Pinned to the past: Where wrestling is a passion and way of life

Sedro-Woolley and wrestling: For the past 50 years, the two have gone together. The town loves the sport, and the bonds it has created transcend generation gaps.

SEDRO-WOOLLEY — Nearly five decades separate Jonny Wicker and Ted Meamber. One is still growing up, the other has grown gray.

Little seems to link the revved-up high-school senior and the respected city councilman. But both belong to a brotherhood of wrestlers in this small logging town 70 miles north of Seattle in Skagit County, where gigantic chain-saw carvings stand on nearly every downtown corner and grappling is still king.

At this high school, the three R's are readin', writin' and rasslin'.

"Sedro-Woolley is wrestling," said Spud Walley, who coached the team from 1968 to 1984 and also had two stints as mayor of the town that calls itself the "Gateway to the North Cascades."

The bond between Wicker and Meamber runs deep. Standing together in the Sedro-Woolley wrestling room, they listen as Coach Jay Breckenridge talks about the experience of a lifetime — winning a state championship.

"It's something you'll never forget," Breckenridge tells his team. "It's a lifetime memory."

As the state marks its 50th high-school wrestling tournament, Wicker and

Meamber are bookends of one of Washington's most enduring programs. Presidents and wars have come and gone, but Sedro-Woolley wrestling rolls on.

Wicker and Meamber share a spot on a hallowed board in the wrestling room. A sign in Sedro-Woolley royal blue is emblazoned in white with the names of the school's 35 state champions who led the Cubs to six state titles.

Meamber's is among the first, Wicker's the latest.

Championship legacy

Meamber helped create the town's remarkable tradition in 1953, and Wicker carried it on in 2002. Meamber was one of the school's seven champions in the inaugural state tournament, which featured just 11 weight classes and drew 60 wrestlers from 10 schools. He captured the 133-pound title as a sophomore under Coach Bo Campbell, a legend in these parts.

"That was pretty special," the 66-year-old Meamber said in an almost reverential tone, eyes sparkling.

Wicker knows just how special. He won at 152 pounds as a junior last year as Sedro-Woolley took the Class 3A crown for the first time since 1983, Walley's next-to-last year as coach. Sedro-Woolley will try to win back-to-back titles for the first time in school history Friday and Saturday at Mat Classic XV in Tacoma.

"I've been looking at that board for a long time," Wicker said. "It's kind of special to be on that board with all those other state champions."

The wrestling legacy that began five decades ago is everywhere. Names of the 35 champions, four of whom won two titles, also are printed on the edge of Sedro-Woolley's varsity mats.

"Right where the opposing team walks in," said Rick Tingley, a 1973 state champion for Sedro-Woolley who is now an assistant coach.

Wrestlers of '53

Tradition still means a lot to Meamber. He is the only '53 champion who still resides in Sedro-Woolley, although four others who wrestled on that team also live in town or nearby — Bob Burnett, Ron Maxfield, Chuck Lederle and Russ Stamey. Burnett was the only other from the bunch to place in the '53 state tourney. He was pinned in the 145-pound final by Lincoln's Les Kleinsaser, who was named the tournament's Outstanding Wrestler. A week earlier, Burnett had decisioned Kleinsaser, 1-0.

"I think I made him mad," Burnett said with a grin.

Now as then, wrestling was a way for young men to build muscle and character. Meamber said the workouts enabled him to lug 100-pound sacks of potatoes and flour as a box boy at the local grocery store.

Wrestlers wore the navy blue "SW" on their letterman sweaters like badges of honor.

"If you could start on the wrestling team in Woolley, even then, that was something," Maxfield said.

The five keep in touch and see each other occasionally. Ask them how the sport has changed, and they're not shy about explaining why a favorite move is no longer legal. Maxfield gets down on all fours during lunch at the local Eagles club as Burnett demonstrates the "key lock." Burnett locked up his buddy's arms and gingerly rolled him over, pinning his shoulders on the carpet. Both couldn't help but laugh.

Drawing a crowd

Four of the five old wrestlers were among hundreds in the stands at the sub-regional wrestling tournament at their old high school a week ago, which the No. 1-ranked Cubs won. In Sedro-Woolley, wrestling rules, generally outdrawing basketball.

"The whole community gets involved in it," Wicker said. "It's probably the biggest sporting event that goes on around here. We get bigger crowds than any other sport. Everybody's behind you when you're wrestling. It feels good to be a part of that."

Kacy and Dave Johnson, who own the Sedro-Woolley Floral and Gifts shop just a few blocks from the high school, are regulars in the stands.

"It's always been a tradition here," Kacy said. "I enjoy the sport because no matter what size the kid is, there's a place for him."

She complains that she has to miss her first state tournament in 25 years next weekend because of a family wedding. But Diane and Cal Cole will be there. She is a '54 Sedro-Woolley grad who still follows the sport, although neither of the couple's two sons wrestled.

"These are my kids," Diane said at Monday's practice, where she handed out three-inch gold safety pins for every pin at sub-regionals.

The Johnsons don't have any wrestlers in the family, either. Their 4-year-old grandson is the next hope.

"His dad was a basketball player," Kacy says. "But I've already given him a (wrestling) singlet in Sedro-Woolley colors."

But the grandson lives in Burlington, the Mount Vernon suburb five miles west of Sedro-Woolley on Interstate 5.

"He's going to be a Tiger," she says with equal parts grin and grimace.

Where it all began

Sedro-Woolley and Burlington-Edison high schools are arch-rivals sharing a long history. When Coach Allen Learned started the Sedro-Woolley wrestling program in 1947, the only two matches were against the Tigers. Campbell took over as coach two years later, and matches were conducted with high-school boxing bouts called "smokers." Action alternated between the two.

Before 1953, Sedro-Woolley boys didn't know what it was like to wrestle on a mat. They were accustomed to elevated boxing rings with a canvas and ropes.

Burnett, in fact, boxed his first two years in high school, then turned to wrestling after breaking his hand in a bout.

Burlington-Edison has won four state championships, right behind Sedro-Woolley's six (only Moses Lake with 17 and Cashmere with 10 have more). The Tigers, whose most recent titles were in 1993 and '94, might have won in 1953 if they had competed. Burlington beat the Cubs in a dual meet that year. But Coach Francis Becoka balked when his principal told him he could only take seniors to the state tourney. He decided they'd all stay home.

Cash Stone, a junior on that Burlington team, earlier in the season had beaten Sedro-Woolley senior Ron da Silva, who won the 127-pound state title that year. After hearing what happened to Becoka in Burlington, Campbell apparently decided not to risk asking his principal if underclassmen could go.

"Bless his heart, he just put his guys in the car and off they went," Stone said.

Burnett is quick to point out that Burlington only beat his '53 team by one point, 20-19, and the two schools split that season. Sedro-Woolley won 24-16 the first time around.

Burlington was able to hire Campbell away from Sedro-Woolley in 1955, much to the chagrin of Meamber and his teammates.

"All of us felt like we were completely abandoned, because we loved Bo Campbell so much," said Meamber, who placed second at state by a point his junior year and fell to fifth as a senior after a long illness.

Coach Campbell

Campbell was a hands-on coach with cauliflower ears and a trademark matchstick in his mouth. He constantly demonstrated moves, using his wrestlers as props.

"Most of us were always hoping he wouldn't pick us," Meamber said.

Campbell, who died in the early 1990s, was a stickler about nutrition, and the wrestlers who rode in his blue DeSoto to Pullman for the state tournament found themselves in a quandary when his wife brought cookies for the trip.

"We didn't know whether to eat them and make him mad, or not eat them and insult her," Maxfield said.

In Campbell's eyes, the Cubs were also state champions in 1952. They went unbeaten that year, though there was no official state tournament.

"Bo decided we were the best," Burnett said.

Wrestling in that first state tournament was an eye-opening experience for the young boys from the mill town on Highway 20 that in 1953 had less than half of its current population of 8,658.

"I remember the excitement of going and the apprehension of not knowing what to expect," said Meamber, who will be among the dozens of men honored in a special ceremony Saturday at Mat Classic XV celebrating 50 years of state-tournament wrestling. "All of us were that way, even the coaches."

He and the other first- and second-place finishers were awarded medals. Meamber proudly pinned his to his letterman sweater, which he later let his steady girlfriend wear. Before long, medal, sweater and girlfriend were lost.

Many of the kids who started Sedro-Woolley's wrestling legacy saw it continue with sons and grandsons who wrestled. Burnett's son, Bob, placed third at state for the Cubs in 1976, helping Sedro-Woolley win its third wrestling title. A grandson placed fourth in 1993 and another won a title in '98. The next in line is a freshman at Burlington-Edison.

Reviving the tradition

Walley, a legend around town, continues to keep a close eye on the Sedro-Woolley program. When the team floundered — by its standards — for most of the 1990s, he was instrumental in bringing Breckenridge on as coach in 1998-99. It has paid off. The team has taken giant steps each year at state: from 38th, to 11th, to sixth, to second, to first.

Breckenridge, whose brother, Tony, was an unbeaten three-time state champion at Burlington-Edison, was a football and wrestling standout there himself in the 1970s, winning a state wrestling title in '78. He competed in both sports at Eastern Washington before a series of concussions ended his career.

"So I rode bulls for 15 years, because no one could tell me I couldn't," said Breckenridge, whose raspy voice fits a renegade reputation.

He is still driven by lingering questions of what might have been if not for his concussions.

"I never got to answer the question of how far I could have gone," he said. "I'll never know. That bugs me to this day."

Breckenridge drives his wrestlers relentlessly during the season and is a master motivator. Each year, he brings in Joe Seay, who coached the 1996 U.S. Olympic team and Sammy Henson, a former national freestyle champion, to speak at the team's summer camp.

Breckenridge promised last year's wrestlers that if they won a state title he'd commemorate it with his first tattoo. "SWHS state champions 2002" was stenciled on his thick left calf, appropriately by one of his former wrestlers. Breckenridge left room below for future champions.

The 43-year-old, who is married with six children (five of them girls), spends quality time with his team year-round. They hunt and fish together and bale hay at his Burlington farm. On Thanksgiving morning, the team went on a 90-minute run up Chuckanut Mountain, a peak 10 miles northwest of town.

When Breckenridge isn't coaching, he's an elementary-school P.E. teacher.

"I've got every little kid in the world wanting to be a wrestler," he said.

The next generation

Breckenridge's team is fed by Sedro-Woolley's Steel Claws youth program. Many of his varsity wrestlers got their start in the club, which sometimes eclipses 100 and has kids as young as 5. The future Cubs train in Sedro's wrestling room, mentored by their high-school idols.

Whether they are 7 or 17, they have wrestling in their blood. Sophomore Ethan Sandelin, a Steel Claw graduate who was part of last year's title team, can point to his grandfather's name — Dan Bartek, 1961 — on that revered board of champions in the Sedro-Woolley wrestling room.

Senior Jehra Moore, who placed second at state at 215 last season, has one last chance to add his name.

"Every day, we all look at that board and picture our name up there," he said.

Next weekend, maybe that dream will come true for Moore and a teammate or two. Some day, perhaps his son, or his son's son, will share the same dream. In Sedro-Woolley, wrestling is a link between generations. And winning is a way of life that spans five decades.