General Information – Updated 9/20/09
My name is Rudy Valdez, and I’m the head coach of our team this year. I’ve coached the Redmond / Sammamish Bulldogs for the last 6 years, and have sons that participate on the team.
Rudy Valdez
(425) 836-5431 (Home)
(425) 444-2516 (
We also have instructional coaches that have been with the team for several years (and who also have or have had sons on the team): Matt Iwicki and Patrick King. The three of us take turns giving instruction and running practice.
In addition to the instructional coaches, we have a cadre of assistant coaches which we form at the beginning of the season from parents who would like to help (we had 4 or so assistant coaches last year). These assistant coaches play a vital role in the success (and sanity) of our program, so your participation is very welcome.
Please feel free to contact any of the coaches at any point during the season with any questions, suggestions, or concerns.
Our team participates in the Western Washington Kids Wrestling League (WWKWL). While the league originally was made up of approximately 8 teams in the Seattle area, three years ago we’ve merged with a league north of Seattle to form a larger league with three districts (we’re in the Southern district). While we’ll spend most of our time wrestling with teams in the Southern district, we do meet with the entire league several times a year.
The league is cast as a “novice league”, meaning that it is generally intended for kids learning to wrestle and kids who are in their earlier years of development. Consequently, there are some restrictions on who can participate in the league-wide tournaments. If you’ve wrestled for 3 years, or have won a league championship, you need to be petitioned in to these tournaments by the coaches. This doesn’t apply to the majority of our team, but some wrestlers may be affected. There are other tournaments outside of our league that the more advanced wrestlers typically attend, and we will attend those with our more advanced wrestlers, independent of the WWKWL season.
The more advanced wrestlers on our team will participate in some WWKWL events, but will also wrestle in various local USA Wrestling events. USAW events are great for those wrestlers who have wrestled a few years, or who are generally winning at the WWKWL level. We’ll attend some of the USAW events as a team, but these are optional.
We’ll have several league meets and several league tournaments this year (as well as the optional USAW tournaments).
Meets are usually between 2 to 4 league teams within the same district, and usually involve each wrestler wrestling 2 or 3 matches. These are less formal events, and can vary in quality depending on how well they are organized. Our team will likely host at least two league meets this year. These meets can be on weeknights or on Saturday mornings.
Tournaments are more formal events, and usually have more structured groupings of wrestlers and matches. Tournaments are generally on Saturday or Sunday mornings, and conclude by mid-afternoon. Awards are typically given out for 1st through 4th place.
For both matches and tournaments, wrestlers are paired with other wrestlers according to their age, weight, and experience. For meets, wrestlers are usually grouped together with the 3 wrestlers that are closest to them in these three dimensions. For tournaments, the league uses pre-defined age/weight categories. The categories are set such that wrestlers are paired within one year of age, and within 5 lbs. of weight. Age categories are determined by the wrestler’s birth year:
We highly encourage parent involvement in both practices and matches/tournaments. Especially for the younger wrestlers, having a parent help walk them through the wrestling moves during practice is helpful. Also, having parents assist at matches (by pairing up wrestlers, keeping them in queue, keeping score) can greatly improve the experience for everyone. We’d also like to encourage any parents with wrestling experience or knowledge to volunteer as assistant coaches. We frequently have more than two wrestlers on the mat at the same time, and having someone step in to coach along side the parent helps a great deal.
There are a three pieces of “gear” for wresting: shoes, singlet, and headgear. As we’ve built the program over the years, we’ve tried to form a pool of equipment. We offer the gear as a convenience, but may not always be able to accommodate everyone.
The gear pooling approach has the benefit that you don’t end up buying new wrestling shoes every year (which cost approximately $40) as your wrestler’s feet grow. Until we hand out the equipment, you should wear a tight fitting t-shirt / tanktop, shorts with no buckles / belt loops / rivets, and tennis shoes with no protruding metal eyelets.
We have three main objectives with the Bulldog Wrestling program. First, we want to make sure the kids stay safe. Second, we’d like to help the kids learn the sport of wrestling, including good sportsmanship. And third, we want to make sure the kids have fun. Every year we’ve had a great bunch of kids, and we really have a great time. We’re looking forward to spending the season with the team.