All eight San Diego Bulldogs Wrestling Club members who are going to Chicago for the Gay Games VII next week are driven to bring home some medals when they compete on Monday, July 17, during the weeklong Olympic-like sports festival.

Director Russ Connelly, who co-founded the San Diego Bulldogs in 1998, said it’s difficult to predict how well the Bulldogs will fare at the Gay Games. He said it depends on the particular draw each wrestler is placed in based on their bout card, which contains information on the wrestler’s past experience and other statistics.

“You never know where the bracketing is going to go,” he said. “They’ll take all that criteria and match them up and try to work on putting people together in appropriate match-ups. They also make sure that people are not going up against teammates.”

Although most wrestlers in the Bulldogs are inexperienced competing in tournaments, Connelly said the team’s chances at the Gay Games are good.

“I think we have an excellent chance of competing for a medal, but it’s also difficult to know what the competition is going to be,” he said. “Our primary competition will be the Golden Gate Wrestling Club from San Francisco. They’re sending at least 20 wrestlers and, historically, they make up about a third of the competition.”

Wrestlers from Southern California will also make up a third of the competition, he said.

The Bulldogs have been recruiting new wrestlers and have started to generate interest. Connelly said he has noticed more people coming to check out Bulldogs practices on Sundays and Thursdays.

“They’ll come to one practice and they’ll realize that it’s not as intimidating as the perception they have,” he said. “They stick around more and get a great workout. They stick around for camaraderie as well as the sport.”

No wrestler will compete in any more than five matches during the tournament, Connelly said. A beginner’s clinic will take place the day before competition on Sunday, July 16, where rules will be reviewed, as well as other fundamentals of wrestling. He said there will also be a novice seminar where athletes not competing in wrestling but interested in the sport can learn more.

Connelly, who competed in the 2002 Sydney Gay Games in Australia, has been going to the Golden Gate Wrestling Tournament in San Francisco for the last 10 years and said he observed and learned the logistics of how to put together a wrestling club from attending those tournaments. The Golden Gate tournament, now in its 22nd year, recently took place in San Francisco over Memorial Day weekend.

Connelly coached the Bulldogs part time until Greg Lines took over coaching responsibilities a year and a half ago.

Connelly said wrestling in the gay community has become popular since the late ’70s and early ’80s, when there were only three or four gay wrestling clubs in existence.

“As people who have been in those clubs have moved to other cities, they started clubs in those cities,” Connelly said.

One of the key people of the gay wrestling movement was Gene Dermody, a former president of the Federation of Gay Games, who currently coaches the Golden Gate Wrestling Club in San Francisco. That club was started by several Gay Games founders, including 1968 Olympian Tom Waddell.

The Bulldogs are a U.S.A. Wrestling-sanctioned and chartered club. Connelly said club members can compete in any U.S.A. Wrestling-sanctioned tournament in the country with their competitor card.

Lines said his goal at Gay Games is to wrestle his best, have fun, and meet a lot of other gay and lesbian athletes from all over the world from a variety of sports. He agrees that wrestling is a sport that is gaining quite a bit of popularity within the GLBT community.

“It offers a fun way to get [and] stay in shape, and supplement regular workouts at the gym,” he said, adding, “Wrestling is also a sport that is a great mental workout.”

Jake Whitehill, Mat Moranville and Lines will compete in the Open Division at the Gay Games. Lines and Whitehill will wrestle in the 163-lb. weight class, while Moranville will hit the mat in the 220-lb. weight class.

Kevin Servais, David Omdahl, Tom Merkel, Gary Gerber and Ty Downey will compete in the Masters/Veterans Divisions. Servais will wrestle in the 114.5-lb. weight class, while Omdahl, Merkel, Gerber and Downey will all wrestle in the 163-lb. weight class.

The Bulldogs recently sent three wrestlers to compete at the Golden Gate Wrestling Memorial Day Tournament and Clinic in San Francisco on May 28.

Gerber said he got into wrestling in high school as an intramural sport and knew it was a sport in which he could excel. He is gunning to bring home a gold medal in his weight class and said his chances are good based on his Golden Gate Wrestling Tournament result, although he admits that the competition will be at an even higher level at the Gay Games.

At the Golden Gate Wrestling Tournament, Gerber placed second after pinning Ken Thomas of Los Angeles in the 165-lb. weight class and was the only one of the Bulldogs to win by a pin.

Gerber said he doesn’t think about the significance of being an out gay athlete at Gay Games.

“To me, this is just something I wanted to do all my life, and whether you’re gay, straight, bisexual, this is something that everybody can participate in,” he said. “You can see how much fun we’re having out here.”

Moranville is relatively new to wrestling but said he enjoys the sport and enjoys learning new techniques every time he hits the mat.

“It’s a sport where you have to be kind of aggressive,” he said. “It’s a personality sport, basically.”

As a sport with intense and close physical contact, some people have criticized gay wrestling clubs as sexual outlets, but Lines said that’s not the case for the Bulldogs.

“Of course, a lot of guys are curious about the man-to-man, physical contact aspect of wrestling – and there is plenty of that – but guys who walk into our club and get on the mat quickly learn that we are a legit freestyle wrestling club that is sanctioned by U.S.A. Wrestling,” he said. “I encourage anybody who has ever thought about wrestling or even has the slightest curiosity about the sport to come check out the San Diego Bulldogs Wrestling Club.”

Connelly also encourages wrestlers of all ability levels to join the Bulldogs.

“I would say basically there is, in our particular club, mostly newcomers to the sport. We encourage that,” he said. “... It’s not meant to be intimidating; it’s not going to be a knock-down, drag out. It’s like most sports in our community – it’s meant to be inclusive.”

The San Diego Bulldogs Wrestling Club is San Diego’s only year-round, diverse and all-inclusive wrestling club catering to anybody who has an interest in the sport of amateur freestyle wrestling. All skill levels, from beginners to seasoned wrestlers, are welcome. Call (619) 491-4747 for more information.