Medomak Valley alumnus William “Billy” Bramhall has been hired as the new head coach for the Panther wrestling program. Jed Harris, Doug Libby and Eric Hunt will assist. Although Bramhall is the head coach, he considers fellow 1998 MVHS graduate Harris as his co-coach.
Both Bramhall and Harris wrestled for the Panthers for four years. They started coaching four years ago for the Medomak Pee Wee program.
They did not coach one year, and the program folded. “We brought it back,” Bramhall said, and the two men have coached the K-4 program the past two years. “We’ve had a lot of success,” Bramhall said.
They have promoted the young wrestlers’ strengths, celebrated their success and worked on their weaknesses, Bramhall said about the successful program.
“The key to a strong high school program is to get them hooked on wrestling when they’re young,” Bramhall said. “We teach the basic moves, then we’ll chain the moves together.”
Bramhall is encouraged by the turnout for his first year coaching at the high school with 16 wrestlers coming out the first day. “We have a big handful of green kids. What we teach, they’ll know and we won’t have to re-train bad habits.”
“I am very excited. I think we can do some really good things up here. I was impressed with the team. They were motivated and had a lot of self-drive. That’s definitely going to make my job easier,” Bramhall added.
Bramhall’s philosophy on the mat is simple, “get out there and give everything they’ve got until the closing bell. Get out there and win. I want to see a lot of drive.”
His goal is to boost the numbers in the program and fill all the weight classes. When he and Harris wrestled for the Panthers there were 25-30 kids out for the team. “When you get a couple of kids deep in the weight classes, the varsity guys have to work harder to hold their sport. They strive to work harder,” Bramhall added.