<\/a>A youth wrestler jumps into his mother’s arms during Saturday’s elementary school age wrestling tournament at Thunder Mountain Middle School. (Klas Stolpe \/ Juneau Empire)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Instilling a love of the sport is critical to having a vibrant community in that sport.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Even in my hometown of Little Norway the herring toss champions give back by hosting clinics on how to throw and catch those slimy silvery little fishies.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The fact that so many teenagers are choosing to spend their weekend in a gym helping out and supporting elementary-age tournament grapplers speaks volumes.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
And I have always been impressed by the parents of all young athletes.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Parents wake up earlier than their athletes to get them to whatever sport is in season and are patient, helpful and supportive.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Wrestling isn’t always spectator friendly to new parents, until they understand the rules, scoring and format,” Hass said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
As the matches wound down Saturday, it was announced that the Kolbjorn Arndt Memorial Scholarship was awarded to youth grappler Janessa Dutton.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
She will receive $2,500 to attend a summer wrestling camp of her choice.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Coaches said Dutton exhibits all the positive attributes that Kol did… she works hard in practice, is open-minded and coachable, is a caring teammate and loves wrestling.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
I could have had all those qualities too as a tiny Little Norway wrestler…If I only would have had a handful of high school wrestlers helping me as well.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I could have been a wrestler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":957,"featured_media":116303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[568,709,479],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-116302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-sports","tag-column","tag-junior-sports","tag-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116302"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=116302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}