Camp History

The Facility: This is a 107 acre camp with a 17 acre fully stocked lake for fishing or boating. Wrestlers are housed in cabins located near all facilities including the pool, dining hall, recreation hall, and weight pavilion, as well as the 3 wrestling pavilions with 2 to 3 full mats on each. Camp Maple Lake was originally Russ Houks Wrestling Camp and was home of the USA and Olympic Team Training Camps.

Maple Lake’s began hosting their wrestling camp in 1962 and became the U.S. Olympic and Pan-American Games Training Camp from 1964-1973. The Camp was also the host training Center for the Canadian World and Olympic Teams. The camp was started by wrestling legend Russ Houk. Russ was the U.S. Olympic Team Manager and had World and Olympic Greats there such as Dan Gable, Chris Taylor, Rick Sanders, John & Ben Peterson, Stan Dziedzic, Wade Schalles, Gray Simons, Don Behm, Wayne Wells and more. Many of the Camp’s structures were built by some of these greats.

Coach Mean Gene Mills has been teaching at Camp Maple Lake since 1979 and did so every summer till summer of 2020 when the Covid pandemic hit. Russ passed in 1988 and Coach Mills has leased the camp for 2-4 weeks ever since for wrestling camps. When the COVID 19 Pandemic hit, camps were postponed and then the facility was turned into a year round Air B&B. There are no longer Sports camps at Camp Maple Lake.