Imagine being a young basketball player and learning that at your summer camp, Bobby Knight, Gene Keady, Michael Jordan, Dean Smith, and Kobe Bryant are going to be there teaching you how to play the game.

That's equal to the experience 320 wrestlers have gone through once again this year at the Brian Anderson Little Giant Wrestling Camp at Wabash College. 

Anderson has brought in top talent every year for the camp, from college champions to Olympic medalists. This year's staff may be the best ever. (Click here for an overview and photos from the 2009 camp.)

Wednesday the campers had a chance to listen and learn from one of the best to ever lace up a pair of wrestling shoes and hit the mat for competition. Dan Gable's resume as both an athlete and coach is astounding. He won 118 matches at Iowa State with only one loss, and won a gold medal at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich (without allowing any opponent to score a single point in any match, by the way!). As a coach Gable led Iowa to 15 national titles, including nine consecutive crowns. He led the Hawkeyes to 21 Big Ten titles along the way. Gable also served as the US Olympic Team coach at the 1980, 1984, and 2000 Olympic Games. His hometown of Waterloo, Iowa has even opened the Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute and Museum in his honor.

Gable taught two sessions in the Knowling Fieldhouse, not only focusing on the specific moves on the mat but the importance of making wrestling entertaining too.

"If you make wrestling entertaining, it's harder to be an extinction-type of sport," Gable said in between sessions as he discussed the sport's battles over the last 15 years to maintain a strong public image and its hold in the college sports scene. "With everything out there grabbing some of the focus over the last 15 years, it's almost like you've double the field of sports fighting money issues and regulations. Schools have a choice --- you can either double the amount you spend or cut back. Usually doing away with stuff that's easy to cut is the simplest way to do things. If you make wrestling entertaining it's harder to be that extinction-type of sport."

Gable was joined by another legend, Bruce Baumgartner. The 1995 Sullivan Award-winner as the outstanding US amateur athlete, Baumgartner has won more Olympic and World freestyle medals (13) than any other competitor. Joe Heskett (a four-time All-American at Iowa State and silver medalist at the 2007 World Championships), Reece Humphrey (three-time Indiana High School champion, two-time NCAA Nationals qualifier, and 2008 World University Championships silver medalist), and Heny Cejudo (2008 Olympic gold medalist at 121 pounds and the youngest gold medalist in US Olympic history) also served as clinicians during the four-day camp.

For former Wabash wrestler and current Crawfordsville High School teacher and wrestling coach Chris Ervin ’91, the decision to attend the camp every year has been an easy one.

"Our reason for coming year after year is the great job Coach Anderson has done is bringing top clinicians in every time. A lot of camps we've gone to — ones at Indiana University or Ohio State — get stale after a few years because the same people keep coming to teach over and over again. This camp is run extremely well to start with, then when you add the high quality coaching staff and clinicians that Brian puts together I just don't think it can be beat. The ten kids I brought to camp this year will have learned from three former Olympians. It would be difficult to find another camp that has that kind of draw anywhere in the country."

The hard work won't end for Anderson when the camp draws to a close on Thursday morning. He'll turn right back around and start working on the 2010 group of instructors in an attempt to top this year's group.

Photos (top right) - Dan Gable shows one of the campers how to use leverage against an opponent.

(Bottom right) - The legends of wrestling: Bruce Baumgartner and Henry Cejudo provide instruction for at the Brian Anderson Wrestling Camp.