East End Wrestling Club Begins To Keep Sport Alive on East End

Wrestling is considered by some a niche sport, not as popular as lacrosse, basketball or soccer. But come November and into the winter months on the South Fork, when student-athletes start to take to the mats, one would be hard pressed to think that the East End is not a wrestling hot bed.

But there lies the problem.

Wrestling, just like the more common sports, is something that needs to be practiced year round for those who want to be at the top of their game. But since the pandemic, what youth wrestling programs did exist on the East End were zapped by COVID and have been, for the most part, nonexistent.

Greg Melita, owner of Hamptons Jiu Jitsu, wants to change that.

Through his Hamptons Youth Camps, established at the height of the pandemic as an official nonprofit 501(c)(3) charity in 2020, Melita, a former wrestler himself who learned under Suffolk County Sports Hall of Fame coach Guy Leggio and wrestled with good friend Rohan Murphy at East Islip High School, has started the East End Wrestling Club, a USA Wrestling-recognized youth wrestling program that will provide high quality instruction in the sport at all Hamptons Jiu Jitsu locations, which includes the Southampton location within Southampton Gym on County Road 39, and an East Hampton location at the Ross School Tennis Academy. Melita is also in the works of procuring a new location on the western side of Southampton Town.

Hamptons Youth Camps, which runs solely on private donations, provides scholarships for local kids in the area and links them with select businesses that provide high-end professional recreational services. These include but are not limited to martial arts, fitness, self defense/protection, motocross, surfing, boating, yoga, tennis and more. Putting the East End Wrestling Club under the Hamptons Youth Camps banner allows for private donors to fund the club, meaning that coaches can be paid while there is no cost to the youth and families participating in the program.

Melita ran into Hall of Fame wrestling coach Jon Tush one day a few years back at Southampton Gym and the two started up a conversation about wrestling. One thing led to another, and last week the club was launched.

The club had a soft opening last week with limited participation due to the holiday and spring break at most districts in the area, but the club held its first official practice on Monday for fourth- through eighth-graders and had about a dozen young wrestlers taking instruction from Tush, who said he now, more or less, resides in Southampton full-time after retiring.

Tush, inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2015, most recently coached at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey, leading its nationally-ranked program. He was also the New York Athletic Club’s wrestling president.

“Wrestling is something I’ve done now for 45 years at every level,” he said after class on Monday. “Everywhere I go, there’s got to be wrestling, and we have such a great opportunity out here to build on what some of the coaches have already done. I can see kids from different towns already who have a very solid base. So we just want to make it wrestling all year round if they want to, and bring some competition to them as younger kids. The high school kids can continue to develop during the summer and that’s the goal.”

While the younger group of fourth- to eighth-graders will wrestle on Mondays at 4:30 p.m. for an hour, the high school wrestlers will go on Fridays at 5:30 p.m., also for an hour.

Jeff Ciolino is spearheading the program for Melita. Ciolino has experience running youth wrestling programs himself and knows the importance of them to keep the sport alive. He said East End Youth Wrestling is here to help support the local school wrestling programs, not to deter them in any way whatsoever, and that most varsity coaches are already on board and will be helping out in different ways and sending their wrestlers so they can keep up with their craft.

“So many other sports have a year-round presence, and it really is tough on a lot of these coaches because it really takes so much of a commitment,” Ciolino explained. “A lot of these varsity and junior coaches are singlehandedly running everything, from varsity to JV to trying to start a youth program.

“Other parts of the island have established, elite clubs that are taking on more of the high-end wrestlers and they go to these big competitions, and that’s fine. But a lot of the local youth wrestling programs have gotten really weak, or they just don’t exist anymore, especially because of COVID,” he continued. “There is limited access to a lot of spaces. I used to help my dad run his youth program. It used to be held at East Quogue Elementary School. COVID came and the school said we can’t have any more outside programs and that was that. With Greg allowing us to use his space, he’s going to have one open at the Ross School soon and then in Westhampton, we’re going to have a lot of fantastic mat space.”

East End Wrestling Club is for wrestlers of all levels. Whether it’s someone with little to no experience to the experienced, all are welcome. All wrestlers must fill out a Hamptons Youth Camp waiver, which can be found at hamptonsyouthcamps.org/east-end-wrestling-club, and must also register through USA Wrestling, which can be found on the same website.

“You have to wrestle in the spring and summer because that’s what the good wrestlers are doing,” Tush said. “And now it’s good, too, not only boys, it’s girls. My thing is wherever there’s kids, there should be wrestling. And I always want to be a part of that.”