— It was a camp of surprises for the Muskogee High School wrestlers this week

Coach Bobby Jefferson’s group was attending the All-America Wrestling Camp at Southwestern College at Winfield, Kan., where apparently, the biggest impact they made there didn’t originate from a competitor.

According to his email message to Jeremy Biddle, the camp director, Taggard Wall, the mayor of Winfield, got a call from “a group of folks” who ran into the team at a Braum’s restaurant on Tuesday.

“At first (they were) concerned because they saw a bunch of kids in line ahead of them and how rowdy they figured kids can get, but then they told me that the wrestlers from Muskogee were the best behaved and the most polite young men they had seen in a long time,” Wall said in the letter. “They really thought a lot of that wrestling program and of the town of Muskogee after the wonderful interaction they had with those wrestlers. They were also happy that Winfield was able to play host to such wonderful young men.”

The mayor said in the message he wanted to share this news with the Muskogee players and coaches directly. Missing them on the final day of the camp at their hotel, the note was read at the final gathering of campers on Wednesday.

“When he said something to me about an incident at Braum’s, I kind of held my breath,” assistant coach Dan Jefferson said. “We’d gone up there for ice cream and my attention had been on getting everyone through the line. Were there problems? I wasn’t aware of any, but you never know. So I was a little worried.”

When Biddle read the letter, Dan Jefferson called it the most heart-stirring moment he’d had in the program.

“I felt myself welling up,” he said. “We’ve been to the state (dual) finals three years in a row, we’ve increased our team GPA every year but there hasn’t been a single event that has had me as emotional as when he read that. It’s not just a credit to what we do but their parents, teachers, their churches, and themselves — just something that the whole community can share with them.

“Words can’t express how proud I felt.”

And to top it off, the “Ice Fighters” came away with two of the five camp champions — 132-pounder Jacobe Smith and state champion and 138-pounder Lukas Etchison.

Not a bad summer trip.