a month,” Semifero said.

Kenney and Semifero will run another program in the summer and plan on continuing to host camps for years to come in order to bring in more wrestlers to the school.

“We definitely have our work cut out for us coming in the next year, but I think starting this middle school program over the next year or two is going to allow us to compete more and more at a higher level,” Semifero said.