Wrestling Resurgence: How Glen Lake Community Schools Rebuilt A Long-Dormant Athletic Program Into A Powerhouse

When Glen Lake Community Schools rebooted its wrestling program two years ago, coach Luke Moeggenberg didn’t expect to be winning district titles or fielding state championship contenders any time soon.

He may have underestimated his own impact.

Speaking to MHSAA.com in 2024, the year Glen Lake reestablished a wrestling program that had been dormant since 2001, Moeggenberg said his big goals weren’t framed around postseason glory, but around the fundamentals of wrestling technique.

“My focus has been really trying to get our team into a position where they are safe to compete,” Moeggenberg said at the time. “When you’re talking three months of wrestling experience to this point and you are competing against kids that have maybe been wrestling 12 years, our focus has been getting our kids to compete with a little bit of confidence and in a safe manner.”

Moeggenberg’s athletes got into competitive form faster than he expected. This weekend, three Glen Lake high schoolers will head to Ford Field to compete in the Division 4 state championships. And while the Lakers didn’t qualify for states as a team, they did win a district title, the first in school history for wrestling.

“We’re at the point where we’ve got some kids that have really bought in. They believed in the process, and they're really growing pretty quickly,” Moeggenberg says. “And that’s notable, because some kids wrestle their whole lives, and then you have this natural expectation for them to be competitive. But we have Caden Sheehan and Abraham Feeney and Gavin Sheehan. They've each only got 2-3 years of wrestling under their belts, and they're qualifying for state finals. They’re already top 16 in the state before they even lace up their shoes for this weekend.”

Moeggenberg is no stranger to athletic success. A standout wrestler at Shepherd High School, he finished runner-up in Division 3 in 2001, in the 140-pound weight class. He went on to compete collegiately for Michigan State University (MSU), where he met his future wife, Liz Shimek, arguably the greatest athlete in Glen Lake High School history.

For the Lakers, Shimek went all-state in basketball, volleyball, and track, set a state basketball record for most career rebounds (1,533), and was named Michigan’s Miss Basketball for her senior season. After committing to MSU on a full athletic scholarship, Shimek etched her name in the Spartan record books, reigning for a time as the school’s all-time leading scorer (1,780 points) and all-time leading rebounder (1,130 rebounds), and leading the program to the Division 1 NCAA championship game in 2005. She went on to play in the WNBA.

Luke and Liz got married in 2006, moved to Glen Lake after Liz retired from professional basketball in 2009, and now have five kids.

“After we had a family started, I started dabbling with opportunities for my oldest son Lamdin, who's now 14, to go out and try wrestling,” says Moeggenberg. “There was nothing here in the entire county at that time, so I reached out to a couple programs elsewhere, and I ended up really liking the Benzie Central program. I went down there and helped run their youth program.”

Soon, the second Moeggenberg child, Fletcher, had joined his dad and brother on their regular trips to Benzie. And before long, word had gotten out and other local families were asking to join the program, too. “Eventually, we were taking 15-24 kids down there on a regular basis,” Moeggenberg says.

Those numbers gave Moeggenberg and a few fellow coaches enough firepower to take the matter to the Glen Lake school board, which committed to restarting wrestling as a school-sponsored sport. Now, the programs are growing at every age level, with recent high school successes the clearest testament to the rebuilding process.

“There are 14 varsity weight classes in wrestling, running from 106 pounds up to heavyweight, and one of our big goals this year was to fill all 14 weight classes,” Moeggenberg tells The Ticker. “You become very competitive very quickly in Division 4 wrestling in northern Michigan by not going out and forfeiting matches. In prior seasons, we were forfeiting four matches every tournament, and that means you’re down 24-0 before the whistle even blows.”

Filling all 14 weight divisions opened the door for the high school squad’s other goal, which was winning districts last month against Benzie Central. The Lakers went one step further, too, scoring an upset victory over Mancelona at regionals. The team lost in the next round to a “a super strong and deep Roscommon team,” but brothers Caden Sheehan and Gavin Sheehan finished top three at regionals in the same weight class (144 pounds) to punch their tickets to Ford Field, and senior Abraham Feeney also qualified with a fourth-place finish in the 150 pounds division.

“Hopefully, they can go in with the same ‘I have nothing to lose’ mindset that we had in our regional match against Mancelona, and can just leave it all on the mat,” Moeggenberg says of the trio. “From where I’m standing, they could definitely be satisfied just qualifying for state. But these three boys, they're not that. They want to be on that podium.”

Pictured: Glen Lake's three state-finals-bound wrestlers, Caden Sheehan, Gavin Sheehan, and Abraham Feeney.