Photo by Jake Przytarski Pictured is one of the Marshall wrestling team’s boards showcasing its state champions and individual state qualifiers. The boards help display the history and records of the team that was discovered in a box last summer.

MARSHALL — In the summer months leading up to the Marshall wrestling team’s historic 2018-2019 season, coaches Justin Bouwman and Ethan Hoppe uncovered a long-forgotten box buried on the bottom shelf of the athletic storage cage. Upon opening it, they discovered memorabilia and record books dating all the way back to the Tigers’ inaugural season in 1962-1963.

Awed by their discovery but unsure of how to properly utilize the items within, the box was tucked away once more as the team prepared for the season ahead.

A year later, a pair of Marshall wrestling boosters came forward with an idea to use the information from the record books to construct a brand new record board in the wrestling room.

“Lee Louwagie and Al Roth came forward with the idea of well we have this record board right now in the wrestling room,” said Hoppe. “It just has the names of everyone that’s ever placed at the state tournament and the state champs which is a good collection, but they were wondering if we could go a little more with it since now we had this history box and we had these records that we found.”

With inspiration born, Hoppe, Bouwman, Roth and Louwagie went to work in deciding what all would be included on the new board and what it would take for them to make it a reality.

Each one of the four took on a major role in its construction — from research, layout of the board and meticulous fact checking through calls and social media interactions with former wrestlers and coaches.

“Roth and Louwagie did a lot of online research looking at online brackets, comparing what online brackets had to what we had or what our records show,” said Hoppe. “A lot of late nights were spent with those guys going back and forth through every weight bracket at the state tournament every single year all the way back to the early 1970s.”

When there were discrepancies in information, Hoppe would call former wrestlers and coaches during that specific time period in question to ensure complete accuracy. Oftentimes, the conversations would last for an hour as wrestling history buff Hoppe and alumni wrestlers reminisced about old times.

“A lot of research went into it and sometimes that research was finding these guys on Facebook for example, messaging them and finding their phone numbers online,” said Hoppe. “Calling them up and saying, ‘Hey my name is Ethan Hoppe, I’ve got a lot of questions for you regarding your wrestling career, wondering if we could talk. We’re putting together this wrestling board.’ A lot of those conversations would turn into 45 minute to hour long conversations just kind of reminiscing which was awesome.”

For the most difficult time period to locate information (the 1960s), Hoppe met up with invaluable sources like former Marshall wrestler Bruce Chandler, as well as former coach Jerry Sletton who combined to help connect some of the final missing pieces to their puzzle.

“One guy I got to sit down with that was pretty cool was Mr. Jerry Sletton, and he was a teacher in the district in Marshall for a long time and he was the head coach from 1964-1969,” said Hoppe. “That’s pretty rewarding when you just kind of show up at this guy’s house and say, ‘Hey I want to talk Marshall wrestling and tell me about what you did. You were a huge part of this program obviously, tell me your story.’ And then just sitting back and just taking that all in.”

With the information provided by Sletton and Chandler, the timeline of the Marshall wrestling program was complete and the information needed for the board was all there. The final step remaining in seeing their plan through to completion was construction of the board.

For that, the group turned to AP Design, who turned their blueprint into the final product in early October.

“A lot of credit goes to AP Design, they helped come up with the layout of how it should be and what it should look like,” said Hoppe. “They helped design obviously with the new school logos and the colors and stuff like that and just helped put it together and helped install it and it came out to be really well done.”

According to Hoppe, the board will serve two main purposes.

“Goal No. 1 is to be able to put something up on the wall and show the kids that with hard work and dedication and team work and respect that you can get your name up there and once it’s up there it doesn’t go away,” said Hoppe.

“Then it’s also the idea of showing them where the program was, and kind of bringing it full circle,” said Hoppe. “(We want) to show the kids where the program has been and where it is now and show them that history and connect it all together. It’s pretty awesome and it kind of gives you a sense of family a sense of this is who we are.”

The group of four responsible for its construction has a plan to meet the latter objective on Feb. 6th, when Brandon Valley (SD) comes to town for a dual. Following the conclusion of the match, the team will host an Alumni Night to properly unveil the board and show it off to everyone involved with Marshall wrestling over the years.

“Anyone that was a wrestler, a coach, a statistician, a manager, anyone that had something to do with Marshall wrestling we invite them to come down to Alumni Night,” said Hoppe. “We’re going to take a giant photo of everyone that’s there. They can share their stories if they want to but (we want to) to honor them and show them that they’ve been a part of this and they’re still a part of this.”