Wait, which team is this?

Hey, this is Corby. A few people thought the club should have a logo and gear of its own, and this is the attempt at that. Here's how I understand the rest of it. If I've got something wrong, tell me and I'll fix it.

Short version: The Wildcat Wrestling Club is the community program run by River Falls Wrestling Boosters, Inc. The River Falls High School team is a WIAA program of the School District of River Falls. Same town, same tradition, same room, most of the same kids. Two organizations. That is on purpose, and it is also the rule.

The high school team

River Falls High School wrestling is a school sport, run by the district and governed by the WIAA, same as football or basketball. Coach Loomis and his staff are hired by the district. Registration, physicals, eligibility, the schedule, the bus, the singlets ... all school. You sign up at rfwildcats.org, not with us.

Same for middle school. Meyer wrestles January through March as a school activity, and you register through the activities office like any other Wildcats sport.

The club

Everything else is the club: River Falls Wrestling Boosters, Inc. A nonprofit, incorporated in 1994 by parents, coaches and former Wildcats, chartered through USA Wrestling, run by a volunteer board of parents. No school money in it, no school money out of it.

The club is:

• Youth wrestling, 4K through 5th grade. First singlet, first tournament, first meltdown in a headgear.
• Practice and open mats all year round, open to every age from 4K through 12th grade. That's new this year. This fall it's Mondays and Wednesdays, September 9 to November 4, with a spring block once the high school season is over.
• The fundraising. The golf outing, the meat raffles, and the get-togethers at our sponsors' places.
• The rest of the year. The team camp in June, the River Falls Days parade and the alumni get-together after it, the youth parent meeting in October, team movie night, the all-ages team photo at the last home meet, and the tournaments we host ourselves: the youth tournament, the youth and middle school duals, the state qualifier in March and the beginner freestyle tournament in April.
• The bills nobody sees. The YouTube streaming gear, help with the hotel on the Wisconsin Dells trip, snacks for the kids at tournaments, extra T-shirts, warm-ups and state shirts, and the graphics going up in the wrestling room.

One thing, so nobody wonders: the Northern Badger is the school's tournament, not ours. River Falls has hosted it since 1997, about a hundred volunteers run it every December, and a lot of them are our parents. The money is the district's. The concession stand is the district's food service, and what it makes goes to free and reduced lunch. We're proud to work it anyway.

In the winter the club room looks like a 4K-to-5th-grade program. That's only because the older kids are at school practice. They're club kids the other nine months.

Why they have to be separate

Not a preference, a rule. The WIAA says a high school coach can't coach his own upcoming-season wrestlers outside the season, apart from a few summer weeks. It also says a program that isn't the school has to be open to everyone, can't be mandatory, and can't run on school money. So the club is its own legal thing with its own board, bank account and insurance. That's what lets a River Falls kid get on a mat in April. Hudson does it this way. Kaukauna does it this way. Every good program in the Big Rivers has a school team and a club behind it.

About the name. And the logo.

From 1994 until last year the club's name was Toss and Turn Wrestling Club. If you've been around a while you've seen it on a check, a parade banner, or up on the boards at youth tournaments. That's the name our kids wrestled under.

It was a fine name for a phrase and a bad name for a place. At a state tournament every other team on the wall reads as a town: Hudson, Ellsworth, Prescott. Ours read "Toss and Turn."

So the club is now the Wildcat Wrestling Club, and the new cat you've seen on the gear board is the club's mark. It replaces Toss and Turn. It does not replace the high school Wildcat, and it never will.

Toss and Turn
Wrestling Club

Three things people asked on the gear board

"Why rebrand the current logo?" We didn't. Wiley isn't going anywhere. The school owns its Wildcat and its colors, the district has a contract with Nike for high school gear, and the singlets, warm-ups, room and record boards all stay exactly as they are. What's new is a mark for the club, which never had one. Toss and Turn was a name with no logo.

"Nobody would know we're from River Falls." Fair. That is the exact reason Toss and Turn went away. So on anything the club prints, the cat is locked up with the club name or with River Falls. Nobody has to guess. And if the cat itself doesn't say River Falls to you yet, that's fair too. It is a few months old. Every mark in town started at zero, and the way it gets to mean River Falls is the same way Wiley did: our kids wear it and win in it.

"Ask the wrestlers." That is what the gear board was for. Every vote and every comment landed with four people: Thane, Kristine, Cam and me. Pieces that got voted down don't get made. If you want to see the tallies, ask me and I'll show you. Ask me anything, honestly. I'm gathering data and trying to make as many people happy as I can, and I'm navigating this as I go. The goal is the best gear our kids can have.

This is how every youth program in town already works. Youth hockey has its own crest. The soccer club has its own badge. Youth football uses the school's cat head, and the gymnastics club doesn't use a cat at all. Nobody thinks the hockey association is the high school hockey team. The wrestling club is the same deal. Both marks are navy and gold. Both are Wildcats. One is the school's, one is ours.

Got a better idea? I'm all ears.

None of this is locked in. The cat is a first attempt at giving the club a mark of its own, and even the school's Wildcat has been redrawn more than once over the years. If you've got a logo idea, or a different direction entirely, youth@rfwrestling.org.

Quick reference

Questions: youth@rfwrestling.org, or grab any board member at practice. We're the ones in the club shirts.