More widget information you can put the RSS Widget below in all sorts of places, Facebook, Myspace, blogs, your desktop and more.

If you want to post it it to your desktop, follow the link below the widget that says Get This Widget.

Click on the grapic that says “Click Here to Get Code” It’s in the upper left hand corned of the page. Then you’ll see all sorts of graphics/logos that will be loaded ontop of the widget. Click the one you’d like to work with. To continue with the desktop instructions, Click on the desktop instructions, download the small piece of code, click run, click run, click next, click I agree, click install and follow the rest of the instructions - basically it’s just clicking continue.

To post of myspace or facebook, click on their logo, click the link that says copy code (it selects all the applicable code for you) and put it on your page. I posted it in my interests on our my space page. Wrestling Shoes My Space Page Post a link when you download this where the widget is at…

Where do you think we should be this year taking photos?

Should we switch from photos to videos? Would you rather see videos then photos?

Should we focus more on high school wrestling or college? We try to balance them.

Last year we covered over 25 wrestling events…taking over 5,000 photos of amateur wrestling.

Remember to support the company that funds all of this - http://www.wrestlinggear.com without wrestlinggear.com we could not afford to provide this content for free.

Jeff Pape
WrestlingGear.Com - Wrestling Shoes

All of the new wrestling shoes that have been release from adidas and Asics can be ordered at http://www.wrestlinggear.com A few more shoes will be released before the season like the adistar from adidas and the Scrapper from Matman in two colors and will be youth sizes only.

Jeff Pape
Owner/President
http://www.wrestlinggear.com

The link from this article can be found by clicking here. Here is the text from an article that appeared in the Franklin Park Herald Journal today:

Family raising money to benefit charities

Jackson Pape is one of the lucky ones.

The son of Jeff Pape, member of the Franklin Park Rotary and the Franklin Park/Schiller Park Chamber of Commerce, benefited from an operation to fix a cleft lip.

“You wouldn’t notice it now, but when Jackson was a year old, he had a fat lip,” Pape said.

“But the scar has healed. It’s hard to notice.”

Jackson is 4 years old.

Through the newly-founded Pape Foundation, Pape wants to help more children.

The Pape Foundation golf outing will be held July 29 at White Pines Golf Course, 500 W. Jefferson Ave. in Bensenville. Proceeds will benefit the Smile Train.

“We learned about the organization from Jackson’s doctor,” Pape said. “The Smile Train operates on the ‘teach a man to fish’ theory,” Pape explained.

“They give instruction to local doctors who then go to the patients. These are families without means of transportation.”

“We were lucky,” Pape said.

“My wife, Nancy, was working for a Fortune 500 company so we had good insurance. All we had to pay was the deductible.”

That surgery can cost thousands of dollars.

The Smile Train is a nonprofit organization that provides services and programs in more than 60 countries, including the United States, and has helped provide free surgery for thousands of children as well as free training and education for more than 15,000 surgeons and medical professionals, according to information provided by the organization.

The Pape Foundation is working to improve that number through its golf outing.

Also benefiting from the foundation’s first event will be the Illinois chapter, National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Pape, who owns a wrestling gear company, also sponsors wrestling clinics for area youth.

“Our committee of about 10 people have been working hard to put together our first event,” Pape said.

“The golf outing is coming together nicely with lots of raffle prizes and goodie bag items.”

The fee is $125 per golfer if registered by July 15 and $150 after that date.

“Some of our top raffle prizes include a barbecue package — complete with a Smokey Joe, small table, and barbecue equipment,” he said, “or a complete ice cream-making system.”

Visit www.thepapefoundation.org for more information

Follow this link to the dual meet line ups for the Overtime vs Bulgaria exchange dual.

http://overtimewrestling.com/International%20Wrestling%20Showcase_Lineups.pdf

I will be there for a little while taking photos (as long as my two little guys behave)…

Forgive me for the foul language, but I wanted to emphasize my point a little bit. We travelled to Vegas for the Olympic Team Trials and were coming back on US Airways. I think this might be the first time I flew on US Airways (we flew American out to Vegas).

So we start our trip for our 11:56 p.m. flight from Vegas around 9:30 p.m. We get to the airport and of course since we are early we fly through the lines. I could not believe how many people were flying at this time. I was actually worried we might miss our flight.

Okay so we make it to the gate and everything is looking good. Around 11:00 they announce our plan just left Arizona and would be running a little late. Not so much of a problem. Then they announce they have a pilot but no flight attendents for our flight. They make an announcement we’ll need to wait until 1:00 a.m. until a Toronto flight arrives in Vegas. We’ll around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. they announce they do not have a complete crew and our flight has been cancelled…wow!

So everybody rushes to the US Airways counter to rebook our flights. We wait about an hour and they say they can get us out on a 4:00 p.m. flight to Arizona and then a 9:00 p.m. flight from AZ to Chicago and we’d be home early morning on Tuesday (24 hours passed our original time).

We say no way, American has flights out. They say we can’t get American flights…then I say I don’t care…then they ask a supervisor and amazingly they can get us on it, but the flight that was available is no longer available.

Then they say all they can do is give us a $5.00 coupon for food. Wow we have to miss a days work, arrange for my parents to watch our kids again, and have to spend the night in the airport because it’s so late we’d have about an hour to sleep in the hotel. So they figure my time is worth $.40 an hour.

I guess what’s frustrates me the most is they lied to us on three separate occasions: 1) First they said they could not get us on American and get us on an American flight 2) They say it was a mechanical issue and another person said it was there was not a complete crew because a flight attendent called in sick 3) They said all they could give us was a $5.00 food coupon and then gave other people free flights.

The past couple weeks WrestlingGear.Com has been busy. Jeff Pape, owner of WrestlingGear.Com, was recognized with the Special Recognition Award by his former high school, Leyden. Jeff was recognized for his work in mentoring high school students with Ask The Expert, working with the Chamber of Commerce to build a stronger relationship with Leyden, and for the work with their work program. Jeff has hired Leyden students for over 10 years dating back to when he owned an accounting firm. A statue of an Eagle was presented to Jeff and WrestlingGear.Com that will be displayed at WrestlingGear.Com’s office.

Another recent update is we were the focus of a chapter in a book called The Internet and American Business. The chapter relates to the article that was published in 2006 that was covered by The Wall Street Journal. A copy of the book is also available at WrestlingGear.Com for viewing. Jeff met the author when he spoke at The Dot Com Boomerang event hosted by epraire.com

Let’s exchange links. If you have a wrestling website, that does not sell anything that we sell…we’d like to exchange links with you. Simply add our link on your site to WrestlingGear.Com - wrestling shoes and wrestling equipment and we will add a link back to your sites. We also can exchange links with highschoolwrestling.info, papelacrosseequipment.com, and illinoiswrestling.com

If you are having trouble creating the links, we can send you the html to generate the links the way we would like them on your site. We will put your link our site along with a brief description. Here is our links page for wrestlinggear.com

Jeff Pape
WrestlingGear.Com

We are hosting our inaugural golf outing this year to help raise funds and awareness for the Smile Train and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame - Illinois Chapter.

Response has been great so far with hole sponsors and raffle prizes. Two weeks ago we were looking at around $2,500 in raffle prizes, but now you can expect to have your chance to win over $5,000 worth of raffle prizes and goodie bag items given to each golfer.

Download a flyer about the registration and sponsorship ideas by clicking here. You will need adobe reader to view the document. If you are interested in attending or sponsoring a hole, give us a call at 630-832-0500. You can also mail in the registration information and we will take care of the rest.

The Pape Foundation, NFP has filed the paperwork for its 501 (c) 3. The IRS allows The Pape Foundation, NFP to operate as a non-profit while the paperwork is being reviewed.

Jeff Pape
WrestlingGear.Com - Wrestling Shoes and Wrestling Gear

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:
Jeffrey Pape
WrestlingGear.Com, Ltd.
800-565-0995
Fax: 630-832-0505
Jeffpape@wrestlinggear.com
http://www.wrestlinggear.com

WRESTLINGGEAR.COM ANNOUNCES GOLF OUTING TO CELEBRATE 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Elmhurst, IL – April 1, 2008 - WrestlingGear.Com is planning a golf outing and fundraiser for July 29, 2008 at White Pines Golf Club in Bensenville, IL. WrestlingGear.Com will be celebrating its 10 year anniversary during 2008. In 10 years, WrestlingGear.Com has grown to one of the largest Internet/Catalog based stores in the country.

Money raised at the golf outing with support two organizations - the first is The Smile Train, an organization that helps kids and their families repair cleft lips. The owner of WrestlingGear.Com’s son was born with a cleft lip. The second organization is still being finalized, but will be an Illinois based wrestling organization.

“This is going to be a great event and celebration 10 years in the making. We already have many of the top wrestling organizations in the country and the state behind this event. Not only will it be a great time, but we will raise money for kids with cleft lips and another Illinois based wrestling organization.

For more information or to be added to the golf outing mailing list, call Jeff Pape at 1-800-565-0995.

About WrestlingGear.Com:

WrestlingGear.Com, Ltd is one of the most visited wrestling websites in the country. Started in 1998, it now offers products from adidas, Asics, Brute, Championship Productions, Cliff Keen, Matman, Suples, and other major wrestling companies. Every year, more wrestlers “Get Ready for the Mat!” with WrestlingGear.Com. For more information visit: http://www.wrestlinggear.com

 

About The Smile Train:

The Smile Train is a non-profit organization that provides services and programs in more than 60 countries — including the United States — has helped provide free surgery for thousands of children as well as free training and education for more than 15,000 surgeons and medical professionals. Additionally, The Smile Train is sponsoring major research projects that are searching for a way to prevent clefts. For more information visit: http://www.smiletrain.org

Longtime Marist Coach to Hand Over Reigns
CHICAGO, IL, November 6, 2007— Marist High School coach Mark Gervais announced the 2007-2008 season will be his last at the helm of the school’s wrestling program. Assistant coach Brendan Heffernan will take over in 2008-2009.

Gervais ( Mt. Greenwood ) has headed Marist’s wrestling program since 1984, leading the team to 24 of its 28 consecutive East Suburban Catholic Conference (ESCC) titles. His career record is 495-69-2. His teams have won 17 regional championships and 7 sectionals. Gervais’s teams have also garnered one state title (1987), one second place state finish (1997), and three third place state titles (1985, 1989, 1991). He has coached 10 individual state champs and 50 individual state finishers.

Gervais, who came to Marist in 1982, has been a member of the physical education department, and currently serves as the department chair. He also served as Marist’s athletic director from 1995 to 1998. He was inducted into Marist’s Hall of Fame in 2003 and into the ESCC Hall of Fame in 2006.

A graduate of Northeast Missouri State (B.S.) and Eastern Illinois University (M.S.), Gervais has served as president of the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association. He is a member of that organization’s Hall of Fame as well. Gervais previously coached at Truman State University and Eastern Illinois University . He has led several Junior National Teams.

“It’s really been a joy and honor to have the head coach position,” Gervais said. “All good things must come to an end, and it’s time for a change in the program. It’s wonderful to have someone like Brendan Heffernan step in and take over a great tradition.” Gervais will continue to teach at Marist and coach the lower levels of the school’s wrestling program.

Heffernan ( Oak Lawn ), a 1999 Marist graduate, has been a teacher and coach at Marist since 2005. A standout wrestler in his own right, Heffernan is a two-time state place winner and took third at Junior Nationals. He also wrestled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Heffernan is also the head sophomore football coach.

On accepting the position, Heffernan said, “I am thrilled about the position and appreciate Coach Gervais giving me the opportunity.” Gervais coached Heffernan while he was a student at Marist and Heffernan said he continues to be a helping hand. “Coach Gervais has showed me what it means to be a coach and I am honored that he thinks highly enough of me to turn over the program, which is one of the most respected in the state,” Heffernan said. Heffernan hopes to maintain the same level of success and integrity the program has been known for over the years.