Wrestling families from across the state of Kansas will see a familiar face in a different singlet this weekend. The KSHSAA Class 321A State Tournament will be held Friday and Saturday in Hays and the third ranked wrestler in the 120 pound bracket is junior Tyler Kester. At 29-0 for the season, Kester is representing Southeast High School from Cherokee – a program in only its second year. But Kester is no newcomer to the sport.

“The wrestling community is kind of a tight knit family,” said SHS Wrestling Coach Jason Wilderman. “The people that have grown through the kids clubs, most everybody in the state knows Tyler Kester because he’s been placing and winning state championships for a long time.”

“My dad kind of just loaded me up into the truck one day and said ‘we’re going to go to wrestling practice,’” Kester said. “I was, like, five years old at the time so I kind of just went with it. The first thing that came to my mind when he said ‘we’re going to go to wrestling practice’ was WWE wrestling.”

There were no turnbuckles, ropes or chairs at Kester’s first wrestling practice. Instead, there was Coach Wilderman.

Coach Wilderman graduated from Pittsburg High School in 1994, but started coaching for the Pittsburg Wrestling Club when he was still just a junior. He went on to become the head coach for several years and took a few years off from coaching after his first child was born. He returned to coaching and spent more than 20 years coaching with the Pittsburg Wrestling Club. Kester was with him for much of that time.

“I’d like to take all of the credit for Tyler’s success but he’s been doing this since he was five, and yes, I’ve been around him since he was five, but he’s also gone out on his own and sought out the toughest competition and practice partners,” Coach Wilderman said. “He would go to Oklahoma and Kansas City to practice with other elite wrestlers. The Pittsburg Club was a big influence and Pittsburg was becoming a dominant program, so he had a lot of good practice partners there to work out with and good coaches there. He’s just a product of a good program there.”

In 2013-14, as a freshman, Kester qualified for State and took fourth place. A year later, Kester was injured and missed out on the opportunity to qualify for State.

That same year, in 2014-15, Southeast Junior High and Southeast High School in nearby Cherokee started a wrestling program. Wilderman, who was already teaching at the district, became the head coach of the program.

Kester considered his options prior to the 2015-16 school year and decided to join Coach Wilderman at Southeast.

“It wasn’t just his good coaching abilities, he’s a fantastic guy overall,” Kester said. “He knows me really well and he knows my style of wrestling, and I know his style of coaching. It really works out well.”

Kester’s presence gives the Southeast Wrestling team somebody else to learn about the sport, who isn’t a coach.

“Most people in this area just don’t know what it takes to be a real wrestler,” Coach Wilderman said. “Now that they are practicing with him and seeing the things he does, how he prepares, and how hard he works, they are picking up on it.”

But it’s not just the high school wrestlers who Kester has made an impression on. Coach Wilderman said kids wrestling with the two year old Lancer Youth Wrestling Club have been supportive of the Southeast wrestling program and shown an interest in Kester.

“Whether he knows it or not, they look up to him,” Coach Wilderman said.

Coach Wilderman expects five current members of the SHS Wrestling team to continue next season and he hopes five incoming freshmen will continue as well. He’s hoping the excitement of having somebody representing the school at State will inspire those student-athletes by giving them someone to look up to and strive to be a state champion.

“People see ‘Southeast’ listed and just know that we actually have a wrestling program now,” Coach Wilderman said. “Hopefully they’ll start seeing these other kids start to filter through as well. We received a lot of compliments throughout the year just saying how tough our kids were and it just ups the level of our practices and our own expectations.

“Our kids in the practice room see Tyler and, they’re like ‘wow, he’s awesome, he’s a stud, I want to be like him.’ It just raises our own level of expectations. It makes people realize what it takes to get to that level, and our kids know that he just doesn’t practice here. He practices throughout the summer. He puts works in outside of the regular season and that’s what it takes – that level of dedication.”

Weigh-in at Hays is Friday February 26 from 7:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. at the Gross Memorial Coliseum. General Admission Ticket sales begin and General Admission Gates open at 8:00 a.m. The First Round of wrestling begins at 10:00 a.m. In the first round Kester will face fellow junior, Oscar Jamie of Lyons High School, who is 26-15 for the season. Of the sixteen man bracket, six will medal at the State Tournament for each weight class. Results will be posted at http://www.kshsaa.org/Public/Wrestling/State.cfm