The History of Lake County Wrestling Club
Originally created in 1985, Lake County Wrestling Club (LCWC) quickly evolved into the first super club of its time in Illinois. Ted DeRousse, with the help of like-minded wrestling coaches in the area, including Libertyville's, Dale Eggert, put wheels in motion for something everyone in Lake County could benefit from. Soon after, a practice schedule was put in place with practices held at Antioch and Libertyville High Schools. Eventually evolving to its regular summer practices in centrally located Grayslake High School with the help of Coach Kushner, Grayslake’s head wrestling coach. By 1989 Lake County Wrestling had already won the Illinois Club Cup Freestyle Championship.
The initial goal of LCWC was simple; promote the sport of wrestling throughout the Lake County area in a fun, affordable and safe environment. Wrestling is a seasonal sport and all student-athletes may not share the same goals. With this understanding, participating coaches in the area were willing to support any wrestler in achieving those goals in a fair and equal manner. Obviously for any student-athlete, the sky’s the limit and coaches were always re-evaluating old goals and helping to establish new ones as a wrestler would grow with the sport.
While one wrestler’s goal may have been a starting position and a winning record second to other life goals and student-athlete commitments, another wrestler who had already won a state championship going for two in a row, might have set a goal a bit higher aiming for the prestigious Outstanding Wrestler Award at the state tournament. Whatever the goal was, every wrestler was taken just as serious as the next and those same values hold true today for Lake County Wrestling Club.
Lake County Wrestling Club believed that any wrestling was better than no wrestling at all. The wrestler with the less aggressive goals may have only needed a few weeks of off-season practice and one of the technique camps put on by LCWC to help achieve the goals put in place. LCWC achieved the real winning goal for all wrestlers when the athletes participated in off-season wrestling, giving wrestlers throughout Lake County extra mat time with bodies outside the every day wrestling room. In addition, lifelong friendships for many wrestlers were created extending beyond their own school walls.
The ultimate goal wrapped around Lake County Wrestling was to get kids to dream big and to enhance life's lessons and experiences beyond state and national borders, eventually passing those experiences and knowledge on to wrestling generations of the future. LCWC also felt that it was important to promote the Olympic styles of wrestling in both Freestyle and Greco-Roman with the hopes that every wrestler could believe anything is possible, even an Olympic Championship. Coach Ted DeRousse and everyone else who participated in the Lake County Wrestling Club, believed that Olympic Champions were made in the off-season. Every sport requires dreams beyond high school and college careers to constantly evolve. To help those dreams come to life, LCWC helped local wrestlers by accomplishing one small task at a time, and methodically turning that into what most perceive as jaw-dropping feats, statistics and awards. At the very least, all of the hard work and dedication would translate into a useful skill that every wrestler could take with them throughout life for any task at hand.