Blue Springs team goes to the mat for Project Warmth

Though their sport is indoors, high school wrestlers around here know the cold.

They take pre-dawn jogs all winter to make weight. Their team buses roll through freezes to get to tournaments.

Yet the Blue Springs High School wrestling Wildcats recognize they tend to be nicely bundled up. On Saturday two dozen from the team turned out to help area residents not so fortunate by collecting coats, blankets and scarves for Project Warmth.

This being the start of their season, “it definitely helps us to get to know each other,” said state contender Bret Heil, whose senior class was paired with freshman wrestlers for the noon shift at Independence Center. Juniors and sophomores were assigned for later in the afternoon.

“And it’s great just to help people a little, too,” Heil added.

Independence Center was one of eight collection sites around the metro where thousands of coats, quilts, throws and other items were stuffed into trucks. The donations will be distributed by the Salvation Army.

The Blue Springs squad brought an athletic gusto to the task.

In the back of a Ryder truck, 120-pounder Tyler Collins could barely get his arms around the largest bags bulging with donations. “Sort of like getting a body lock on them” before pitching the bags to the top of the pile.

In the 35 years since The Kansas City Star launched Project Warmth, needy people have benefited from blankets and outerwear in winter and utility assistance in summer. KCTV and several other local partners now assist in the drive to comfort people from the extremes of Midwestern weather.

Grapplers get it — both the chill of leaving practice after a shower and the sometimes stifling heat of a wrestling room, said Tracy Hazen of the Wildcats Wrestling Booster Club. Also, “you think of the discipline it takes to be a wrestler,” she said. “They have some empathy of what it’s like trying to make it on your own.

“It takes a positive mindset.”

Hazen is a former marketing director at The Star who has been active in Project Warmth for more than 15 years. Last year she helped rally the wrestlers to take up the cause as a way of showing their commitment to the community.

And it might have been an effective bonding agent for the team, which sent seven members to the Missouri state tournament.

Their new coach this year, Bobbe Lowe, was happy to continue the effort. When coaching past years in Oak Grove he sent wrestlers into the cold to ring bells for the Salvation Army.

Lowe reminded the Blue Springs bunch at every practice that Project Warmth was expecting their help. “As a coach I should set expectations of what they need to do, and once you set those expectations, a lot of kids work to meet them,” he said.

“Every kid this year was super attentive. It’s not like you’d see eyes rolling about having to volunteer on a Saturday. … It really was, ‘Yeah, coach. I get it.’”

So many showed in Independence, donor Becky Tracy of Lee’s Summit was a bit startled as seven buff dudes surrounded the trunk of her Buick before she even popped it open. In seconds the coats of her deceased brother were in the able arms of Collins in the back of the Ryder.

Teammate Koby Mansfield volunteered in shorts, amusing some of the parents who helped under cloudy skies with temperatures just above 40 degrees.

“This is not cold,” the wrestler said.

This story was originally published November 4, 2017 at 4:50 PM with the headline "Blue Springs team goes to the mat for Project Warmth."