IKWF reaches amazing level of success on mat
Illinois ranks No. 1 nationally in number of participants By Michael Rand
Brian Murphy of Glenbard North (Ill.) High is the No. 11-ranked wrestler nation- ally in the Class of 2013. He has a list of accolades a mile long and will wrestle in college at the University of Michigan. But before he was a household name in national circles, he honed his craft like many young wrestlers in his home state of Illinois have done: club wrestling in the Illinois Kids Wrestling Federation. “I just remember high-quality competi- tion. Usually every tournament I went to there was a really good guy that I knew about,” Murphy said, remembering his younger days in the IKWF. “I was going to be in for at least one good match at every tournament. The best way to get better at wrestling is to put yourself up against good competition. And I saw that a lot.” Indeed. That’s the norm in the IKWF, one of the country’s model youth wrestling programs. There are many rea- sons the IKWF has established such a lofty perch, but much of it can be traced to its president, Jim Considine. In addition to being the organization’s president since 1994, Considine is the Illinois State Chairman for USA Wrestling, the assistant wrestling coach at Glenbard North High, the head coach of the Villa- Lombard Cougars Wrestling Club as well as working full-time for Motorola. He jokes that he has more than 24 hours in his day, but that’s what it takes to do all of those things while managing to help grow the IKWF. When he became IKWF president in 1994, the organization had about 5,000 youth wrestlers. Now it has more than 15,000. Illinois has sur- passed California as the largest state in terms of participation, Considine says. “As much as we are proud of our national championships,” Considine said, “we are just as proud of that, that we have gotten our program to grow like that.”
38 USA Wrestler
the season and they have nothing to look forward to. One of the bylaws I wrote was, ‘who cares how many kids you enter in a weight class?’ But only two can score points. We made that change.” Perhaps more significant, though, was the IKWF’s dedication to community- based clubs. Considine saw the impact of local involvement and buy-in through the club he coached, the Villa-Lombard Cougars, and the organization worked to ensure that spread throughout the state. “There are no free agents,” he says. “The majority of the clubs are community based. You have people who care about the community, the high school program and the kids going through it. And that’s how the clubs have grown through the years. Now we have second-generations coming through. Kids who wrestled for me are now dads coaching.”
Jim Considine has played a huge role in the success achieved by youth wrestlers in the state of Illinois.
Like he said, though, Considine is still proud of those national championships, where the state has dominated in recent years. Illinois youth teams have won 16 of the last 30 titles at the USA Wrestling National Duals, including nine of the last 12.
Just how did Illinois turn itself into a national powerhouse? As is the case in most recipes, it took the right blend of ingredients and the requisite amount of time for it to all come together. “It started a while ago,” Considine said.
“We made a few changes, and I’ve been lucky enough that the people here care more about wrestling and kids and the state of Illinois than they do about them- selves. I’ve had the support of an incredi- bly great board over the years as presi- dent.”
Among the changes: Considine started coaching in 1983 when the oldest of his sons got involved with wrestling. At the time, a club could only enter two kids at one weight in end-of-year tournaments. “What does that encourage?” he asked, looking back. “Weight-cutting, number one. And kids get to the end of
Dedication trickles down to the individ- ual clubs and shows up in coaches like Joe Tholl. He’s been coaching youth wrestling since the late 1960s, with the vast majority of that time coming with the Orland Park Pioneers. His father, Joe Tholl Sr., was among the men responsi- ble for the formation of the IKWF. “Coaching wrestling dictated a lot of my life. I was going to go off to college, but instead of going into the white collar world of studying law I entered the blue collar world that gave me the time to spend with youth wrestling,” says Tholl, a plumber who works in construction. “And I’ve had many years of satisfaction because of it. When an athlete shows up at your doorstop 20 years later and you had a little bit of influence on them … the reward is the sport.”
Tholl had a wrestler finish as the state runner-up the weekend of March 8-10 at The Show, the crown jewel of the IKWF’s folkstyle season.
The event goes beyond a state tourna- ment; it’s a full-on event. The state is split into eight sections and two divisions – novice (10 to 12 years old) and senior (12 to 14). As Considine describes it, every qualifier (about 800 total) is marched out onto the mat at the beginning. During the finals, there is a grand march and the top Continued on page 39
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