BY MATT KENNEDY
Grand Junction High School’s wrestling team is coming off a successful year finishing tenth at state and have a lone champion in Kieran Thompson poised to return for next season. Now going into this upcoming school year, the head of their program carries a list of accolades any high school wrestler can only dream of accomplishing.
Kyle Sand is known for his time at Arvada West High School as the now 34-year old was the first wrestler in Colorado prep history to go undefeated all four years.
He went on to win an NJCAA national title at North Idaho College, then won an NCAA Division II championship at Adams State University. Sand would then start his coaching career at his alma mater where he helped coach a national champion during his four year stint as an assistant coach.
Sand has repeatedly said he enjoys coaching more than being a wrestler. His favorite moments around the sport is while he was helping someone else succeed, rather than himself. Selfless…as any good coach should be.
“I always have high hopes for what I’m doing,” Sand said. “One day I would love to win a state title like Cole [Addison] did and coaches have done in the past. That’s my coaching ultimate goal. As a team, I would love to have multiple state champions over the years and things of that nature. Those are definitely goals that I aspire for going forward with the program. But I just wanna take it in stride right now.”
The former Arvada native now resides in Fruita with his wife and four kids. He has been away from the wrestling scene for some time but saw a prime chance to return to the sport when former GJHS wrestling coach Cole Allison resigned after the most recent season.
The flexibility of schedule and opportunities of impacting young athletes was too much for Sand to turn down. Although he expressed his goals as a coach were about more than just winning state titles. He’s in it for the long game.
“Relationships,” Sand said about what he is looking forward to while being the coach. “Building relationships with these kids and trying to have an impact to where I can talk to them 20 years from now, ya know? See them with their kids, and I just hope that not only I had an impact with their wrestling career, but made an impact on their lives.”
Coaches at the high school level have a bigger impact on a student athlete in one season than most people have in a lifetime. It’s where key methods and ideologies to success and hard work are established and for Coach Sand, his biggest piece of advice speaks volumes to what his coaching influence will be like.
“Nothing comes easy,” Sand said. “Everything comes through hard work and sacrifice.”
When it comes to growing up in the Colorado wrestling scene, Sand, who is considered a legend from his prep days, knows what it takes to win at the high school level and shows a great deal of respect for the sport in the Centennial State.
He is also familiar with the competition that exists at the collegiate level in Colorado. The former Grizzly knows all about Chuck Pipher and the Colorado Mesa wrestling program as well as the Mountaineers down at Western Colorado University. In high hopes, Sand says one of his coaching goals is to get his wrestlers to that next level of competition.
“The Rmac is a great division,” Sand said. “They get a lot of good talent a lot of the schools…I look forward to building my guys up to where they hopefully can go to one of these programs. Hopefully Adams [State].”
For now, GJHS’s wrestling team is trying to host summer camps for their wrestlers which will be Sand’s first chance to work with the student athletes in person. Until then the interaction has been limited to Zoom and telephone calls.
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