A U.S. Army Reserve Palletized Load System M1075 truck pulled up on the east side of Parsons High School Tuesday, loaded down with wrestling mats.
Parsons Wrestling Club Coach J.R. Keene, Coach Kato Barr-Miller, PHS Athletic Director Chris Ball and a group of students helped the soldiers unload the mats and move them into the high school wrestling room.
It’s a great day,” Keene said.
The mats arrived as a part of a bilateral agreement between the Parsons Wrestling Club and the U.S. Army Reserve.
“We are going to store these mats for them because they can no longer store them, and we can use them whenever we want because of that,” Keene said. “It's great for our club. It’s a big step in the right direction. The mats we are using right now, one of them the wrestling club bought, used in 1995 from Emporia High School, so it is probably actually from the 80s.
“The other one we’ve been using from LCC is from the same time,” Ball said. “It was their competition mat back then.”
The coaches said the mats can also be used at the middle school so all three groups of youths - high school, middle school and Parsons Wrestling Club (ages 5 to 14) can benefit.
“It’s a really good thing for us,” Keene said.
Keene said they have raised enough through the club to buy one of their own mats, and then they have a donor who is going to give money towards another one, but they have to raise two-thirds of the cost. They have applied to the Parsons Area Community Foundation to see if they can get a grant to help with the remainder of the cost. Those grants are usually announced in April.
With those, Keene said, they will be able to have brand new competition mats across the board.
One of the competition mats they are using now, Ball said, was bought in 1997 and they still use it for every competition.
“So we are able to upgrade a little bit for the safety of the kids, and make sure we are staying in line, " Ball said.
“The high school corner mat,” Ball said pointing to the corner of the room, “is from 1983. So, if you take care of these things, they will last a long time. But with our tournaments, as big as they have gotten, we really need five total mats to do that.”
Ball said about 10 years ago there were about 60 youths in the wrestling club. COVID then hit and they couldn’t wrestle for a couple of years, which depleted the number of participants. About two years ago there were 20 youth, last year there were 40 some and this year Keene said they have about 67 youth wrestling in the Parsons Wrestling Club.
Ball said at the high school level there are about 21 boys wrestling and four girls, so it is a very popular sport in Parsons.
The U.S. Army Reserve will be given access to the mats whenever they need them for training purposes.
“It’s an agreement that benefits all of us,” Ball said.