HERMES BEACH WRESTLING CLUB
WELCOME TO A CLUB for WRESTLERS & THEIR FRIENDS/ NEIGHBORS
You can participate as Wrestler or Friend/ Neighbor in our Stories and Events and Contacting Others through us, Your Club.
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Hi, I am Dwayne Kramer. I teach Wrestling. I am not a Coach. Wrestling is Great Fun and ENJOYABLE when with friends. That is the way I teach Wrestling.
I have seen Women wrestle better Bouts than Men. So our Club has both Men's Wrestling and Women's Wrestling. For legal reasons we have only persons over 18 years of age (Any younger person must be accompanied throughout by a parent or guardian, held responsible). FUN & ENJOYABLE WRESTLING is not dangerous and very healthy.
JOIN OUR STORIES FIRST. THEN JOIN AN EVENT. LET FRIENDSHIP LEAD YOU TO BECOME A FELLOW OF OUR CLUB. IT'S FOR LIFE!!
EMAIL: hermesbeach@yahoo.com
Wrestlers use a beach cottage given to us by the Nielsens. It is officially called the Rankin Herm Cottage, as the Rankin family gave us most of our leading local wrestling champions. The cottage is just three rooms but it
Adult Members have free access. Kids must be accompanied. The patio and beach is the Club House Beach Wrestling and beach social area outdoors. The cottage has an entrance from the lane leading from a neighborhood of modest homes. The neighborhood swimming pool is only a short jog. It is a bare minimum open air pool with a grass area. It is a social magnet. We have Wrestling Mats at one end of the grass and any wrestling there is well received by the neighbors.
WOMEN WRESTLING is an increasing part of the Club. More than half (60%) of the wrestling fights between adults in a week are between women. However the men wrestle longer bouts and so time wise the ratio is reversed.
So Clubwise our Goals are
Adults: 1. Increase men's bouts to 45% (Women 55%) of Total Bouts.
2. Increase Women's fight time to a Submission Fall so that both men and women move to 35 minutes average from current women 14 and men 31 minutes.
Teens: 3. Increase numbers of Girls to equal boys in number of bouts and duration. We hope to also achieve 65:35 ratio of Adult to Teen wrestling bouts to a fall, from current 80:20. And increase fight time to a fall from the current 3.5 minutes for both sexes average to an average of 5 minutes for girls and 7 minutes for boys.
Women are full members of the Club on equal basis as the men wrestlers.
However mixed wrestling is not a part of Club Wrestling but may be a leisure fun thing.
We find that Men use the fight areas mainly in the late afternoon - evening session and almost all dusk fights on the beach or water edge are between adult men. Women, we find, dominate the Mid-day (Lunchtime) session.
We will be trying to have equal numbers, men and women and each time.
We like to see wrestlers come in with their families or a wrestlers' group. At present this happens mainly with the women adults. Men adults tend to turn up singly at the wrestling area.
The club also includes men and women who are called Neighbors, whether physically so or not, who are associate members. They do not wrestle and have no vote in the club. But they are full fledged members for all other aspects of the Club. All Wrestler members are also Neighbors in their activities. We have not so far allowed under 18 Neighbors. Club rules require that Neighbors be tied to one or more Wrestlers as supporters of that wrestler and being a cheering team for his or her wrestling with certain minimums of performance. Over the coming year we hope to see the following changes:
1. More Neighbors or Associate members also wrestle from time to time
2. Teen or student members being allowed on their own right.
3. While neighbors who are not full member wrestlers will have to declare allegiance to a particular wrestler for cheering and support work, they will not be tied to a particular wrestler but will have freedom of choice constantly amongst wrestlers with the club assigning some neighbors to a wrestler who is alone.
We started Hermesbeach Wrestling Club (HWC) with less than a handful of persons. Two teachers at Senior High, Roy Orlov who was in charge of Wrestling and one of two senior teachers in the Athletics & Sports Department and I, Dwayne Kramer teaching economics and commerce, started the club. Pat Jensen, our Principal and Roy Coleman, Roy Orlov’s senior teacher, agreed to be Club Trustees, giving us status though the club was outside the school.
Roy, Dwayne, Petr Thielemann and Tim Kriegel had known each other since we were in Junior High School here. Petr and Tim were kids of Rev Kurt Thielemann and Rev Theo Kriegel respectively. The fathers were rival pastors and also rivals in just about everything. Their feelings sometimes just boiled over into wrestling in the neighborhood. Dwayne had been befriended by Tim when he started in junior high and Roy was always close to Petr. So they were like two tag teams usually looking for a fight with each other. Hermes Beach was a rough place for teens. As we became older teens we increasingly wrestled seriously over girls and sports decisions. By the last year of Senior High our day usually ended up in a wrestle out through dusk on a neighborhood beach.
We are back to that life now!!
When Dwayne started to work in County Hall he moved back to his boyhood neighborhood. He started seeing some guys he knew as rivals in his teens. The way they saw each other had not changed; especially with Roy Orlov and Hans Hauptmann.
He confided in Tim Kriegel and who arranged for Dwayne to meet Roy on a popular jogging stretch of beach. The guys stripped to swimming briefs and erupted into wrestling. It was good wrestling and earned spontaneous applause from the joggers.
After a couple of fights, Roy arranged for Dwayne to get a job at the same school so they could meet and wrestle without bothering Tim. As their students somehow got to know of the wrestling, soon a class of wrestlers and the Club took shape.
We have now come a long way. Dwayne and Roy, called Budo or Hollis by the kids, have become known and accepted as teachers who fight each other in the school and their wrestling classes are well attended. Through the kids parents support, the Club too has developed to be a social club with wrestlers and audience members.
We now simply call ourselves “Hermes Beach Wrestling” or BWC, the Beach Wrestling Club. Our structure now is as follows:
Hermes Beach is governed by a Committee consisting of
President : Astrid Svennson (Arne and Astrid Svennson are a prominent family whose three daughters are Birgid, Brigitte (teachers) and Suzanne (works at Kriegel’s chapel) and whose younger family members are keen on wrestling)
Wrestling Captain: Solana Schneider (Solana and Birgid Svennson are active in wrestling and Solana’s husband Rod and family are in county politics. Rod’s brother Marc heads one party and Erik Eriksson, the current Mayor, the other party.)
Three Wrestler Member Reps who are the year end (Christmas Tournament Finals) champions of the adult men and adult women and the Wrestler Spokesperson who is a champion elected as most popular
Three Family Reps who are the most popular wrestler family members as elected.
And they are subject to correction by the Trustees, Pat Jensen, the High School Principal and Roy Coleman, senior teacher of the Senior High Athletics & Sports Department.
Actual day to day affairs are handled by
1. Wrestling Captain. Mrs. Solana Schneider. All wrestlers must get an OK and schedule their wrestling through the wrestling captain.
2. Vice President Media. Ms. Carla Grossman. Carla edits a local magazine and works as an editor in a news conglomerate. She ensures publicity.
3. VP – Human Resources. Ms. Svetlana Fedorova. She cajoles us into training, teaching and becoming better wrestlers.
4. VP – Wrestlers. Ms. Luzia Manne. Luzia spends time with every wrestling pair and tries to make sure that they have positive and winning psychologies.
5. Volunteer ‘Managers’. Mrs. Carol Andersson, Ms. Brigitte Bensen, Mr. Jan Sharapov, Mr. Jax van Eisen help ensure that the wrestling takes place in good wrestling areas with plenty of beach or outdoors and quality audience/ passers by.
The practical effect of all this growth is fantastic. To me it means that I can concentrate on becoming a good wrestler and on developing fights with guys that I feel strong urges to wrestle and hold under me. It has really released and set me free!!
