Students practice moves at Prescott High School Wrestling Camp.

Editor's note: This report was sent in by one of the participants in the High School Wrestling Camp.

Wrestling, the sport of winter. Every year millions of wrestlers across the U.S. alone "take up their arms" if you will and suit up for the season where despite the average temperatures being around freezing in many places, the average temperature of a wrestling room is around 90 degrees.

Wrestlers are warriors of the winter, not just physically, but mentally. Our mental winter of the year is when we are pushing ourselves to the extreme. We have so many things going on we have no idea what we are even doing anymore. Wrestling takes mental toughness, running over two miles in practice often as well as back-breaking stadiums and drilling. Then you hit the weight room to lift weights. If you're lucky, you wont have to go back to the room to do a little drilling and shave off a few extra pounds.

That's an average practice, imagine the tournaments! The average football game has around 6 minutes of actual contact. Wrestlers have six minutes of actual contact in six minutes, not in an hour plus time. Mentally, wrestling season is the winter of the many athletes who choose to participate.

What does that really mean though? That means that wrestlers are willing to give up the "spring and summer" of their mental lives to continue training. Almost all wrestlers participate in weight lifting. While the rest of the school is off partying or letting their social lives expand, wrestlers give up this time year after year in pursuit to be better prepared for the winters. If that means running in the burning temperatures, they will often time do it, all just to be better prepared and ready for the season ahead.

The wrestlers in the Prescott area know that. For that reason two of the three high schools with teams in the quad-city area sent wrestling teams to the annual Prescott Team Wrestling Camp to update their skills in this cool-off period of summer. Wrestlers coming from the high schools of Cactus, Pueblo, Washington, and Coconino joined PHS and BMHS for a camp to review the vital skills of a wrestler.

A few of the teams chose to lift weights during their necessary lunch breaks so as to be ready for the blizzard of the winter. Three renowned clinicians met with these valorous warriors to review their skills. NAIA national Champion Harrison at ERAU taught the kids with humor on the first day, reviewing basic moves and take downs. Byrd, NAIA 3x All American for ERAU, moved in the second day, and went over drilling and takedowns with the warriors on the second day, taking the athletes through an acrobatic warmup that few could compete with.

Coach Duberry, having coached Sunnyside Highschool to four back-to-back state titles in Arizona, head of a nationally ranked team containing two All-Americans, one being his own son, travelled north. Letting the younger clinicians review the basic skills, Coach went over some very useful techniques, in life as well as in wrestling. He taught the young warriors of ethos, giving examples of various great men he had met in his life time, including Coach Dan Gable, who he says he is proud to be on a name to name basis with. He went over the shared bond of brotherhood all wrestlers shared, and felt, stating that even his female financial planner had wrestled. He told of startling statistics where wrestlers dominated the successful people in the world. He challenged the wrestlers, charging them with leadership of their generation. He concluded that if wrestlers were to lead the new generation, he was not afraid. After all, he says, "...you're wrestlers, I trust you." Because he says that when wrestlers are done wrestling, all they have to do is work, they will work hard in whatever industry they are in. Because they know suffering, yet they know the light in the tunnel as well.

Despite weightlifting and practice, extra sessions were added to give every wrestler the optimum from his camp and exercise the skills they reviewed in drilling. With separate sessions set apart particularly for this reason, the wrestlers were glad, yet disappointed at the same time when the end of the Saturday morning session rolled around. Mats were rolled up, new found friends wished well, and the wrestlers all returned home, and waited for winter to roll around.