Matador Wrestling Club brings Embry-Riddle wrestlers to Yuma camp
Yuma wrestlers trained with Embry-Riddle athletes at a $50 camp, gaining rare exposure to college pace, technique and a clearer path beyond local mats.
Young wrestlers in Yuma got two days of work they usually cannot get close to home: direct instruction and live drilling with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University wrestlers, including Yuma native Trenton Blomquist. The Matador Wrestling Club camp, held June 13-14, gave athletes ages 8 to 19 a chance to train from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day for $50, putting college-level technique in front of local families without sending them out of the region.
The clinic featured some of Embry-Riddle’s top NAIA wrestlers, including Blomquist, Daniil Gorshkov, a 2x All-American, and Yoshiya Funakoshi, a national champion at Embry-Riddle. For Yuma wrestlers, that kind of access matters because it offers a look at the speed, discipline and detail required at the next level. It also gives younger athletes something local mat rooms cannot always provide on their own: live contact with college wrestlers who can show how habits built in middle school and high school can carry into postseason wrestling and beyond.
The camp fit into a broader push by Matador Wrestling Club to keep advanced wrestling opportunities in Yuma County. Just days earlier, the club advertised a June 9-11 Elite Girls Camp led by Carolina Moreno, a 3x National Champion, with Lillian Gradillas and Emma Baertlein also on the lineup. That schedule suggests a year-round pipeline, not a one-off event, with Matador building repeated chances for local athletes to learn from high-level competitors.
That pipeline matters in a county where travel, cost and access can shape whether a child stays in a sport long enough to improve. A $50 camp held in Yuma can be the difference between a family staying involved or skipping a higher-level clinic because it would mean time off work, hotel costs or a long drive. By bringing collegiate wrestlers to town, Matador reduced those barriers while giving local athletes a model for what comes next.
The connection also reaches beyond one weekend. A separate June report from KYMA noted that Yuma wrestlers took a trip to Tempe to watch Arizona State wrestle Iowa State, another sign that local programs are creating more exposure to elite college wrestling. Meanwhile, Embry-Riddle’s Prescott campus, where the wrestling program is based, sits on a 500-plus-acre campus in northern Arizona, underscoring how unusual it is for those athletes to spend time working directly with Yuma youth.
For Yuma County wrestling, the message was clear: the path to the next level does not begin only in state tournaments or faraway showcases. It can start in a Yuma gym, with a college wrestler across the mat and a local athlete learning what higher-level training feels like.
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