Growth of Devils Lake wrestling program forcing the need for bigger facilities

In 1993, Devils Lake wrestling coach Dennis Flynn was promised a wrestling room.

More than three decades later, the team is coached by Dennis’s son, Brendon, and it still doesn’t have personalized wrestling facilities.

With the recent, rapid growth of the Devils Lake wrestling program, the teams are running out of space to hold practices. There are more than 80 youth wrestlers, more than 40 high school boys and over 20 high school girls.

“It’s to the point now that something needs to get done, now that we have the girls program. This program’s growing, and we’re to the point where we’re outgrowing the facilities,” said Josey Ness, head coach of the Devils Lake Shooting Starz Wrestling Club. “And honestly, we’re too late now. We’re not set up for this amount of kids. And we’re gonna have to act quickly, because when you get to be too congested, now you’re not giving them the adequate mat time.”

Wrestling in Devils Lake has come a long way — from nearly getting cut in the mid-2010s, to now having more kids than they know what to do with. It’s been kept afloat largely due to the Shooting Starz, a non-sanctioned club for kids in grades K-6 that feeds into the high school program.

It’s a good problem to have, stressed current Devils Lake boys’ wrestling coach Brendon Flynn. But it’s an urgent one nonetheless.

“It’d be nice to have our own home and just be able to practice safely sometimes,” Flynn said. “We need to invest in our kids. I know things take money, but at the same time, I think there’s enough money where if we really wanted to, I think we could find it.”

Currently, the high school teams practice in a space behind the bleachers in the Devils Lake Sports Center. That same gym is used for the Devils Lake boys’ and girls’ basketball teams. So, every time the bleachers need to be pushed back for a big game or tournament, the wrestlers have to roll up their mats and put them away.

A wrestling mat costs around $15,000-20,000. The tape alone costs $100 just to roll the mats up once. With the wear and tear that they get from being set up so many times, they don’t last as long.

“So that’s a big expense right there,” said Jeremy McCarthy, president of the wrestling board. “If we could just keep them flat, we could get how many more years out of it by not having to roll it up constantly, every single day.”

Added Devils Lake girls’ wrestling coach Fields Olson: “Velcro is Velcro. It’s not meant to last forever.”

The Devils Lake Shooting Starz

A feeder wrestling program has existed for many years in Devils Lake. The specific iteration of the club that remains today, with folkstyle wrestling, was started in 1998.

“If you don’t have a feeder program, you’re gonna die,” Flynn said. “That’s just the way it is. Doesn’t matter what sport you’re in.”

The group is usually run by parents whose kids are involved, with new families cycling in when the others age out of it. The current head coach, Ness, is in his son Rustyn’s last year with the Starz. The club is split into two groups, one for the K-2 kids and another for the 3-6.

The coaches keep things as basic as possible with the younger class. The focus is all on agility, which trains their bodies for when they’re old enough to start learning some moves. The older group gets to learn more about technique and develop some skills.

The kids start competing in January. They usually get a couple weekends off in February, Ness said, but they resume competing all the way until the end of March.

“We give the kids the opportunity to come to the tournaments. If they choose not to, it’s not mandatory,” Ness said. “And I think that’s the key thing, is we’re not pushing the kids to where it’s not becoming fun anymore. They’re wrestling at their pace of what they want. And as long as they’re learning and liking the sport, the rest of that will come as they mature and get older.”

The sport of wrestling goes back a long way for Ness. His dad, who was also a wrestler, introduced him to the sport when Ness was in kindergarten. Ness later became a three-time state champion wrestler for Devils Lake High School. He even got recruited by NDSU and Wisconsin.

“I didn’t pursue it so much,” Ness said. “I kind of got to the point in my career where if I was going to school just to wrestle, I had to decide if that was worth the length of time… So I didn’t finish it out, but I was recruited.”

When Rustyn was three years old, Ness started helping out with the youth program — naturally preparing to coach his son when he got old enough. Ness was named the new head youth coach four years later, when Rustyn was seven. And now he’s been in that position for four years and counting. Rustyn is 11 and will age out of it after this winter.

“There’s a lot of values that kids develop through the years, not just for the sport, but for later in life,” Ness said. “And that’s why I’ve come to realize that this sport was actually more important to me than I thought.”

McCarthy, who’s essentially the coaches’ boss and leads fundraising efforts, is relatively new to the wrestling family. His oldest son, Devils Lake sophomore Cayden McCarthy, plays a sport in every season: football in the fall, hockey in the winter, then baseball in the spring and summer. But the McCarthys were never a wrestling family.

That was until McCarthy’s neighbors, who are wrestlers, talked his younger son Jack into wrestling. Jack has now been in the youth program for three years. His dad has been on the board for two.

“He wanted to try it out one year, and we’ve been going ever since,” McCarthy said. “He’s enjoyed it. Found something he likes to do, so you can’t say no to him.”

The Starz had 12 state placers last year, including four first-place winners. Boys and girls were both represented.

“It shows how well our coaches, they do a great job with all these kids,” McCarthy said. “Managing 80 kids between five of you, and keeping them kindergarteners engaged, it’s a fun thing to watch.”

In the time McCarthy’s been on the board, the number of kids in the youth program has gone from 51 to 84. It’s gone from the 70s to the 80s just in the last year.

“I love seeing the interest because it’s only benefitting these kids mentally for later in life, as well as being mentally strong, being able to go and compete on their own,” Ness said. “It’s a different mindset when you step on that mat all by yourself, and not being able to count on anybody on your team to try to win a match for you. You’ve gotta overcome all that mentality stuff that’s going on.”

Ness can remember when there were only 25-30 kids in the program. And with the newly-sanctioned high school girls’ wrestling program, the participation in girls’ youth is increasing too.

“I want those kids to be able to grow and advance as much as they can in that season, and then it’s up to us coaches to provide that to them,” Ness said. “And if our hands are tied because of the facility, the size of what we have, we’re not giving the kids what they deserve.”

The Starz practice in the gym at Minnie H Kindergarten Center. There are 44 kids in the K-2 division, who all have to cram into a tight space that hardly even leaves enough room for their backpacks and winter coats.

“And this is all they get, is a 40-by-40 space,” McCarthy said. “It’s just — it’s not right.”

The coaches have to balance the line between keeping practice lengths reasonable and allowing kids to get enough mat time. They hold practices on Mondays, Tuesday and Thursdays, which usually range from about two to three hours in the evenings.

Ideally, Ness would want a facility where they can hold quicker practices right after school.

“We go till 8:00. It’s getting kind of late for these kids to be staying up that late at a gym working out,” Ness said. “I don’t think these young kids should have to be out past 6:30, 7 at night, so they’re getting their adequate rest. So it’s not just the sport. It’s taking care of the kids, making sure kids are getting their adequate sleep. And I honestly think the interest would probably continue to grow if some of those practices weren’t so late at night. I think some kids don’t do it because Mom and Dad don’t want them getting home so late.”

McCarthy said there’s been some talk in the past about building an extra area on the east side of the Sports Center. But any potential progress was delayed back in 2014, when the program was put on notice and nearly cut from the school. It took years for the numbers to be large enough again to justify building a whole new facility.

But they’re up. And they’re only rising.

“The youth program has been a blessing,” Flynn said, “and it’s just continuing to thrive, which is awesome.”

The high school program’s resurgence

The Starz are a large reason the program survived that 2014 scare.

“When we were on the chopping block,” Ness said, “what saved the program is people told the school board, ‘Come down and look at our feeder program. We have numbers. You’ve gotta give us a couple more years.’”

The program had two years to get its numbers up, along with Devils Lake girls’ hockey at the time. As the youth parents kept the Starz Club afloat, they were confident the younger kids graduating into the high school ranks would fix the problem.

“We had some great parents that stepped up and really kept our youth program alive and were able to get kids,” Flynn said. “And the most important thing is they made it fun. They made it fun for the kids and they kept it fun.”

The head high school coach at the time was Todd Lambrecht. Once a state champion wrestler for Devils Lake, Lambrecht played college football at the University of Mary and was named an NAIA All-American. He went on to have coaching stints in South Dakota and Nebraska before returning to Devils Lake as the head wrestling coach during the 2012-13 school year. He was assigned with the daunting task of taking over a dying program.

“Whether I had wrestled here or not, whether I was a state champion here or not, my passion would still be there for the kids and the program,” Lambrecht told the Grand Forks Herald at the time. “But that I did wrestle here does mean something to me. We took a lot of pride in our program back then. I want these kids to feel that same pride. And I think they do.”

Lambrecht’s hiring sparked the beginning of the uphill climb for Devils Lake wrestling. Once a program robust with state champions like Lambrecht, Flynn and Ness, the Firebirds had only won one dual in the two years prior to Lambrecht’s tenure.

Lambrecht brought on Olson — now the head coach of a Devils Lake girls’ wrestling team that didn’t even exist at the time — as his assistant in 2014. Olson had previously coached junior high wrestling.

“Once you connect with those first-year wrestlers, you plant that seed of ‘It’s about wrestling, not winning,’” Olson said. “Then you kind of hook them for life.”

The program was officially no longer on notice at the end of the 2015-16 season. Later that year, Flynn joined Lambrecht as an assistant coach.

Flynn, the son of Devils Lake’s former longtime wrestling coach, won two state championships for the Firebirds in the early 2000s. He went 140-26 during his high school career, including 38-3 as a senior. He went on to get signed by the University of Minnesota wrestling team.

Flynn took over the Devils Lake program in 2017, and has now been the head boys’ wrestling coach for the last seven years. Lambrecht eventually transitioned back to coaching football. He was Devils Lake’s defensive coordinator for two years before being named the new head coach in 2020. The Firebirds’ football team made the playoffs this fall and put together its best record since 2017.

And the wrestling program has only continued to grow under Flynn’s leadership.

“Building the program is just something, you either have it or you don’t,” Flynn said. “And it’s just being able to relate to people and relate to kids. I have this joke I always say: You’ve gotta ask a kid at least 17 times before they’ll come out. But that’s just a lot of answered prayer, providing kids and getting the interest.”

Flynn stressed that a program’s success starts at the top. In order to get the younger kids interested, the older kids have to set an example and invest themselves in the experience.

“If they don’t buy into your program, and they don’t buy into what you’re about, I could have fell flat on my face and we’d be talking a different story right now,” Flynn said. “But, credit to the kids to really wanting something, and really wanting to be a better person and a better version of themselves.”

The Devils Lake boys’ team won each of its first three duals this season. The Firebirds also had four wrestlers place in the top six of their weight class at the Mandan Lions Tournament. They’re coming off a year where they sent 18 wrestlers to state.

Their goal is no longer about just building or maintaining a program. They’re in it to win the East and emerge victorious in state duals. That’s how far they’ve climbed. A decade ago, they were lucky just to win a regular-season dual or to have enough kids for a team.

“Just getting them to really believe, ‘Hey, we can beat the Bismarcks, we can beat the Fargos. And we can compete with these guys,’” Flynn said. “It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve definitely put them through the tests and fires. Because I have a mentality where I want to find out now if you can handle it, and I don’t want to find out later. So it’s a true testament to the kids and their resilience, because it wasn’t easy at first… We’re not the underdog anymore.”

The continued success of the Starz helps, too, because there are always new wrestlers coming in when the seniors graduate.

“We got through that tough time. We’re winning. We’re successful,” Ness said.

Flynn said they’ve never had to go more than one year through a rebuilding phase, which is rare for a small school like Devils Lake. Most small-town teams have a wider variance from year to year, whereas the Firebirds have become a well-oiled machine.

“Look at the high school team, what they’re doing now. There’s a lot of Shooting Starz kids that are on that team,” Ness said. “They’re competitive. They can compete with schools. They’re ranked in the state now as a dual team. This feeder program is very important because these kids have a lot of mat time, and learned a lot by the time they get to the high school level. And at that point, the advanced learning of the sport, it’s keeping pace with the rest of the competition. And that’s why the numbers are growing. Kids want to be part of a successful program.”

Flynn, with his own wrestling days behind him, sees himself in the kids he coaches. He said he remembers all the people who aided his personal development, and now he wants to be that figure for all the up-and-coming kids in the community.

“That’s why I get so nuts on the side, is just because I’m so involved with the kids,” Flynn said. “And when they’re wrestling, I’m wrestling.”

The emerging girls team

One detail not yet covered was what happened to Olson after Lambrecht left the wrestling program.

The answer? He was deployed to Afghanistan.

Olson grew up in Devils Lake. He started wrestling in sixth grade, when it was a park board program. The kids would wrestle at various elementary schools, and high school wrestlers served as the coaches.

“That’s what broadened my interest in wrestling,” Olson said. “Even starting as a sixth-grader, I wish I would have started earlier.”

Olson continued wrestling through his high school years, during D. Flynn’s tenure. Olson became the junior high coach while Dennis was still coaching.

But after two years, Olson, a member of the North Dakota National Guard, was deployed. So he stepped away from Devils Lake wrestling and started a family.

Olson remained away from the sport until his oldest son, Fausten, decided he wanted to join the youth program. Olson started coaching again, helping out with the Starz.

Fausten ended up not sticking with wrestling, choosing basketball as his winter sport instead. Today, Fausten is a high school senior and was recently named the school’s homecoming king. He was on the state champion basketball team that ended a 99-year state title drought last winter, and he was one of the starting five in their season opener just a couple of weeks ago. Fausten is also the starting center fielder on the baseball team. Olson didn’t hesitate to say that baseball is now Fausten’s best sport.

But despite Fausten no longer wrestling, Olson stuck with the program. He was an assistant under Lambrecht for a few years, until he got deployed to Afghanistan.

When he got back from Afghanistan, he received a promotion that moved him to Bismarck. That kept him away from Devils Lake for two more years.

But finally, in the early 2020s, he was assigned to Devils Lake. He returned home.

“I happened to come back to Devils Lake; received a position on camp,” Olson said. “And it just so happened that the girls’ wrestling really picked up. And at that point, they were establishing two separate programs. So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll throw my name in the hat, see what happens.’ And then here I am.”

Girls’ wrestling was officially sanctioned in the state of North Dakota in 2021. Even in that short time, Olson has already seen the program develop.

Last year, the girls’ roster size sat in the 12-15 range. Three of them graduated or transferred after the season. The team started this year with nine kids. Olson was realistically hoping to get that number up to 15, in order to fill 13 weight classes.

He now has 21.

“So the amount that came out this year obviously just kind of blew away all expectations I had,” Olson said.

Olson held open-mat sessions for the girls during the summer. He stressed the importance of word-of-mouth to get numbers up.

“There might be a girl that just has a friend that wrestles, comes by and watches it and is like, ‘Well if they can do it, maybe I should try it,’” he said.

The girls have already produced an NAIA wrestler in Jenna Gerhardt. They sent four wrestlers to state last year. They won back-to-back duals in a meet on Dec. 12 this season.

“High school is a flash. Just get involved with stuff,” Flynn said. “It’s awesome to see how women’s wrestling has grown in the last 10-15 years. It’s insane how fast and how big it’s grown across the country. And it’s really because it gives these girls that might not have went out for basketball or went out for hockey, it gives them an opportunity. And then it gives them a chance to go take that skill and go get ‘em a college education somewhere.”

But like all the other ages and levels of wrestling in Devils Lake, the facilities remain a concern.

“The biggest obstacle for me has been practice space,” Olson said. “I’m aware that the school board is aware of it. However, it’s one of those things where, what’s the solution? For me as a head coach, I’m gonna always, first and foremost, look out for my program. So if I have to find an area that is suitable for my athletes, I’m gonna.”

With a roster about half the size of the boys’, the issue doesn’t affect the girls quite as severely right now. Olson said the team could be okay with space that just supports a single full mat. But the boys ideally need space for two full mats, and the youth wrestlers need way more space with their program surpassing 80 kids.

The demand is high for just an overall revamp of the practice facilities.

“There’s a definite need to have an isolated area for wrestling, period. Regardless of boys or girls,” Olson said. “I would say that would be the biggest obstacle and the biggest challenge we have right now.”

The importance of wrestling in a kid’s life

Ultimately, these efforts to upgrade the practice spaces are part of a mission to keep the Devils Lake wrestling program alive and thriving.

The community has seen what it’s like when a program is on the chopping block. And with the success it’s risen to, they don’t want a repeat of that 2014-16 period.

“It’s a double-edged sword right now because both programs are really growing,” Flynn said. “And now we’re trying to figure out space for everyone.”

Flynn has stayed committed to the sport of wrestling for so long because of how it’s shaped his life. Not only is he trying to help kids have success in their sport, but he’s trying to teach them lessons that will help them down the road.

“The thing with wrestling is, if I win or lose, it’s on me. And such is life,” Flynn said. “So I’m gonna get exactly what I put in. If I work really hard, I’m gonna find success… It’s very much an individual sport, but I have to rely on other people and learn to trust other people, and learn to trust myself to help me accomplish those goals.”

It’s that pursuit of individual problem-solving that can be applicable to many facets of life.

“Once you get out there, you’re kind of on your own,” Flynn continued. “And that’s what wrestling is. That’s what it teaches you. So there’s a reason why a lot of wrestlers get recruited by Navy SEALs and the military… There’s an old saying by Dan Gable that says, ‘Once you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy.’”

One of those wrestlers happens to be Olson. He’s faced challenges well beyond the difficulties of wrestling in his own life, with his career in the National Guard taking him from North Dakota to Afghanistan.

He echoed Flynn’s sentiment.

“One of my biggest things, as we look at society itself, is personal accountability,” Olson said. “And wrestling is a prime example of that because it’s you and one other person. You have nobody to blame. You have to deal with the wins; you have to deal with the losses. As an individual, it makes you mentally tough to face challenges in life.”

In regards to wrestling itself, that philosophy shows up in pulling out gritty victories. It shows up in finding ways to win even when things don’t go in a wrestler’s favor.

“You’re going to face adversity in life. But it’s what you do with that adversity that’s gonna define you as a person,” Olson said. “I’d rather have a girl win ugly than lose pretty. And the reason I say that is because whatever it takes on that mat, it doesn’t have to be cookie-cutter technique, but if you have the heart, you have the drive…you will be successful.”

For Flynn, there’s a special connection with the kids, being that they’re all from the same hometown he grew up in.

He knows what it’s like to be from a smaller school, and to feel like the odds are stacked against you. He’s been in all of these kids’ exact shoes.

“I love seeing these kids that come from the same background as me,” Flynn said. “A small town, we’re not expected to do necessarily great things.”

He pointed to the recent Alabama-UND basketball game as an example. It was one of the most captivating local sports stories of the year, one that reached a national audience. The Betty Engelstad Sioux Center sold out for Grant Nelson, a Devils Lake graduate now playing for the No. 6 team in the country. But they also witnessed a show from Treysen Eaglestaff, a Bismarck High School graduate who put up 40 points and nearly led an upset over the Crimson Tide.

It was a high-powered showdown between two elite North Dakota talents. And as Flynn can personally attest, as a former state champion himself:

“Just because you’re from a small town doesn’t mean you can’t do great things. Just because we’re from Devils Lake doesn’t mean you can’t be a state champ or a D-I athlete. For me, it’s just seeing those kids really make that choice in their mind, like ‘Hey, I’m gonna be somebody. I’m gonna do something.’”

This philosophy starts at the youth level, then carries up through the kids’ high school years. And it’s not restricted to just the wrestling mat.

“A champion is doing all the little things right,” Flynn said. “Like, am I helping Mom and Dad at home? Am I taking care of school? Am I a good person in the community? How would people view me, not just wrestling? Because if we’re only doing the wrestling aspect, but we’re not doing the other part, it’s not really winning.”

It all starts with making sure kids are bringing the right attitudes to the mat. From there, they’ll develop the right mindspace, and they can continue to be molded into successful wrestlers and competitors in the long run.

“You have two different kind of mindsets that you can choose,” Ness said. “You can either be finding a way to pout or whine about something, complain about something, or use that time to figure out what’s the solution to overcome this or do this. And I’ve found that things later in life, instead of maybe being so dependent on somebody to help figure out a problem for yourself, that’s one thing that wrestling has done.

“My instinct right away is I count on myself to try to figure out the problem, rather than call upon someone else. And it’s just a natural instinct. It’s something that I developed through the sport. And every kid is different. But I honestly believe that will be something that they’ll use in some shape or form later in life.”

But without wrestling, the group of 100-plus kids currently involved in the program won’t be able to develop those skills. Many of them might not be playing a sport at all during the winter if the town didn’t have wrestling. And in order to continue supporting their growth and improvement, they’re going to need a place to practice.

So it might just be time to install the wrestling room Brendon’s father was promised 31 years ago.