The mats at Eleven Elevation Jiu-Jitsu were packed June 13–14 as young athletes from the Tri-Community trained with Olympic-level coaches during Wrightwood Wrestling’s two-day clinic. The event marked a milestone for the fledgling program, which has grown rapidly under the guidance of Coach Josh Langston and Eleven Elevation founder Chad Keel.
“This was a great clinic,” said guest coach Arsen Aleksanyan. “A lot of young kids and a really talented group. If they all stick together and go to the same high school, that’s going to be a really tough team.”
Aleksanyan, a former member of the Greco-Roman world team and current head coach at the Poway Olympic Regional Training Center, led much of Friday’s instruction. Saturday featured Olympic coach Valentin Kalika, known for mentoring champions including Helen Maroulis and Amit Elor. Mental performance coach Erin Herle also spoke to students about confidence, composure, and how mindset can shape results on the mat. The clinic, held inside Eleven Elevation in Wrightwood, included outdoor conditioning, wrestling technique, jiu-jitsu integration, and team-building. Local sponsor Wrightwood Fine Foods provided lunches.
Wrightwood Wrestling operates as a program within Eleven Elevation, a gym started by Keel nearly a decade ago in a garage. “It started on the Wrightwood page,” Keel recalled. “I saw a post [for a Jiu-Jitsu partner], responded, started kind of rolling with this guy. He started inviting other people… Pretty soon, we outgrew the garage.” Eventually, the program moved into one of Wrightwoods oldest buildings, which used to be the Wrightwood Store, the Cluster, and most recently, a bookstore. “It needed a lot of renovation,” Keel said, “but what it looks like now is really a credit to all my students… They came together unpaid and just scraped 100 years’ worth of paint off the walls.”
Langston, who retired from wildland firefighting as a hotshot captain, joined the gym as a student and soon began leading wrestling instruction. “It was about a year and a half after coming here that [Keel] called me one day and gave me a proposition,” Langston said. “He was seeing his kids go out to tournaments and get beat by wrestling kids… That was the kind of missing link.” What began as a single weekly class soon grew into a structured program, with fundamentals taught on Tuesdays and a focused competition class on Fridays. “We don’t play games, and it’s a lot more serious,” Langston said of the Friday group. “Even though wrestling is an individual sport, if one kid is slacking off, everybody is going to have to do extra work because of that.”
Wrightwood Wrestling emphasizes both skill and character. “If none of these kids become professional athletes, that’s A-OK by me,” Langston said. “Ultimately, what I’m trying to instill is strong work ethic, good morals, and just being overall positive contributors to society.” Aleksanyan expressed a similar philosophy. “No matter how good you are, there’s somebody that’s always better than you,” he told students. “It teaches you humility… and it’s so individual, one-on-one, so everything’s on you.”
The gym’s community-first culture plays a big part in its success. Parents and children are training together. “Most sports, you don’t get to play with your kids as you get older,” Keel said. “This is a sport where… you’re all doing it.” The gym serves a wide range of families, including many homeschoolers and kids who haven’t found a home in traditional team sports. “We’re trying to create opportunities for a lot of these kids who are great athletes,” Keel said, “but were normally turned away from the traditional sports because they… had a problem with the team sport aspect.”
Langston said that 90 percent of the students in his program are homeschooled, which creates barriers when it comes to CIF-sanctioned competitions. “There is no avenue for them to compete scholastically at the CIF level unless they’re in a school,” he said. “Which seems to me highly unfair if I have kids who can compete at the national level.” He hopes to continue growing Wrightwood Wrestling into a five-day program and expand its offerings to serve athletes better. “Maybe even all sports at some point where the baseball kids can come in, get a really good workout, build the muscles that are appropriate for their sport. Track and field kids, long-distance kids, anybody can come in here … but with an emphasis on the grappling,” he said. “That would be my amazing goal.”
Community awareness is growing, but slowly. “There’s no signage here that says wrestling,” Langston noted. “There are a few professional fighters here in town… [who] recently reached out due to social media and said, ‘I didn’t even know Wrightwood had a wrestling program.'” As word spreads, he hopes to continue building support and encouraging more athletes from the Tri-Community to train locally, especially given the physical benefits of high-elevation conditioning.
As the program prepares for a return to regular competition in the fall, Langston said he’s proud of how far the kids have come. “They’re all growing. They’re all standing out,” he said. “They all have really great potential.”
Wrightwood Wrestling can be found on Instagram and Facebook at @WrightwoodWrestling.
