For the 2024-2025 wrestling season, Pittsburg High School’s wrestling program has gained two new assistant coaches.

For the past seven years, the program has been led by SparkWell student support coordinator and head wrestling coach LC Davis.

“Since I’ve been here, it’s always been a natural transition with assistant coaches,” Davis said. “We also have two volunteer assistants that will be helping us out in the room and they are also going to be great additions.”

One of the new assistant coaches is Karsyn Stewart who is also PHS’ assistant volleyball coach.

“She had already made a great bond with our female athletes,” Davis said. “That’s why we brought her on board.”

Not only is this Stewart’s first year coaching wrestling at PHS, but this was also her first time being an assistant volleyball coach for PHS in the 2024 season.

“I hope that I can bring energy and my positive attitude to the PHS wrestling coaching staff,” Stewart said.

According to Stewart, although she has never wrestled before, her motive for coaching this sport is to help her in future endeavors.

          “I decided to coach wrestling because I aspire to be a head volleyball coach one day and this is a great learning opportunity for me,” Stewart said. “Wrestling is a sport where you have to have grit. This is going to help me in my future years of coaching on how to keep my players motivated and working hard.”

The other assistant wrestling coach that was brought on board this year is Johnny Akin. 

“Johnny Akin is one of our new assistants,” Davis said. “He wrestled at Saint Thomas Aquinas. His dad was one of the best wrestlers to come out of Kansas.”

According to Davis, even after losing two seasoned assistant coaches, the gain of coaches in Stewart and Akin had helped continue to build the program higher.

“We lost two good assistants and had to replace two good assistants and I feel like we did that,” Davis said. “We have a great coaching staff.”