Charger camp preps wrestlers for season

WITTENBERG — The Charger Intensive Wrestling Camp gave area wrestlers a chance to work on their craft in preparation for the upcoming season.

The camp was run at Wittenberg-Birnamwood High School and included 65 wrestlers between grades 3-12 from July 29-31. The number of wrestlers was the camp’s highest amount in its three-year history.

“We’ve created a pretty good program here and we have a lot of parents of good wrestlers that were looking for something a little more inexpensive than some of these other camps charge and a little more intensive. We give a real good bang for the buck here,” said Duane Potrykus, who ran the camp.

The camp opened up each morning with a run before hitting the mats to work on techniques and various drills. After a lunch break, more drills accompanied by live wrestling took place for the next two hours. A conditioning period ended the day.

Teamwork was an emphasis of the camp, as wrestlers were split into teams before competing in various activities.

“We are working on getting better at our takedowns, and then bottom position and trying to get out. We’re trying to teach kids how to be more offensive and then we go live and see what they’ve picked up from it,” said Potrykus.

Most of the wrestlers in the camp were from the Wittenberg-Birnamwood district, but also included athletes from northern schools. like Crandon and Elcho. and others from the Wausau area, like D.C. Everest.

Potrykus said he’d worked with many of the wrestlers in the past, whether it be during a youth season or training in the preseason or offseason.

The cost of the camp was $125, and included a t-shirt and daily lunches.

Functioning as Potrykus’ “right and left hand men” were Cian Fischer and Stetson Potrykus. Fischer went 47-0 and won a 2019 state title in the 120-pound weight class during his senior season at Weyauwega-Fremont. Stetson, the son of Duane, claimed fifth place at state in 2017 in the 152 class as a member of Witt-Birn.

Duane Potrykus also had help from Troy Ostrowski, the current Witt-Birn wrestling coach, as well as from other staff members from the high school and youth levels.

Potrykus was pleased with the turnout of the camp and how the camp was conducted. He also expects the camp to keep growing in size in the coming years.

“With just the way the world works right now, you have to do some training outside of your regular season,” said Potrykus. “When you can pick a camp where you are going to go hard three days and really push yourself, I believe that’s where parents are going to start sending their kids over longer camps just for the name of the guy who runs the camp.”