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New Jersey Herald- August 1, 2008
A Different Kind of Wrestling School- Fredon man offers place for local grapplers to improve their mat techniques
by Nick Sabatello
Fredon - The thermometer reads 90 degrees but it feels more like 190. It's the type of room you sweat in even when you're standing still. The red-padded walls and matching floor add to the toasty atmosphere.
All 10 of the grapplers in attendance at Shawn Hall's makeshift wrestling school have somewhere else they can be. They have girlfriends to take to the movies. Some have pools to swim in. All of them have couches on which to lounge. Instead, they are spending their summer night with a 46-year-old law enforcement agent.
With a thunderous crash the incumbent king of Sussex County wrestling is slammed to the mat. Within these four walls, Kodie Silvestri isn't treated like royalty.
The silver medal he brought home from Atlantic City is useless here. The man launching Silvestri is Kellen Bradley, a 141-pound junior at Rutgers University. "Kodie doesn't get taken down like that very often, " Hall said. "So that's good for him." Hall is the man behind the Skill Is poweR (SIR) wrestling school. Unsatisfied with the way he threw Silvestri the first time, Bradley
does it again. He can't let the other nine go home without seeing the
proper technique. Silvestri's shoulder hits the mat harder this time. He grimaces in pain for a second before smiling. It wasn't long ago that Bradley was getting slammed into the same mat.
He came to Hall during his days at Kittatinny High School. Before Tommy Spellman was starting for Virginia Tech, he went to Hall.
Spellman spent a Christmas Eve and a Thanksgiving in the wrestling
school/loft above Hall's three-car garage. Silvestri has gone
to SIR since he was small enough to crawl through the dog door of Hall's
home. Up until six years ago Hall taught the kids in his basement.
They didn't have padded walls back then.
"Without him I wouldn't be at where I am now," Silvestri said. "He's the biggest reason for my success."
This practice isn't limited to the past and present stars of SCIL wrestling; the future is there, too. Hall remembers when High Point's Drew Wagonhoffer came with his older
brother in diapers and they had to fight to keep him off the mat. Now,
he's squaring off with state champion Derek Valenti. Even the state champ comes to Hall before heading off to the University of Virginia later this month.
Hall moved to Sussex County from Iowa- a state known for producing
great wrestlers- in 1996. That's when the former high school biology
teacher changed careers and joined law enforcement. "When I got here, I realized I was in a hot bed of wrestling, " Hall said. The two-time All-American at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was open for business.
It started with a handful of younger kids. Then the younger kids got older and told their friends. Now, Hall has about 150 kids who keep him busy six nights a week. He
tries to keep the groups small in his 20-by-40 foot loft. "Any kid who does this on a summer night when it's 90 degrees, " Hall said. "You know they are committed to the sport."
During the season, his varsity wrestlers come to him on Wednesdays and
Sundays for specialized training. Sometimes they go over tape to
prepare for a big match. In the off-season, he chooses
traveling teams made up of his top wrestlers. On July 19, SIR wrestling
took first place at a Broadheadsville, PA. tournament. They knocked
off teams from Alabama, Easton, PA and Pleasant Valley.
At a
team camp at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, his group won all 10
dual meets. They competed against clubs from Iowa, Colorado, Missouri,
Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois and Kentucky. Next month, they will spend three days at a tournament in Long Branch. "Those tournaments help me get my name out there," Silvestri said.
"Not only that, it's hard to find competition like that in the summer."
Knowing that, Hall loads up his RV and brings his wife and
wrestlers to Iowa for a week. Its not much of a vacation but he enjoys
it. "My real passion is wrestling," Hall said. "I do other
things for a living to make money but this is really my passion. I
don't have kids so I live vicariously through these guys. These are my
kids."
The wrestlers view him similarly. The barbecues in the his backyard are just as valuable to them as the bouts.
"We all look up to him like another dad," Silvestri said. "He gets so
close with everybody on the team and does everything he can to make us
happy and have fun." Hall keeps in touch with the wrestlers long after their checks stop coming in. "We're vested in them not only for wrestling, but for life," he said.
"They are gonna come back and be the leaders of our community." |
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