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 GENEROUS DONATIONS -
The Freebirds Wrestling Club presented
Julie Wheeler, center, with a check toward
her trip to Beijing to see her son Adam Wheeler
compete in the Olympics. The club gave
Julie Wheeler $2,000 for the trip.

MOLLY  HAUXWELL/Valley Press

Olympics to be family affair

Donations help wrestler's mom travel to Beijing

 This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Saturday, July 12, 2008.

By GREG WAGNER
Valley Press Staff Writer

Thanks, in part, to the Valley's Freebirds Wrestling Club, his mother Julie also will make the trip.

Freebirds presented Julie Wheeler with a $2,000 donation on Friday during the final session of their four-day summer camp. Freebirds raised $500, and the remaining money came from active members of the California wrestling community and local wrestling coaches and businesses.

"It's pretty exciting what the community has done for me and my family," Julie said. "The community has been very generous."

Since Adam Wheeler - a 1999 Lancaster High School grad - qualified for the Olympics with a victory over Justin Ruiz in the U.S. Olympic trials on June 15 in the 96-kilogram (211.5-pound) Greco-Roman weight class, Lancaster High wrestling coach Pat Hayhurst has spearheaded fundraising efforts through word of mouth and a popular wrestling message board. He found plenty of support from a tight-knit wrestling community.

"The money just came flowing in," said Hayhurst, who runs Freebirds along with Quartz Hill High wrestling coach Trevor Leach. "We have so much pride because he's a Lancaster graduate."

Through other fundraising efforts, Wheeler and his family have received enough support so that his wife, Marcey, and her mother and grandmother also likely will be able to travel to the Olympics along with his mom.

Julie Wheeler's brother and his wife as well as Wheeler's wrestling coach at Lancaster High, Mike Henry, and his family are also expected to watch Wheeler compete.

"It seemed like everyone really pulled together for me, it's great to know I have the support back at home," Adam Wheeler said by phone from his home in Colorado Springs, Colo.

That support includes a billboard installed off the Antelope Valley Freeway between avenues M and N that can be seen from the southbound lanes. It celebrates Wheeler as an Olympian and includes a picture from his Lancaster wrestling days.

Upon hearing of Weaver's accomplishments, Lamar Advertising put up the billboard this week for the whole Valley to see.

"That was a big shock to me," Wheeler said. "People are behind me a lot more than I expected."

Wheeler is scheduled to come to Southern California this weekend, helping teach a clinic at Valencia High in Placentia in order to raise additional funds for his family.

Schooners restaurant in Lancaster is playing host to a $10-per-plate spaghetti dinner from 4 to 9 p.m. Monday, July 21, with half the profits to be donated to the Wheeler family. Coach's sports bar, also in Lancaster, will have a similar event on Monday, July 28.

Those behind the fundraising efforts hope those events will provide the rest of the money needed to travel to Beijing - a cost upward of $10,000 a person.

The trip will mark the first time Julie Wheeler, who works at Antelope Valley Hospital, will travel outside the United States, save for a cruise to Mexico.

"She's been a big part of this," Adam Wheeler said. "I couldn't be more grateful (to Freebirds)."

Wheeler, 27, was a two-time Golden League champion, compiling an 81-10 won-lost record, but never advanced to the state high school tournament.

Enlisting in the Coast Guard out of high school, he placed in the Armed Forces Championships in 2001 and 2002, beginning an amateur wrestling career that saw him become a World Cup champion in 2004 and finish fourth at the Olympic trials that year.

Wheeler began the 2008 trials as the No. 3 seed and the only active U.S. wrestler to have beaten Ruiz, who began the Las Vegas event as the world's third-ranked wrestler at 96 kilograms.

"There's not going to be a bigger Cinderella story at the Olympic Games in any sport," said Steve Lawson, a former U.S. Open National Greco-Roman champion who was on hand Friday at the Freebirds' workout and will help put on Sunday's clinic.

Wheeler's weight class will begin competition on Aug. 14.

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