About Our Club

Our Mission is to maximize student-athlete potential in the DC region on and off the mat through professional coaching, mentoring, and providing a positive community around the sport of wrestling. Our aim is to build well-rounded, driven, successful human beings with integrity. We serve children and their families in the DC region who have or can develop a passion for wrestling. 

Legend Wrestling Club

•       A nonprofit 501(c)3 Corporation

•       A year-round wrestling center in Vienna, Virginia

•       Serving families in the greater DC area that covers as far as MD to Shenandoah

•       Full time, professional head coach & certified staff

•       Board of Directors with high-level business experience & a passion for wrestling

•       Community focused: kids, families, and partnership

Philosophy

Mental Health for our youth: Most of our team have dealt with this issue with their children or their children’s friends.  Brian Monday’s son Eric was a HS star wrestler for Madison HS yet, he committed suicide in college.  The VMC will embrace the Eric Monday Foundation and require its coaches as part of our the VMC certification to take an online awareness course of this real current issue our youth are facing today.

Women’s Wrestling: This is the fastest-growing youth sport in America today.  We will accept and train girls and we will give them the same life tools we will for boys.  We have a girls Coach, Victoria Smith who is an experienced college wrestler and coach. Our goal is to always have a woman as a member of our board of directors.

Health and Nutrition: We work with our wrestlers on strength and agility, healthy habits, and weight management.  We are planning to implement classes for this and have a good trainer who is a coach.

Academics: We realize that the chance of making a career out of wrestling is a low probability for most kids.  We actively communicate on a regular basis that academics are a priority and will be needed for the rest of your life.   Many lessons from wrestling will be a huge benefit after the last match is over but academic learning is the most important thing.

Being part of the Legend Wrestling Club at any level is being part of a club that values integrity, hard work on and off the mat, academic success, and a lifestyle conducive with excellence.

All members of our club at every age level will be expected to conduct themselves with the utmost respect for others including opponents, officials, coaches, peers, etc.

All parents are expected to do the same, any signs of unsportsmanlike conduct by a wrestler or a parent will be addressed. If the issue continues, the potential for revoking your membership will be considered. We require that everyone involved with this program including the coaches, parents, athletes, fans, etc. show class, respect, and sportsmanship.

Expectations

Why Wrestle?

A great description of the benefits of having your child wrestle is provided by one of the sport's all-time greats, Cael Sanderson.

The following is excerpted from his article "Why My Kids Will Wrestle".

Foundation Sport

Wrestling is the perfect foundation for all other sports. Wrestling is balance, agility, hand-eye coordination, flexibility, positioning, strength, speed, explosiveness, footwork, hustle, mental focus, mental toughness, core strength, concentration, competition, and endurance. Wrestling will make our youth better at all other sports.

Fun 

Wrestling is a game. It is the most basic and instinctual game. Toddlers wrestle. The sport of wrestling is the ultimate competition where two individual take their individual strengths and match them up against each other. Wrestling is a battle of wits, technique, speed, agility, flexibility, and toughness. No two wrestlers are alike.

Exercise 

Wrestling is one of the world’s most premier physical fitness sports. Wrestling develops strength and endurance. Poor health is a major issue in our society today and wrestling will help develop a love of exercise and physical fitness in our youth.

Self-Confidence 

Very little is accomplished without self-confidence. Wrestling teaches self-confidence like nothing else I know outside of religion and knowing that you are a child of God. Insecure people have the most difficult time learning from others and make progress even more difficult than it already is. Wrestling teaches hard work, self-improvement, sense of accomplishment, camaraderie of a team, 1 on 1 aspect, and self-defense to name a few. These promote self-worth, respect, and confidence.

Self-Defense

Although wrestling is not commonly considered a “martial art,” it is the #1 base discipline in the world of MMA. Wrestlers know how to defend themselves and neutralize threats quickly. Wrestling is controlling an opponent. If you want your kids to know how to defend themselves, put them in wrestling.

Humility

Nothing teaches humility better than a 1-on-1 sport. Winning and losing in a 1-on-1 setting brings humility. There is nowhere to hide and no one to blame but yourself. All wrestlers will lose at some point and doing so in these conditions teaches humility. Hard work and discipline are two keys to success in wrestling and both teach humility.

Respect

The challenges of being a wrestler teach you to respect yourself. After you learn to respect yourself you will learn to respect others. You learn to respect your teammates as well as your opponents. You learn to listen to and respect your coach. After you learn to respect others you are able to learn from them, a life lesson.

Self-discipline 

Wrestling is discipline. Repetition of drills, hard work, weight management, and continually doing the best thing instead of the easiest thing is discipline. Wrestling requires postponing instant “wants” to gain something more valuable long term. It takes discipline and focus to reach goals.

Roadmap to Success

Wrestling is the perfect example of what it takes to be successful in life. Goal setting, hard work, determination, focus, love of challenges, love of competition, confidence, being coachable, mental toughness, discipline, creativity, teamwork and accountability.

Toughness

Wrestling is a physical, contact sport. You learn that sometimes you just get poked in the eye. Physical and mental toughness go hand in hand. You learn that a little pain or struggle is part of the process of doing great things.
Some personal information included in this category may overlap with other categories.

“After you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy.”

— Dan Gable, Olympic Gold Medalist and Coach

Meet Our Coaches

Our Facility

Legend Wrestling is centrally located in Vienna, VA, and features one of the largest, most comprehensive year-round wrestling-specific facilities in the country. With 6,000 square feet of climate-controlled mat space, we can safely and effectively manage both large and small groups of wrestlers, and our mats and wall padding are new for maximum comfort and safety. Strength training and physical conditioning are other aspects of wrestling where our wrestlers receive expert instruction with supervised access to a wide range of training equipment.

Parents are welcome to stay for practice in our parent lounge featuring WiFi and TVs streaming the practice sessions. 

FAQs

Wrestling is one of the few sports that requires almost no equipment to participate in practices, and very little equipment for tournaments.