Ellsworth pee wee coach Adam Atherton teaches Brendan Hamby a move at Sunday’s home tournament at Ellsworth High School.PHOTO BY TAYLOR VORTHERMS
ELLSWORTH — Beneath any successful high school program lies a foundation on which it was built. For the Ellsworth wrestling team, that groundwork begins at the pee wee level.
On Sunday, nearly 250 tiny wrestlers in grades 3 and 4 took turns dancing around the mats in the high school gymnasium for the Ellsworth program’s only home tournament of the season. With many clad in loose-fitting singlets and oversized headgear, matches sometimes involved giggling but more often concluded with tears.
There to restore confidence in Ellsworth’s youngest wrestlers after a tough loss were coaches Travis Hardison and Adam Atherton.
The pair has been coaching Ellsworth’s pee wee program for more than a decade, but the EHS team has only recently developed into one of the state’s best.
What has made the difference, EHS coach J.F. Burns said, is the addition of Logan Walsh’s club — Wrestlers Way.
“The key has been the youth work and the year-round instruction Logan supplies,” Burns said. “He focuses on wrestling 24-7, 365 days of the year.”
Two years ago, Walsh transformed a 40-by-50-square-foot garage on Whitmore Way near Graham Lake into his gymnasium. The Madison native offers year-round clinics to all wrestlers from peewee to high school level.
Prior to that, Walsh graduated from the University of Maine in 2008 with a master’s degree in exercise physiology. He then created the club in Belfast, where fewer than 10 wrestlers trained with him on a regular basis over those few years. Since relocating to Ellsworth, that number has increased to almost 50.
“Wrestling is a family,” Walsh said. “It’s a big community that requires more than just a couple coaches.”
Some of the wrestlers who have been with Walsh since the beginning of his coaching career happen to be four of Ellsworth’s state champions: freshman Peyton Cole (132), junior Dagan Berenyi (145), junior Connor Petros (152) and sophomore Trent Goodman (160).
Logan Walsh, owner of the Ellsworth wrestling club called Wrestlers Way, instructs an Ellsworth pee wee wrestler, Kobe Swett, during a match at Sunday’s home tournament at Ellsworth High School.
To Atherton, who also is an assistant coach for EHS, those athletes’ success and their shared background with Walsh’s club is no coincidental link.
“Wrestling in this area has come leaps and bounds,” Atherton said. “When you have a good staple in the community like Logan, who is really pushing the sport, it is constantly escalating the quality of wrestlers.”
This season, the EHS team notched both Class B Eastern Maine and state championships. The program had never before edged fellow Penobscot Valley Conference rival Foxcroft Academy for the regional title, and the Eagles hadn’t won States since 1982.
Atherton said he has noticed the skill level in his wrestlers improve over the last several years, with more of an emphasis on technique rather than muscle.
“These kids are becoming so technically sound, they take strength right out of the equation,” he said. “They learn how to use every part of their body.”
Atherton described what it’s like watching Goodman wrestle when he and an opponent are locked up on the mat.
“He’s got a hand here, a foot there…” Atherton began. “The other kid is just swimming across the mat because he can’t grab onto anything.”
More Ellsworth wrestlers — from elementary to high school age — have joined Walsh’s club over the past two years. While coaches affiliated with the school like Hardison, Atherton and Burns are not allowed by the Maine Principals Association to train their athletes in the offseason, Walsh has full access to those wrestlers.
“They stay well versed rather than just shelving it and then relearning it in the fall,” Atherton said. “They’re staying current, and they’re improving.”
Walsh also trains wrestlers on the Bucksport and Mount Desert Island high school teams, which he said is strengthening the quality of wrestling in Hancock County.
“It makes every kid push that much harder,” Walsh said. “They should feel lucky to have kids close enough who can challenge them.”
And as is often the case, a good team attracts better talent.
Burns said three of his top wrestlers who did not live in Ellsworth — Cole, Berenyi and Goodman — chose to attend EHS partly because of its improving wrestling team.
“Once you attract one, it’s like a magnet,” Burns said. “That’s how you form a great program.”
The annual Ellsworth pee wee tournament has more than doubled in sized since it was first organized three years ago, when 103 kids competed in the event.
On Sunday, Hardison and Atherton were not easy to spot in the crowded gymnasium, with the pair falling somewhere on the relaxed end of the coaching style spectrum.
Walsh, on the other hand, is a self-described “intensity.” From the corner of the mat on his hands and knees, he shouted out specific instructions to an Ellsworth wrestler until his own face turned pink.
But once the match ended, Walsh scooped up the crying child, who was crushed by his defeat, and carried him off the mat while offering words of encouragement.
“We’re all different — that’s why we work well together,” Walsh said. “When you have all these coaches coming together, it creates one big core group.
“That’s just what these kids need.”