Queen of the Mat
December 16, 2011
DEWITT – Even if they haven’t faced her, most Lansing-area wrestlers have heard of Rachel McFarland.
It’s a different story when DeWitt hits the road for Saturday tournaments. McFarland will run up against opponents who don’t know a thing about her – until she beats them.
The Panthers senior has won more than 100 matches over the last three seasons. She’s been asked about wrestling boys probably as many times.
“Sometimes, I feel bad for them. I’m not going to lie,” McFarland said, breaking into a laugh. “I don’t think of (wrestling boys) in a different way. But for guys, it’s probably weird because they never wrestle a girl.
“I just wrestle.”
A girl wrestling on an MHSAA team isn’t rare -- roughly 146 have participated in the sport per season over the last three. But McFarland is special.
She signed a letter of intent Wednesday to accept 
nearly a full scholarship from NAIA Oklahoma City University, which has the top-ranked women’s collegiate wrestling program in the country this season. She’s also wrestled on the international mat, taking fifth in a world competition in Hungary over the summer.
A 112-pounder, McFarland will carry a 101-39 record into her final high school season later this month. She’s both won a CAAC Gold championship and finished runner-up, and as a sophomore advanced to the MHSAA Regional round.
Not bad for only five years in the sport. After sitting through her younger brother’s tournaments while they were growing up, she decided in eighth grade to join her middle school team. She was tired of watching and not being a part. And she was drawn to the sport’s intensity.
“She had the drive to be great. I’ve never seen an athlete in any of my sports with such work ethic and dedication,” said DeWitt coach Brian Byars, who also coaches the school’s boys cross country team. “And so we knew that she could be something special. We just didn’t know what.
“Her commitment and desire kept her achieving goals, and we just kept setting them higher and higher. And then we just started realizing what a treasure we have.”
McFarland is following a short line to success at the MHSAA level. Goodrich’s C.C. Weber finished fourth in Division 3 at 103 pounds in 2009, the best MHSAA Finals finish by a girl. Martin’s Amy Berridge finished seventh at 103 in Division 4 in 2004. McFarland will be Oklahoma City teammates with Kristi Garr, also from Goodrich and an MHSAA Finals qualifier in 2010.
McFarland was a softball player during her middle school years, and ran cross country and track earlier in her high school career. She had picked up some wrestling knowledge watching her brother, and the rest came from natural ability and a lot of work on technique.
“I thought I was going to beat her because she’s a girl. She totally was better,” said DeWitt sophomore Alex Lantz, McFarland’s practice partner last season. “When she roughs around the guys a little bit, it’s like ‘Whoa, she just threw me. I’ve got to do it back or something.’”
McFarland’s success is opening the wrestling room door for other interested girls at her school. A few gave the sport a brief try over the last few seasons, and Byars said one in particular has talked to both he and McFarland about joining the team this winter. Byars and McFarland also have discussed starting a little girls wrestling program in their community.
McFarland also considered signing with King College (Tenn.) and Menlo College (Calif.), which like Oklahoma City are members of the 14-team Women’s College Wrestling Association. She intends to study biomedical science and will move far from her family – but anticipates few changes to life on the mat despite the fact she’ll no longer be wrestling boys.
“Everyone knows girls are more dramatic, so there might be more drama. But I think it will be about the same,” McFarland said. “I’ll definitely miss the guys. It’s fun being with them. But I think it will be OK. (The girls) are all wrestlers. They’ll understand.”
Longtime Coach Vlcek has Manchester On Pace to Contend in D4 Title Race
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
December 19, 2023
Steve Vlcek is 34 years into his varsity coaching career at Manchester and might have his best team yet.
The season still has a long way to go, of course, but Vlcek is confident that what is being built right now in the Flying Dutchmen wrestling room is something special.
“I always call this our preseason,” he said. “We’ll have four tournaments before the new year. That’s 26 or 27 matches per kid. That way, we can figure out where we are at, what we need to work on more. Then we can start tweaking stuff a little bit.
“It’s been a really great start. I see a lot of improvement in our team.”
Vlcek, who has won more than 700 meets in his career, and Manchester have been on the cusp before. The Flying Dutchmen have won 18 straight District championships and own a dozen Regional titles. Manchester was the Division 4 runner-up in 2008 and has reached the Semifinals multiple times.
The last two years, they’ve qualified for MHSAA Team Finals weekend but have lost the first day in Quarterfinals.
“It’s been a little frustrating, but you have to keep plugging away,” Vlcek said. “We’re trying. We have a good shot the next couple of years.”
Vlcek was a football guy at Manchester, but when the school didn’t field football in 1981, he turned to wrestling.
“We didn’t have football my freshman year, and I was driving my mom crazy,” Vlcek said. “I took up wrestling.”
During his four years with the varsity, Manchester went through three coaches. It was his final coach, Dan Jordan, who invited Vleck back a couple of years later to work with some of the wrestlers on the team.
“He called me up and asked if in my free time I would come and work with a couple kids,” Vlcek said. “Two years later, I was the junior high coach, and two years after that he resigned, recommended me for the job and I got it. He did a really good job of bringing up the program.”
Vleck never thought he would be a coach, but it became his passion.
“Once I started working with the kids, I really enjoyed it,” he said. “I wasn’t sure how much I would like it as a 19-year-old, or 20-year-old kid, but I did.”
Some of his early Manchester teams struggled with numbers. They’d often have seven or eight wrestlers win matches but lose in a dual-meet format because of the forfeits. That started to change during the mid-2000s.
“We started getting good classes together, and that made a considerable difference,” he said.
He picked things up from rival coaches, some of whom he has become friends with over the years.
“You pick up little things from each coach you coach against,” he said.
He credits a strong youth program at Manchester with developing wrestlers at a young age.
“We have a very involved youth program,” he said. “They’ve brought a good product to me. I try to stay away from it, let them develop it. We are very lucky to have it.”
He also credits a slew of assistant coaches, such as Mike Bunn.
“I can name 20 guys who have come into the room and make the program better every day,” he said. “I have my son (Brock) coaching with me now, and I really enjoy that.”
The Flying Dutchmen have 10 juniors on this year’s squad, including Sammy Stewart, who won an Individual Finals title last year at 113 pounds, and Blake Sloan, who was runner-up at 138.
Stewart missed a good part of the 2022 season while recovering from a hand injury.
“He had a really bad accident in shop class,” Vlcek said. “He almost cut his hand off. He came back in mid-January. He definitely had to overcome some obstacles. He avenged the loss he had (during the regular season) in the state finals.”
Sloan is another of the super sophomores. He’s coming off a record-setting football season in which he rushed for more than 2,100 yards.
“I can’t ask more out of those guys,” Vlcek said. “They put their time in and help their teammates out. We have seven or eight kids who have been state qualifiers. We still have some work to do, but there is improvement.”
Manchester is 10-2 in dual meets to start this season, giving Vlcek 711 career victories. The Flying Dutchmen have played a good schedule and have been ranked anywhere from No. 2 to No. 5 in early-season team rankings.
“I like to be challenged,” Vlcek said. “You don’t get better without wrestling the best.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Sammy Stewart’s hand is raised by the official in victory after the Manchester standout won his championship match at the Individual Finals in March. (Middle) Teammate Blake Sloan, right, considers his next move during his championship match last season. (Below) Coach Steve Vlcek embraces Stewart after the victory. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)