North Carolina Wrestling Scout Report

On a fall evening in 2004, Coach Chuck Smith handed me the reins of the Rhino Wrestling Club. Among the myriad of things my mentor imparted on me that night was a clear concise statement. “You have to get belts, Marty. The kids love them and they deserve to get them. They wrestle their butts off and deserve the best we can get them.”

Coach Smith’s philosophy always kept the kids’ interests foremost in our minds. Running tournaments never made us a lot of money. We focused on getting the most mat time for the wrestlers, increasing the level of competition and handing out as many awards as we could. I don’t think there is a time where we did not medal down to fourth place and am sure that over the last ten years or so we have generally given awards out to sixth place finishers. We continue that tradition today and end each year with enough money to start the next and not much extra.

After two years of having tournaments weathered out and absorbing the resulting financial loss, we found ourselves in a position to host a tournament that awarded a championship belt to its victors. Those Rhino eXtreme belts now hold special spots on the walls of wrestler’s rooms from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. This year may see them on the walls of wrestlers from Ohio and Florida and every state in between.

The belts serve their purpose of providing an award consummate with the level of effort needed to when and are a means to achieving our goals as a club. The belts draw extremely tough competition from the entire East Coast, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, Alabama, and West Virginia. The competition makes our wrestlers better and we hope that each year we grow closer to making Fayetteville, Cumberland County and North Carolina synonymous with wrestling and excellence.

A small club with a handful of coaches does not do this on their own. This starts with a tremendous high school coach, John DeWeese of Jack Britt High School and the entire support of that school’s administration, staff and student body. From the custodial staff that opens at 530 am for us on tournament day, to the cheerleaders running concessions, to the Homecoming Queen who hands out awards to a victorious 8 year old champion this has truly been a community effort. Of special mention are two of our most special sponsors, to whom our entire county owes their gratitude, Tyler and Garry Nelson of Nelson and Nelson Chiropractic. Every city in the country should clone these two selfless individuals and make them permanent residents.

After a couple of years we were growing out of our home gym and were faced with potentially having to turn away North Carolina teams so we could let in more out of state all-star or national teams. This is a tough decision to make. How do you decide which team is better when you have never seen the out of state team?

Lucky for us that a two year continuing discussion between the Fayetteville Area Convention and Visitors’ Bureau (CVB) culminated at the right time. We had approached the CVB and discussed with them our goals of contributing to our city’s greatness. Tied to this was the fact that we were losing state and regional events to sister cities and we did not want this continue.

Over the next year the CVB recognized what successful event centers and coordinators are realizing across the nation. Wrestling is strong and growing and brings with it excellence for its residents and profit to service oriented industries. The CVB rose to the challenge and worked with us to develop a partnership with the Crown Coliseum complex. The CVB made a commitment to obtain twenty wrestling mats which would enable them to host any level of wrestling tournament in our nation. The Rhino Wrestling Club made a commitment to host a minimum of three tournaments a year for the next five years, present NC Amateur Athletic Union Wrestling (NCAAUW) and NC USA Wrestling the opportunity to host a state championship or regional championship every year for five years and to be an advocate for our city to be the host for every major wrestling event in the state.

Within weeks of signing this deal, opportunities, such as bidding for the 2007-2006 University and FILA Cadet National Championships, began to present themselves; providing validation to the financial commitment made by the CVB.

So from a small club running tournaments in a high school gym to planning 12-20 mat events in 60,000+ square feet of uninterrupted space was not a journey made by chance. It took a partnership between a club, the visitors’ bureau and a coliseum complex that looked for ways to achieve goals that benefited us all. Each group had skills and areas of expertise that complimented each other and each committed to using events to highlight our city’s excellence.