LAYTON—Ken Astle was a basketball player. His dad Ryck Astle was a basketball coach. By all accounts he should have followed that path but one miscommunication led him into wrestling and an amazing run in the sport. Astle is now passing that passion along as one of the coaches of the Layton High School wrestling team.

“I started in junior high playing basketball,” said Ken. “Practice got canceled one day and I couldn’t get a hold of my mom. I was walking around and saw the wrestlers and joined them.”

“My daughter came to me and said she wanted to be the wrestling manager,” said Ken’s dad, Ryck, who is a Davis School District Secondary Director. “I said, ‘we’re basketball people. I don’t know anything about wrestling.’”

“I was second in district in seventh grade and first the next year,” said Ken. “I kept wrestling throughout my high school career.”

Ryck said Ken came to him in junior high and said he wanted to wrestle at Layton High his ninth grade year. “I told him to stay one more year at the junior high but he said he was bored. He’d won all of his matches and pinned all of his opponents every year. So he started wrestling in ninth grade.”

Astle was named National champion in 2018. Courtesy photos

 The weight then was 103 and he was ranked number one, Ryck said. “He won the LAT ( a big tournament). He was doing really well then he had a growth spurt and had a hard time keeping his weight down.”

Ken was practicing two to three hours, said Ryck. “He started getting dizzy and just sat there. He said, ‘I’m done. I don’t like it.’ I told him he wasn’t going to quit and that he couldn’t let his team down. I said, ‘If at the end of the year you decide you don’t want to do it then you can quit.’”

Ken didn’t quit and went on to have a great wrestling career. 

• National champion in 2018
• He was awarded the outstanding wrestler of the National Wrestling tournament
• Selected as outstanding wrestler of the year
• Outstanding graduate at Western Wyoming and spoke at graduation
• He was also invited back to the college in May to be the commencement speaker at their graduation

However, everything didn’t always go his way. “I had a 9-0 lead in the final match of state in high school,” said Ken. “I was supposed to win. I was undefeated in 5A but I lost in overtime.”

Art Castillo, the coach at Western Wyoming, recruited Ken. “When he got back from his mission he didn’t know if he wanted to wrestle,” said Castillo. “But he got up to campus and there was a strong connection. He was the exact type of guy we were looking for.”

He was a tremendous asset for us, Castillo said. “As an athlete he did just about everything you can do. He hit the trifecta.” 

Ken is a once in a generation type of young man, he said. “He left his mark with me personally. I was grateful to be his coach. I expect he’ll do great things in this world. I can’t wait to see where this journey takes him.”

Ken said the sport has taught him a lot. “I really learned to do hard things. Losing that match in the finals was hard to go through. Even going through the hardest times in this sport you can push through and get back on top. That’s been the highlight for me.”

Layton High took state in wrestling this year. “They’ve been right up there,” said Ken. “It’s great to see the team growing. They’ve had some victories and some tough losses but those can build you to become better. I tell the team, ‘no victory is final, no failure is fatal.’”