Purler “is a Missouri wrestling academy,” said Big Rapids wrestling coach Bruce Hoffman. “Shawn Cassidy, our regional MYWAY (Michigan Youth Wrestling Association) coach in the region, and Amy Cassidy set this up. He followed the fight for a while and made contact. He did all the leg work that brought them here. He went to talk to companies to donate money and reduce costs for children.

“He asked Purler to come here and set up camp. We opened it to 7-17 year olds for anyone who wanted to come. We have kids from Lake City, Lakeview and lots of grandkids from the MYWAY program. A few of my children have managed to do this.

Two BRHS wrestlers, Dawson Kilpatrick and Zane Bowman, were among the attendees.

“They both wrestled for us last year at the college level,” Hoffman said. “We have a few eighth graders who are going to be ninth graders running here. There are several who are going to be seventh and eighth graders who are here and a lot of MYWAY kids.

“We have children from Evart and Pine River.”

Jarrett Reisenbichler was the lead instructor.

“They have different moves that they show and different techniques,” Hoffman said. “A lot of things that I’ve seen are not necessarily what we do, even in our university program. Some things are the same and some are a little different. I am happy. I am very impressed with the camp.

“As far as I know, this is the first time an outside company like this has come to Big Rapids to host a camp. I think we would like to do that in the future. We will have to see how it goes and what form it takes. Shawn did all the work on this. It started as a youth thing and exploded into every kid’s thing. He contacted me and we got a blanket.

Nearly 60 young people have signed up for the camp, Hoffman said.

“We had just over 50 children attending each day,” he said. “It’s a good sized camp. This is our main camp. We’ll get my guys from college together and probably open it up to one of our college or MYWAY kids who want to come over for a few open camps this summer.