Introduction to Little Chargers wrestling club sets stage for Watkins Jr. to grapple with success

CARTHAGE, Ill. — It all started with a piece of paper.

Shawn Watkins Sr. will never forget the day his then 5-year-old son, Shawn Watkins Jr., returned home from Dallas City Elementary School with a flyer advertising the Little Chargers wrestling club — a youth wrestling organization in Carthage — and showed it to his dad.

“It was cool to see the excitement on his face when I asked him if he wanted to (join),” Watkins Sr. said. “That’s always been a fun memory for us.”

Watkins Jr. remembers that day, too.

“I remember getting (the flyer) and instantly putting it in my bag,” Watkins Jr. said. “As soon as I got home, I showed it to my dad. He asked if I wanted to do it, and I was so excited that I was going to be able to wrestle.”

The rest is history.

Fast forward to present day, and Watkins Jr., now a senior grappler for Illini West, is set to compete for a second straight trip to the Class 1A state wrestling tournament.

“It is crazy,” Watkins Jr. said.

Watkins Jr. reached the state tournament last season at 175 pounds but lost both of his matches at State Farm Center in Champaign.

“I had some motivation off of last year,” Watkins Jr. said. “I didn’t have the finish that I wanted. That’s pushed me a little harder this year and given me the motivation to try to place at state this year. Last year set an expectation of how I should wrestle all the time.”

After registering three straight pins to win the Canton Regional at 175 pounds last weekend, Watkins Jr. advanced to the Clinton Sectional, which will take place on Friday and Saturday. The top four finishers in each weight class will qualify for state.

“Those three matches were not gimmies,” Chargers coach Lyle Klein said of Watkins Jr.’s regional victories. “He was on his best.”

Watkins Jr. pinned Monmouth-Roseville’s Keegan Smith in just 28 seconds to capture the regional crown, improve his record to 33-4 and become the first wrestler in program history to win multiple regional titles.

“It’s pretty cool, but I’m not done yet,” Watkins Jr. said.

To see that mission through, Watkins Jr. has an extra bit of motivation. Watkins Jr. is the last active wrestler from the final group of Little Chargers that founder John Wilde coached. Wilde was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in April 2013 and passed away on Jan. 31, 2017.

“That’s pushing me a little harder because I’m the last of the group that he coached,” Watkins Jr. said. “It means a lot to me.”

Watkins Jr. and Santos Castillo, who graduated from Illini West in 2019, wrestled in the Little Chargers program and is now an assistant coach at Illini West, can’t help but reminisce about Wilde.

“We throw around the old lines that he used to tell us all the time and different things he used so show us,” Watkins Jr. said. “There’s a move he used to call the ‘fat man roll.’ When you’re on the bottom, you grab their elbow and roll. It only works on the heavyweights. That’s why it’s called the ‘fat man roll.’”

Watkins Jr. has used that move a handful of times to varying degrees of success.

“I catch myself trying to do it every once in a while,” Watkins Jr. said.

Watkins Sr., who joined the Chargers coaching staff prior to last season, gave Wilde a great deal of credit for not only Watkins Jr.’s success but for also injecting a renewed interest in wrestling in Carthage and surrounding communities like Dallas City, where the Watkins family lives.

“We just aren’t a wrestling community,” Watkins Jr. said. “We never had it. My oldest brother, who was 10 years older than me, he got to wrestle, but when he graduated (in 1992), they did away with the program.

“Other parents have never gotten to do it, so they don’t have their kids do it because they don’t know anything about it. John got that all started back up for everybody, which was a Godsend for people around here because nobody really knew anything about it.”

Klein has noticed how the lessons and skills Watkins Jr. and other wrestlers learned in youth wrestling have translated to success at the high school level.

“I’m in my late 50s, and we didn’t have that,” Klein said. “It’s really pushed wrestling to another level.”

Thanks to that piece of paper Watkins Jr. brought home from school that day courtesy of Wilde, Watkins Jr. continues his quest to reach levels never before seen in the Illini West wrestling program.

“I’m trying to be the first to get on the podium at state,” Watkins Jr. said. “That’s the plan.”