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USA Everett History:
Ron Bessemer officially charted USA Everett Wrestling Club as USA Everett in 1980.
Ron Bessemer is the founding coach of the club, which he formed with five original members: Brian Harper, Dan Alar, Adam France, Boyd Ballard and James Stephens. This small but powerful group started the tradition of success that has carried on through today. This success is due to the foundation that Coach Ron created with the original group of kids.
After coaching the team for 20 years, in 2000 Coach Ron decided it was time to retire from work and move back to the Midwest. By this time Coach Ron had built USA Everett wrestling club into a club with nearly 100 wrestlers working out at the Cascade HS wrestling room in Everett. WA.
In 2001 the USA Everett Wrestling Hall of Fame was created to honor Coach Ron Bessemer, the founding coach of the club and the original five members of the club who performed at extremely high levels on a national and international level.
After Coach Ron retired, Coach Ron’s son and original member of the club, Boyd Ballard, took over as the team’s head coach.
The club continued practicing at Cascade HS until summer of 2002. In the fall of 2002 the club moved to Everett HS for one full season. Then in the fall of 2003, the club again moved to another gym, this time to Marysville where the team practiced until the end of the 2004 freestyle/greco seasons.
At the end of the 2004-freestyle/greco seasons, Coach Boyd Ballard left the area to attend college. With Coach Boyd’s departure, the club was moved to Monroe HS where Andy Cook took over as Head Coach. Coach Andy had been assisting Coach Boyd for the previous couple of years and was a former USA Everett wrestler. When the club moved to Monroe HS there were only about 6 active members of the club left on the team. Practices were only held 2 nights a week, so most of the wrestlers on the team also wrestled for other clubs in the area to get more practice time. A handful of other wrestlers, who wrestled for other teams, joined the USA Everett wrestlers in Monroe working out through the 2004/2005 folkstyle and 2005 freestyle/greco seasons.
Coach Andy left the team at the end of the 2005 freestyle/greco seasons for a coaching position at Vision Quest.
With the retirement of Coach Ron Bessemer and the moves made by the team from Cascade HS to Everett HS, to Marysville and then to Monroe HS, the number of wrestlers on the team diminished greatly. Each move resulted in the team losing members. Adding to the loss of members from each move was the loss of many of the long-term members of the club because they had turned old enough to wrestle for their high school teams.
When the team moved to Monroe HS at the end of the 2004 freestyle/greco seasons there were only a handful of USA Everett wrestlers left on the team. This was a period of a lot of change for the USA Everett Wrestling Club. The club nearly folded. The club had gone from a very large club down to only a handful of wrestlers, with only a few of the wrestlers having been with the team for more than two years. And at the start of the 2005/2006 folk style season USA Everett didn’t even have a place to practice. The club’s president at the time, Ron Lampers, was very instrumental in keeping the club alive. Without his efforts, the club may have folded.
At the start of the 2005/2006 Folk style Season, USA Everett was gym-less and down to a small core group of USA Everett wrestlers. For a few weeks the Greater Gold wrestling club in Kirkland, WA. was kind enough to allow USA Everett the use of Greater Gold’s room to practice before USA Everett moved back to Monroe HS to finish out the 2005/2006 folkstyle and 2006 freestyle/greco seasons. Todd Christensen and Al Soler were now coaching the team.
When the team started the 2006/2007 folkstyle season the team voted in a new board with Michael Cuzzetto as club president and Richard Vulliet as vice president. Todd Christensen and Al Soler continued coaching the team. USA Everett was rebuilding.
The team had gone from nearly 100 wrestlers when Coach Ron Bessemer retired in 2000 all the way down to less than 10 wrestlers at its low at the start of the 2005/2006 folk style season. By the end of the 2006 freestyle/greco seasons, the club was firmly on it’s way to getting back to where it once was.
For the 2006/2007 Folkstyle Season the team had enough wrestlers to start a beginner practice as well as continuing with an advanced practice. The team moved from Monroe HS at the start of the 2006 folkstyle season to Kamiak HS in Mukilteo, WA. The team only remained at Kamiak HS for the folkstyle season.
At the Start of the 2007 freestyle/greco seasons, USA Everett moved back to where it had started in 1980, Cascade HS in Everett, WA. Original club member, Brian Harper, after a 4-year wresting career at the University of Michigan where he was the 1994 NCAA Championship runner-up in his weight division also rejoined the team as a coach.
In addition to returning back to Cascade HS, USA Everett has continued with its tradition of success. In 2008 USA Everett won the State Team Championship Triple Crown by winning the Folkstyle, Greco Roman and Freestyle State Team Championships. For the 2008 seasons the team had 21 individual state champions to include 3 individual Triple Crown winners. The team also had 2 wrestlers, Ryan Christensen and Noah Cuzzetto ranked #2 and #4 respectively in the nation in their age groups by USA Wrestling’s U.S. Future Olympian Rankings.
The team continues to build. For the 2008/2009 folkstyle season there are nearly 80 active wrestlers on the team. Todd Christensen, Al Soler and Brian Harper coach the team. Former Cascade HS wrestlers Brady Douglas and Blake Vigoren as well as a group of parent coaches assist them. Michael Cuzzetto still holds the position of Club President and Richard Vulliet holds the position of Club Vice President.
USA Everett holds wrestling practice five nights a week to include Folkstyle, Freestyle, Greco Roman and in the fall of 2008 added Grappling.
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