Outdoors: Bear Paw Wrestling Camp as much about the outdoors as it is the wrestling mats

When it comes to summer sports camps, there are a lot of different options: football, basketball, wrestling, soccer, you name it. Regardless of the sport, there are a bevy of options available.

Of course, each camp attempts to offer something unique and fun, but when it comes to local camps, it's hard, really hard, to top the Bear Paw Wrestling Camp, which is about as unique as they come and that's because it's held at a nontraditional location out in Beaver Creek Park at the Kiwanis Campground.

"I like fishing and hunting and that's part of what made me want be part of this camp when coach (Scott Filius) asked me so many years ago," Great Falls High head wrestling coach Scott Komac said to a group of campers during the annual camp. "Some of those extra-curricular activities really made it appealing to me and I have always enjoyed coming here. Wrestling is great but you don't have to do it 365 days a year to be good at it. It's nice to enjoy some other activities, which helps you not get burned out and tired of wrestling. It helps keep it fun."

Komac, the long-time head man of the Great Falls High Bison, has been coaching at the Bear Paw Wrestling Camp for years. Yet, following the retirement of former Havre High head wrestling coach Scott Filius, Komac and CMR head coach Aaron Jensen took on a bigger role running the camp, hoping to keep the tradition alive.

And ultimately, the camp went off without a hitch. Like it has in year's past, the camp offered a number of fun activities off the mat, such as fishing, camping, hiking and even a chance to go down a slip-and-slide, which was set up the same night as the annual takedown tournament.

While campers travelled from as far as Great Falls or Malta to take part in the festivities, one of the young wrestlers who soaked it all in was Aden Shandorf of Havre.

"The was my first year of camp but it was really good," Shandorf said. "We got to do a lot of different things, like going swimming and stuff. That was pretty fun and going down the slip-and-slide was fun, too."

Many camps feature a place to sleep, but often times, it can be nothing more than a dorm room on a college campus. But at the Bear Paw Wrestling Camp, the accommodations are much more in tune with nature. Some of the wrestlers, like Shandorf, stayed in the cabins that are part of the Kiwanis campground. Others, though, camped with their parents or pitched tents. Either way, everyone was there to hear ghost stories on Friday night, the final night of camp, after the takedown tournament.

"I heard some pretty scary ghost stories," Komac said.

Of course, having fun is one goal of the wrestling camp, but another is to instill some basic fundamentals, especially with the younger grapplers. And after four days of work, with three sessions per day, morning, afternoon and evening, it's safe to say that mission was accomplished.

"We got to learn a lot of new moves," Shandorf said. "That was the best part besides the fun things we got to do."

Learning and fun should go hand-in-hand. And that recipe, along with outdoor fun sprinkled in, is why the Bear Paw Wrestling Camp has stood the test of time and should continue to flourish, well into the future.