Hall of Famer's Dream Comes True With Enfield Wrestling Room

ENFIELD, CT — For more than four decades, the room directly behind the auditorium in the former Enrico Fermi High School building was known for the sounds of brass, strings and percussion instruments. Now, it is home to the sounds of grunts, groans and whistles, thanks in particular to the efforts of a Hall of Fame coach.

The former high school band room has been transformed into a space exclusively dedicated to the sport of wrestling. It is the practice facility for Enfield High School's grapplers, as well as the Enfield Eagles youth wrestling program.

Former Fermi coach Ben Aleks, a 2016 Enfield Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, contributed heavily to the renovation effort, both in concept and in resources.

"From the time I started wrestling here, Coach Aleks has been a mentor to everyone," current Eagle coach Andrew Duperre said. "He wants to be under the radar, he doesn't want anyone to know that it's him, but he deserves all the recognition for everything he's done for this program."

Enfield and Fermi high schools consolidated in 2016, but a $103 million renovation of the Enfield High School building did not provide space for the wrestling program, necessitating athletes to travel to the closed high school building to practice.

"I had talked to our former athletic director, Barry Bernstein, and was told there was no place at Enfield High School for us to practice," former head coach Jeff Beiler said. "We started practicing at Hazardville Memorial Elementary School, where we had to roll the mats out every day, then roll them back up and put them on the stage. Then we were moved to the Fermi gym, where we were told we could keep the mats out, but then we were told we had to roll them up to accommodate senior citizen pickleball."

The squad began practicing in the old band room two years ago, where Beiler estimates he "spent about 25 hours a week" preparing the site by removing old furnishings and getting the floor in shape. The high school wrestlers prepared and installed the mats themselves.

Once the room was being utilized as the team's home base, plans began to develop to adorn the walls with banners and displays highlighting all past state champions and placewinners from both high schools.

"We had most of Fermi's records, but the records were lacking on Enfield High," Beiler said. Aleks, Beiler and former Enfield assistant Joe Andrychowski, also a Hall of Famer, diligently researched the schools' wrestling history, aided by the family of the late Kirk Parker, another Hall of Famer who coached at Enfield for 25 years and passed away in 2018.

An official dedication ceremony was held Thursday evening, with about 100 guests gazing at the abundance of names from Enfield wrestling's grand history. Among the visitors were past State Open champions Bob Andreana (FHS, 1982), Marty Green (EHS, 1983) and Jay Flynn (FHS, 1999), as well as two-time class champions Jim Olson (FHS, 1980 and 1981) and John Ragno (FHS, 2005 and 2006).

Duperre presented Aleks a plaque thanking him for his "many hours and selfless contributions towards the Enfield Wrestling Program," and for helping to make Enfield "a championship caliber program."

The ever-humble Aleks, who coached Fermi from 1983 to 1994 and is still involved as a volunteer with the Enfield program, emotionally accepted the plaque, stating, "When I came here in 1983, I said, 'where is the wrestling room?' I came from Cathedral [High School in Springfield, Mass.], where we had a wrestling room. We never had one here, and neither did Enfield, but now we do."

"This gives us a place we can call home," Duperre said. "We were practicing behind a curtain for so long and even practicing out in the lobby. This is our home, a place where we can put names on the wall, and it gives kids something to try to achieve - 'I want to be on that wall.'"

(Tim Jensen/Patch Media Corp.)