A new sport club has been slowly growing in Grand Forks since last Fall and received a visit from two champion American wrestlers who were happy to lend their expertise to help grow the club’s skills.
Future Glory Combat Sports hosted their first ever Introduction to Wrestling seminar for children and adults on Saturday at their home base at 4th Street Studio. Leading both classes was Aluis Delarosa, four-time Idaho state champion, two-time Rollie Lane champion and brother Abel “AJ” Delarosa, three-time 5a state champion, four-time state finalist and Rollie Lane champion. Both are coaches.
The first session was for children, with three boys signing up. Alius and AJ put the boys through basics like popping hips, how to land on their knees, grappling, pinning and other wrestling moves. The adult class was for Future Glory members and anyone interested in learning how to improve their own wrestling techniques.
Having two highly-trained, decorated wrestlers and coaches come to the growing club has been a huge help for current members and getting children involved, said Future Glory founder Justin Doubimiff.
Since he returned to Grand Forks last November, he said he’s been trying to build the club first with a core group of 10 dedicated combat sport athletes to get a quality club together
He’s trained and competed in several combat sport disciplines over his life, including ju-jitsu, Muay Thai kickboxing and MMA. His goal is to bring more sport options to the city and particularly for the youth of the community to give them an outlet and positive activity to work on their skills.
“I’m done traveling, I’m staying home to set down roots here,” he said. “I want to bring this back to the city. “We’ve been doing this quietly because I wanted to focus on getting quality fighters and focus on building a strong foundation.”
He and his ex-wife ran a combat sport club in the city from 2017 before he moved away, he said. Another man kept it going for another four years before folding it. A work injury brought him home and he wanted to re-establish the club and he was pleasantly surprised to see most of the equipment was still in storage ready for use.
There is very little combat sport of any kind in the province outside major centres, he said, and with plans to settle permanently, he decided he wanted to restart the club under a new name.
“We have everything, so I thought why not try to get this going again,” he said. “We’ve been steadily building and we went from nobody, to about 10 members. There is nothing like this in the area so my main goal has been to network, so we brought Alius and AJ up here to bring in high-level talent to bring up the energy.”
And the energy was high for both classes, said Alius. He said he was impressed by the level of energy from both the children and adults as well as the already established skills.
“I came here focused on giving them as much content as I could with very little intro,” he said. “I didn’t give them as much fundamentals as I could’ve, but they moved right through that. We moved along a lot quicker than what I expected.”
This was the first time they’ve been to Grand Forks.
The children were a special treat for him because neither he or AJ coached such young students. They were fun to work with, he said, describing them as little sponges that absorbed everything they were teaching.
As coaches and seasoned wrestlers, Alius said he was very keen on bringing his expertise to Canada. While there is more of a wrestling culture in the United States in schools, professional sports and in entertainment, he said it’s so common people really don’t think about how technical and joyous it can be to practice. In Canada, it’s appreciated more often, especially in smaller communities.
The vision is to have Future Glory as a non-profit community club and bring combat sport culture to Grand Forks, Doubimiff said. While the perception is it promotes violence, combat sport actually helps people with athletics, mental health, skill development and overall physical health. Eventually, they will be looking into expanding to include other combat sports and they were recently approved to have a boxing ring.
The group can be found on Facebook under Future Glory Combat Sport and meet at 4th Street Studio Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.