The Making of Champions: Apple Valley High School Wrestling

Editor's note: This feature on Apple Valley High School wrestling kicks off a series that will first introduce readers to the dynamic of the varsity wrestling team as a whole, and then to each wrestler currently in a varsity roster spot. Come back to Apple Valley Patch each day during the next week to read profiles of each of those varsity wrestlers.

When walking into the practice wrestling facility at Apple Valley High School, the theme is clear: Champions.

‘National Champions’ is scrawled in five-foot block letters across one wall of the facility. The words adorn coaches’ and players’ practice gear.

And when wrestling head coach James Jackson urges his wrestlers to give him another sprint, crunch or drill he doesn’t yell or scream or even raise his voice. In an even tone, Jackson simply asks his team, “What do champions do?”

“One more,” they reply in unison.

There may not be a better word than “champions” to describe the 2010-11 class of Apple Valley wrestlers. In high school wrestling, Apple Valley is the team that has faced the best in the nation and sent them home defeated.

The Eagles wrestling team peaked early this season, winning two prominent national tournaments—The Clash in Rochester, MN, and the Cheesehead in Kaukauna, WI—over a 10-day span in late December and early January.

“We wrestled Brandon [FL], who was rated third in the country, and Blair Academy [NJ], who was ranked second, and we beat both of them soundly,” Jackson said.

But to understand Apple Valley wrestling's storied success, it’s necessary to look to the roots of a program that has been to the state wrestling tournament every year since 1983, taking 18 state titles.

The Origin of a Champion

Bill Demaray began the Apple Valley wrestling program in 1976. Apple Valley was a new high school, and the extent of Demaray’s team was five freshmen. By the time those five became seniors they were state runners-up and Demaray had the makings of an elite program.

“Four years after we started we had 240 elementary kids involved,” Demaray said. “We had eight teams of first- and second-graders, eight teams of third- and fourth-graders and eight teams of fifth- and sixth-graders,” Demaray recounts.

While the program was popular in and around Apple Valley, it was still raw. Many kids were inexperienced, and few, if any, really understood the technical aspects of the sport. 

So Demaray—a three-time All-American and two-time NCAA champion wrestler, and father of Matt Demaray, a four-time U.S. National Team wrestler—used the program as a classroom to teach the basics.

“My philosophy was always to keep the kids learning,” he said. “If they're learning, they're having fun. I used that approach from my first year and I continue to use it today. It's all about learning.”

Demaray briefly left the Apple Valley program in 1995, turning over the reigns to long-time co-head coach James Jackson.

Jackson began teaching and coaching in the district in 1980, first as a middle-school coach and then the freshman wrestling head coach. He’s quick to defer to Demaray as the mastermind behind the wrestling program, and credits everyone and everything else before taking credit himself.

“I don’t know if you ever plan for something like this,” Jackson said. “When you work hard good things happen. We’re very fortunate to have the support of the administration and to have the athletes we have. I know I’m coaching elite athletes—that’s not a secret to anybody. But the credit doesn’t go to me or even coach Demaray—the credit goes to the parents and the kids.”

Jackson again credited outside factors for Apple Valley wrestling’s appearances at the state tournament each year since his third year as head coach.

“Maybe it was just timing,” he said. “Someone once said ‘Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.’ I might be the luckiest coach around.”

“But I also have to credit my assistant coaches,” Jackson said. “Any leader needs to surround themselves with great people, and I think I’ve done that with my entire staff … Our success is a collaboration of everyone’s hard work.”

Becoming Champions

Apple Valley senior wrestlers Destin McCauley (152 pounds) and Matt Kelliher (135 pounds) both have wrestled in the program for six years and are two of America’s top-ranked high school wrestling recruits. Both have committed to wrestle at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and both understand what it takes to succeed in the Apple Valley program.

“The biggest thing is hard work and discipline,” McCauley said. “You've got to be willing to go out there and give 100 percent the whole time or you're not going to be able to stay on the team.”

The threat of losing one’s varsity roster spot on a team where more than 40 student-athletes wrestled in varsity meets this year alone is real and unrelenting. It’s also what motivates Apple Valley wrestlers to succeed.

“In a lot of ways the biggest competition we face is in the room itself,” Kelliher said. “For most guys the biggest challenge we have is just staying on the varsity team.”

Senior 112-pounder Jordan Kingsley enjoys the pressure.

“Its fun to practice with the best kids in the state,” he said. “It’s fun to know that when you go out on the mat in practice you're basically facing the next best kid in your weight class.”

Senior state champion Jake Waste is all too familiar with fighting for his spot in the coveted 171-pound weight class.

“I've had a wrestle-off five times in the last three years just to keep my spot on the varsity team,” he said.

Remaining Champions

Most Apple Valley wrestlers compete year-round, with a short break in August and the first two weeks of September. The six-week rest allows their bodies and minds time to recuperate before the nine-month journey of losing weight and gaining strength and stamina.

“These guys wrestle from November to July, and for an 18-year old kid, he’s been doing that for 13 or 14 years,” Jackson said. “You have to give parents a lot of credit for their support.”

While the road to becoming an elite wrestler in Apple Valley is long and arduous, perhaps owing to their youth the wrestlers agree the biggest sacrifice they make is neither physical nor mental.

“Social lives” is the unanimous answer team members give when asked about what they give up to be a part of an elite wrestling program.    

“Especially during the winter our friends know that we're all about wrestling,” McCauley said. “They don't even have to ask where we are because they know it’s the wrestling season and that we’re not going to be at that party or social event.”

But for many on the team, time spent in the wrestling room is also time spent with friends.

“Our teammates become our social lives,” senior 215-pounder Matt Hechsel said. “We’re all friends, so it’s fine to spend the first few weeks of the season on the road away from everyone else.”

After earning the title of No. 1 high school wrestling team in the nation just a few weeks into their 2010-11 season, it would stand to reason that Apple Valley’s wrestlers would coast the rest of the way. The team will continue on the road to state at the 3AAA sectional on Feb. 18; the 3AAA individual sectional is Feb. 25.

But Waste and Kelliher said the national title is just the first step in a season, and career, built on challenges.    

“Motivation just comes naturally to most of us,” Waste said. “Winning a state title is the next step … Winning a national title is great, but winning a state individual title is also something we're all working toward.”

“You have to remember that a lot of us are going on to wrestle in college so, in all honesty, our wrestling career is not even half over yet,” Kelliher said. “You cannot really look at what we've done and think it is time to coast. A lot of what many of us can achieve hasn't even begun yet.”

Behind the Eyes of a Champion

To an outsider, Apple Valley wrestlers can seem like machines. They have built themselves into hulking physical specimens that do not give up, do not shut down and never get tired. They seem to win without emotion, and losing simply does not compute.

But the student-athletes actually are polite, respectful and quite friendly high school kids. McCauley takes exception to the stereotype that he and his teammates sometimes face.

“In movies the top athletes are always jerks, and I think people sometimes buy into that idea,” he said. “But every time we go to a dual meet people see how we are and that we're humble and that we pick up after ourselves. I think the main thing I want people to know is that we're actually really good guys.”

Waste added: “We're not necessarily liked by everybody, winning so many titles, but a lot of people ... automatically assume we're jerks. But if you come talk to us we have no problem talking to you and we're a lot of fun. I think people overlook our natural personalities. We're nice people.”

The team also fully embraces the reality that they are students before they are athletes.

“Even if some of us go on to wrestle in the Olympics at some point, we all know that we're going to have to fall back on some type of profession,” Kelliher said, in a tone that suggested he was reminding himself and his teammates. “Wrestling is definitely not a lifetime sport.”

To Demaray, having the wrestlers take a realistic look at themselves is part of the learning process.

“The importance of academics has to be stressed in every program,” he said. “If the kids don't have their priorities in order they're not competing for the right reasons. [Our kids] understand that better grades mean more options in life and in wrestling. We try to instill in them that academic excellence is their ticket.”

Cultivating the Next Class of Champions

Jackson has five wrestlers this year who have signed letters of intent to Division I college programs, and a sixth that is waiting for his offer to arrive. But more could be coming.

“If you count the underclassmen, we might have eight or even 10,” Jackson said. “I’m not kidding. That’s how good they are.”

Having five or six of those athletes makes Jackson’s job easier and harder at the same time.

“When you have that kind of talent, you’d better win,” he said.  

The pressure to win, however, doesn’t so much come from the Apple Valley school administration, or from parents who give their free time to ensure the athletes are where they need to be. It doesn’t come from Jackson or from Demaray.

It comes from the wrestlers themselves.

“If we don’t have seven state champions this year, it will be a disappointment, not for me or the community, but for the kids themselves knowing what they’ve sacrificed and how hard they’ve worked,” Jackson said.

Jackson credits an assistant coach for introducing him to a saying by which he now lives and teaches: “We are what we make of ourselves and what we give of ourselves.”

So, when he asks his wrestlers what champions do, and they reply “one more,” they always give more in practice than is asked of them.

But Jackson also wants the kids to become productive citizens once they leave the wrestling room. He urges them to be productive in school, in athletics and in society. But perhaps most importantly he wants his wrestlers—past, current and future—to give of themselves.