Many ACP graduates have gone and left the campus after their graduation, but many still come back and visit old teachers and classmates. One alumni and famed legend, Michael Perez, hasn’t left campus. Perez, known and praised by all our students, has been coaching a youth wrestling camp here on our campus alongside Coach Huffman. This is what he had to say about his blossoming wrestling career and youth camp:

Q: When did you first start wrestling?

A: I started wrestling halfway through my 8th grade year with Coach Huffman. My first full year was my freshman year of high school.

Q: What inspired you to take up wrestling?

A: What inspired me to take up wrestling was Coach Huffman. I didn’t know one thing about wrestling, but he was a great coach, and I liked the idea of individually winning on my own and knowing the amount of work I put in was going to be the end result.

Q: Have you won any awards?

A: Since I’ve been in college, I’ve placed at three college wrestling tournaments and have been awarded a scholar award for my academics as a student athlete. It was also really cool to be involved in the lineup this year as an underclassman on the wrestling mat.

Q: When did you graduate from ACP?

A: I graduated from ACP back in 2016… I sure am getting old.

Q: How long have you been doing the wrestling camp here at ACP?

A: I have been doing the youth wrestling camp at ACP with Coach Huffman for two years now, and plan to keep it going!

As the conversation began to dwindle, I asked Perez (pictured at the right) if he had any goals for his youth camp.

A: My goals in doing this youth wrestling camp each summer at ACP is to inspire kids to be great in wrestling…but also in anything they do in life because I believe wrestling teaches that. My goal is also to promote passion for the sport of wrestling within these kids, to make it fun for them, and for them to get an advantage of learning great technique at a young age so they can be studs when they get older!

For Michael Perez, coaching students how to wrestle is not that important. What’s more important is inspiring them to be great in the sport and in their lives. With Perez’s coaching, these young wrestlers are destined to be, as Perez said, “studs”!