Team Alaska sees historic turnout and honors at national kids wrestling competition

The Team Alaska wrestling program sent its biggest cohort ever to a national youth competition last month in Utah, where team members earned 34 All American honors — the most in program history, and a reflection of the program’s growth in recent years.

In all, 29 Team Alaska members competed at USA Wrestling’s 2022 Kids National Championships, held June 26-28 in Farmington, Utah. The program’s previous record for All American honors was 19, set in 2013.

Three Team Alaska wrestlers were crowned champions, several finished as runner-ups and 20 total placed between the Kids Nationals tournaments, in Greco and freestyle.

In Greco, Manny Novelli of Anchorage won the 12U title at 74 pounds and Shane Ostermiller of Palmer won the 12U title at 93 pounds. In freestyle, Izzy Graham of Wasilla finished first in the 8U division at 49 pounds. She doubled as a Western Regional champion as well.

“It was nerve wracking but pretty amazing,” Amy Graham said. “She is fun to watch.”

Graham is the mother of Izzy Graham and is married to Mat-Su Matmen head coach Daniel Graham. Her daughter has been wrestling since the age of 5, and she was amazed by the efforts of the whole team as they battled the top wrestlers in the country.

“A lot of the kids did amazing,” Graham said. “When you get up into those kids’ nationals, you face everybody’s best from all over the states.”

She says the older the kids get, the bigger the brackets are at nationals, while much younger kids may only have 10 to 12 wrestlers in their brackets.

At Western Regionals, which was held in Farmington just before Kids Nationals, Mason Novelli of Anchorage (competing in freestyle in the 8U division at 45-49 pounds) and Cadan McPeck of Wasilla (competing in freestyle in the 6U division at 39-43 pounds) became the first Alaskans ever to be unanimously voted most outstanding wrestler in their respective classes. McPeck wasn’t able to compete at Kids Nationals because the tournament does not include a 6U age group.

Head coach Wesley Bockert said that in the past, it was hard to have kids participate in both Western State Regionals and Kids Nationals if they qualified because they were held in two different states. That meant families had to raise enough money for two separate trips.

“Them moving Kids Nationals to Farmington, Utah, at the same location and the exact day after Western States completed help make that turnout possible,” Bockert said.

He said the downside of that change was that it meant that many kids had to wrestle for seven days of the 10 days they were there.

“We had one kid get 39 matches,” Bockert said. “In a full season, they’d get 15 to 20 matches in an eight- to 10-week period.”

Bockert has been involved with Team Alaska since 2002 and has been in charge of the younger kids’ team since 2014, when he became the director. Prior to his promotion, he worked mainly with the older kids in high school.

“I pitched that position to try to grow the feeder program so that the older kids could have that connection,” Bockert said.

Their numbers in summer camps have grown exponentially over the years, and just this summer, they went from their usual 60-80 kids to 178.

“It’s just the buy-in from everybody around the state,” Bockert said. “The great participation and the great coaches coming out to help.”

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He said without the assistance of his great staff and network of passionate parents and dedicated coaches, none of what the team achieved this year would’ve been possible.

“It was really the community of Alaska wrestling that made that happen,” Bockert said.

He believes that the incredible showing of the team at Kids Nationals will encourage more kids and inspire more parents to join the community.

Bockert said wrestling teaches kids to push through the misery and physical grind aspect of the sport, and how to conquer it “together as a whole.”

“I don’t think every sport does that at the level wrestling does,” he said.

He said that the historic result the team produced this year is a culmination of everyone’s hard work and proof of the positive impact that the sport and programs like theirs can have on Alaskan youths.

“I think everybody can look at what they contributed and know that it impacted kids that aren’t normally in their bubble year round and just come together and make a change in their lives,” Bockert said.