The respective high schools in the Okotoks area can breathe a sigh of relief there are still a few more Barnerts and Watkins to  walk through their halls in the future.

Because as long as the two first-families of wrestling still have boys or girls in school,  there is a good chance there will be high school wrestling in Okotoks.

The Okotoks Wrestling Club attended the Wetaskiwin Classic on Saturday.

It was the first meet of the  high school season and although the few Okotoks wrestlers represented their schools and community well, the schools were far from well represented in terms of numbers.

Foothills Composite High School, which has an enrolment of more than 1,000 students, had about 0.1 per cent of its students at the meet.

Yep, Foothills Composite had exactly one student, Cole Chapman, wrestling in the tournament.

It’s too bad. The Comp seemed destined to be a wrestling power at the start of the decade when they were winning 4A rural provincial banners.

However, the coach, who was a teacher at the school, had to leave.

Fortunately, coaches Doug Watkins and Mark Barnert stepped in to keep wrestling alive in Okotoks.

(Mark’s sons, Wes and Shane, who were part of the Falcons’ glory days, are back  at the Comp helping dad coach this team).

The tough job for coaches Barnert(s) and Watkins is they don’t work at Foothills Composite or Holy Trinity Academy. (HTA didn’t exactly fill the brackets in Wetaskiwin either. They had three wrestlers at the meet.)

Although the club has posters plastered at the respective schools, the coaches can’t do recruiting by some good-natured verbal arm-twisting.

Maybe the lack of wrestlers is due to the fact high school athletes are much more specialized these days.

It seems like football, basketball or volleyball players are practically playing year-round, which leaves little time for the so-called minor high school sports, like track and field and wrestling.

However, the success of former  Foothills Falcon football players Brenden Bennett and Blake Barnert on the wrestling mat is proof that wrestling is good crossover for sports like football. They both wrestled at the provincial level.

It’s also a good sport for those not big enough to play football.

Jordan Wallace might have had cleat marks down his back if he tried to play for the Holy Trinity Academy Knights football team, but put him on the wrestling mat, he is a medal-winning terror as his performance in Wetaskiwin showed.

The future looks somewhat promising because there are 10 wrestlers currently attending Okotoks Junior High School in the club.

But the schools have to start promoting the sport, because there won’t be Watkins and Barnerts to carry the torch forever.

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