Best for a K–8 beginner starting wrestling under the Carroll varsity coaches, competing optional.

Wrestling
Recreational & Competitive
Group classesIndoorSession-basedYear-round
wrestledragonyouth@gmail.com
Operates out of Carroll High School, 800 North White Chapel Blvd, Southlake, TX 76092
The club does not publish its own registration fee anywhere on its site, and the registration path leads off-site to a link hub that does not post it either — ask before registering, and note that registration fees are stated to be non-refundable. Two costs are published, and both are paid to third parties rather than to the club:

The club does not publish its own registration fee anywhere on its site, and the registration path leads off-site to a link hub that does not post it either — ask before registering, and note that registration fees are stated to be non-refundable. Two costs are published, and both are paid to third parties rather than to the club:

  • A USA Wrestling athlete membership, which must be purchased from USA Wrestling before a wrestler may attend practice.
  • USA Wrestling tournament entries at roughly $17 to $50 per tournament.
  • Families also buy their own wrestling shoes and headgear; the club accepts donations of outgrown shoes and passes them on.
A club season with weekly practices, held in the Carroll High School wrestling room. Open to boys and girls in Kindergarten through 8th grade at every experience level.

Schedule

A club season with weekly practices, held in the Carroll High School wrestling room. Open to boys and girls in Kindergarten through 8th grade at every experience level.

Registration has two steps and both are required before a wrestler can practice:

  • A current USA Wrestling athlete membership, purchased directly from USA Wrestling (listing Dragon Youth Wrestling as the primary club affiliate), with a hard copy of the card presented at practice.
  • The club's own online registration.

USA Wrestling tournament competition is offered and encouraged but is optional — entries are made separately through Trackwrestling, and Texas USA Wrestling brackets are set by age, weight class and experience level (Rookie / Novice / Open).

The club runs four blocks across the year, published on the Google Calendar embedded on its Calendar page:

  • Preseason — late summer through October.
  • Winter (the main season) — early November to late February or early March.
  • Spring — mid-March to early May.
  • Summer — late May into July.

Practices are weeknight evenings starting at 5:45 or 6:00pm — Monday, Wednesday and Thursday through the Winter season, and one or two of those nights in the lighter blocks. The Rec/Beginner group practices for an hour and the Intermediate/Competition group for an hour and a half; the Rec season also ends several weeks earlier than the competition season. Exact dates shift year to year, and the club directs parents to its mailing list and its SportsYou team group for the current season's schedule.

Our take

Dragon Youth Wrestling is the feeder program under Carroll's high school wrestling, and it is unusually direct about that: practices happen in the wrestling room in the field house behind Carroll High School, and they are run by the Carroll varsity coaching staff themselves, alongside parent volunteers. For a family weighing where a beginner should start, that is the substance of the offer — the same coaches, the same room, years earlier. The club describes its program as vertically aligned with the high school's varsity program.

It takes boys and girls from Kindergarten through 8th grade and states plainly that all experience levels are welcome. Competing is optional but encouraged, and the two tracks are genuinely distinct: a wrestler can train weekly and never enter a tournament, or move into the USA Wrestling circuit, where brackets are set by age, weight class, and an experience tier that separates first-year wrestlers from those who have placed at state. Everyone must hold a USA Wrestling membership before stepping on the mat, which is bought directly from USA Wrestling rather than through the club — an extra step worth doing early, since a wrestler without the card cannot practice.

One thing to get right before you sign up: this is **not** Carroll ISD's middle school wrestling team. The club says so on four separate pages, because 7th and 8th graders are eligible for both and the two programs register in completely different places. Dragon Youth is the club program that supplements the district's middle-school teams, not a replacement for them.

Local Tips

The wrestling room is its own free-standing building at the very back of the Carroll High School campus on North White Chapel, in front of the track and the baseball field — worth knowing on a first visit, because it is not inside the main school building. Practical notes for a new family:

  • Registration is two separate transactions, and the USA Wrestling membership is the one that gates everything, so do it first and bring a printout or the PDF on your phone.
  • The club's own registration fee is not posted anywhere on the site, so ask before you commit — fees are non-refundable once paid.
  • Tournament entries are separate again, priced per tournament and handled through Trackwrestling rather than the club.
  • For gear, a t-shirt, shorts and wrestling shoes cover weekly practice; headgear and a singlet only become mandatory if you compete.
  • Shoes are the recurring cost at this age, and the club's own advice is to buy cheap because kids outgrow them fast — it also keeps a donated-shoe pool and takes outgrown pairs back.
  • The practice schedule is easy to miss because it lives on an embedded calendar rather than in the page text: the club runs a late-summer preseason, a main winter season from November into February, and lighter spring and summer blocks, on weeknight evenings starting at 5:45 or 6:00.
  • Worth knowing that the beginner season wraps up several weeks before the competition group's does, so a first-year wrestler's year is shorter than the calendar's full span suggests.

Dates move each year, and the mailing list and the club's SportsYou group are where the current season's times are confirmed.

Carroll ISD Connection

This is about as close to Carroll ISD as a club program gets without being one. Practices are held in the district's own wrestling facility at Carroll High School, the coaching is done by Carroll's varsity staff, and the club's board includes a designated CISD liaison. The club positions itself as a supplement to the district's two middle-school wrestling programs rather than a competitor to them, and it points families toward the high school coach for the UIL middle-school program directly. For a Southlake family, the practical reading is that a child who starts here in elementary school is being coached, in the same room, by the people who will coach them in high school.

Credentials

Coaching is split between the Carroll High School varsity staff and credentialed parent volunteers. From the high school: Joseph Hathaway, Carroll varsity head coach; Gabriel Reyes, varsity associate head coach; Steve Love, varsity assistant coach; and Ian Semelroth, Carroll middle school head coach. On the parent side, Philip Doran is the club's director and head parent coach, a Kansas high school state champion and a USA Wrestling Copper certified coach, coaching here since 2021. Bret Bosler, assistant parent coach since 2017, was an Oklahoma Coaches 4A All-Star in 1988, an Oklahoma high school state placer and three-time state qualifier who wrestled at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M, and is also a state judo champion and a third-degree Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. Parent coaches must complete a USA Wrestling leadership membership, a background check, and Safe Sport training before working a practice.

Sign up to find out which kids’ activity will take over your entire weekend