His wrestlers wanted to keep going after season, so a Kotzebue coach started a club

Young athletes in Alaska's bush communities often don't get many opportunities to travel for sports until they're older, so when Kotzebue elementary wrestling coach Matt Cooper heard his kids wanted to keep competing after the school season, he decided to start a club team.

The school team only gets to compete in one big meet a year, the Bush Brawl in Kotzebue, which brings in elementary, middle school and high school teams. But after the early November meet, the season is over.

Cooper got the idea for a club from Kotzebue's elementary club basketball team, the Eskimojis, and set to work getting permission from the school board to use the high school cafeteria to practice. Cooper's 'Alpha Pups' team is comprised of around 15 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders from his school team, and it made its first trip to Nome on Nov. 30.

"They're actually starting off pretty good," Cooper said. "Between (the basketball club) and now the Alpha Pups, it gives the kids a lot more opportunities to get out.

"It keeps them more eager in school too, because that's one of the rules we have is that the kids keep their grades up."

The Alpha Pups didn't have time to fundraise for their trip to Nome, so parents chipped in for plane tickets, and the team was allowed to stay at the school for the weekend.

For most of the kids, it was their first time outside of Kotzebue, aside from maybe a trip to Anchorage, and it was the first time getting to travel for sports.

The nerves were apparent Friday, Dec. 1, the first day of the meet, Cooper said. The Alpha Pups had to wrestle in t-shirts and shorts or pants because they didn't have club singlets yet, and one of the team's best wrestler, fifth-grader Finn Gregg, was pinned quickly in his first match.

"Then all of a sudden Finn came out in his next match … and definitely wasn't fazed," Cooper said. "They came out and started winning matches."

Cooper said Gregg won his next five matches, and fellow fifth-grader Jake Sheldon was 6-0 over the two days. By the time the meet was over, the two teams were pretty evenly matched, Cooper said.

Cooper's mini-wrestlers took a lesson from the pros too. Some of the kids recorded their matches on cellphones and watched the videos afterward to see what they could improve. After the first day, the kids asked if they could do a 9 p.m. practice to get ready for Saturday.

But it wasn't all about competition.

Nome coach Lahka Peacock hooked both teams up with an hour of pool time at the community pool, and the local Lions Club gave the Alpha Pups gift cards to Subway. Peacock and the Nome coaches drove Cooper's team around town, picked them up from the airport, took them back to the school from the movies and made sure they were well-fed.

"They went out of their way for us to make sure our kids were taken care of," Cooper said. "All of a sudden you see them as friends, or even family.

"A lot of the Nome kids hung out with us afterward at the movies and stuff like that. My team definitely did come out with some new friends, and vice versa."

Nome isn't much bigger than Kotzebue — about 3,800 people to 3,200 — but for the Alpha Pups, it was an opportunity to explore a new part of the state.

Cooper said he hopes to continue to see more elementary clubs pop up around the state and he hopes to make another trip with the Alpha Pups in the spring, maybe to Anchorage.

"It's just about our youth getting out there and seeing other parts of Alaska," he said. "That's mostly what my idea was to get them out there and give them something positive to do."