This wrestling season featured a beginning of one career and an end of another for the Erneste family.
The famed wrestling family from Park Hill is most well known for Bill Erneste, who guided the Trojans to the multiple state championships and prominence in not only the state but the nation.
Now retired from coaching, he still spends plenty of time around the mat.
His son, John, just wrapped up his senior season at Missouri with a sixth-place finish at the NCAA championships this past weekend in Pittsburgh, earning his first All-American honor during his collegiate career.
A little more than a month ago, John’s younger sister, Samantha, wrapped up her first season as the girls wrestling coach at Knob Noster High School.
But she is quick to point out her hierarchy when it comes to her brother.
RANDY SPEER/Warrensburg Daily-Star Journal
Knob Noster girls wrestling coach Samantha Erneste gives instruction during the MSHSAA State Tournament in February in Columbia, Mo.
“My brother is No. 6 in the nation and I beat him up when I was six, so apparently I’m No. 5,” she said with a laugh.
Samantha Erneste is a junior at Central Missouri in Warrensburg, where she is a special education major and has a minor in adaptive physical education.
The 2016 Park Hill graduate has been around wrestling as long as she could remember, but her dad was a little uneasy at the thought of his daughter wrestling.
By the time she was in high school she talked her dad into letting her to wrestle for the Trojans.
“They didn’t want me to wrestle, but it is in my blood, absolutely,” Samantha Erneste said. “The day I was born I was at the mat. I remember my dad coaching freestyle and folkstyle and I would sit in the corner when I was 3-years old and help him coach.”
Her dad said by the time Samantha was five she could score a wrestling match.
“By the time she was 10 or 11 she knew the moves and I could even ask her questions,” Bill Erneste said. “I loved having her by my side. She always wanted to be a wrestler and I was probably holding her back a little.”
She spent time on the JV roster at Park Hill but when she was in high school the girls had to wrestle the boys. Her dad remembers her having a few varsity matches and a number of big JV wins.
Samantha also grew up around some of the best wrestlers to ever walk the halls — Ke’Shawn Hayes, Canten Marriott, Ryan Hosford, Colston DiBlasi — and they all became older brothers of sorts, her dad said.
This past year marked the first year the girls had a separate division to compete and qualify for state.
Her dad thinks if there was a girls division when Samantha was school she would be a state qualifier at the very least.
“It is so cool,” Samantha Erneste said. “I was a little jealous, I wish it could’ve happened a little sooner, but at the same time, I was so excited. I think it was just wild to see them out there (at Mizzou Arena) and feel the success and thrills and the nerves in the tunnel. It was cool.”
Her first venture into wrestling wasn’t the usual. She was actually doing mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiu-jitsu in Warrensburg but a fight in the stands during a MMA match made her reach out to her dad.
Bill Erneste made some calls and found one of his friends, David Andrade, at Knob Noster. Samantha worked with the youth program at Greater Heights and used that experience to help with Knob Noster.
The school district needed help coaching middle school wrestling and Samantha Erneste was set to help out at that level when a phone call last summer changed things.
She was offered the chance to be the first girls wrestling coach as MSHSAA made girls wrestling a sanctioned event.
She took over a team of 11 wrestlers when the year started in the winter and finished with nine. The Panthers went undefeated and had one tie, which happened when one of her girls had to be pulled up to fill a spot in the boys dual.
Bill Erneste drove to Grain Valley to watch his daughter coach in her first tournament.
What he saw made him proud. Samantha wasn’t a coach that just yelled at her wrestlers. She was coaching them up, saying ‘keep your elbow in,’ ‘knee slide,’ and ‘peel a hand.’
“I was so proud to watch her out there and the way she carried herself,” Bill Erneste said. “I couldn’t be more proud of the way she handled the girls when they won was great and when they lost was great.”
Knob Noster finished the season with nine wrestlers and Kelsey Burden advanced to the state championships.
Erneste was able to implement school work into coaching a team, some only two years younger than her.
She used what she learned in special education and adaptive physical education. She had to use baby steps in teaching many of the first-time wrestlers. She showed the wrestlers how to do a hard snap down until they got it, sometimes using herself as the prop.
“Getting the basics right, it was like teaching,” she said. “We took gigantic steps in four months. I have the summer to work with them and we have eight months before we compete again.”
All three Ernestes — a coach, a former coach and a college wrestler — were in Columbia together last month. Bill was there helping out at the state championships as a security volunteer on the mats, Samantha was coaching and John had a dual at Hearnes Center that saw the largest crowd ever to watch the Mizzou team compete.
When Burden was competing in the girls bracket, Samantha was in the coach’s corner working and her dad stood by the wall taking the match in. He’s been at Columbia and had a great deal of success, winning six state titles between 2003 and 2013 and being named the coach of the year five times in an eight-year span.
“I followed her around like a proud dad taking photos,” said Bill Erneste.
Samantha said she didn’t feel any nerves having a legendary coach keeping a watchful eye on her.
“He’s my dad,” she said. “I don’t see the amazing hall of fame coach and all of those sort of things. He is my dad. He loves me when I fail and he loves me when I have success. He will love and help me out if I screw up and he’s got my back if I do something right.”
CODY THORN/Citizen photo
Knob Noster coach and Park Hill graduate Samantha Erneste, far right, talks with wrestler Samantha Burden after a loss in the MSHSAA State Championships in February in Columbia, Mo.
Coaching isn’t done for Samantha this year. She is going to guide the Missouri girls team at the Fargo Nationals for the second year in a row. She will start her senior year of college in the fall and her second year as a high school wrestling coach in November.
“This has been a heck of a year watching her coach and John get his All-American honors at the national championships, a goal he has had,” Bill Erneste said. “It definitely makes you a proud dad.”