Roman Bravo-Young and Khaled Dassan stood before a group of more than 200 young wrestlers, elementary school to high school age, on Saturday morning at Desert View High School and stressed discipline from the start of their unique five-day camp called the “KD x RBY Wrestling Clinic.”
Have fun being trained the sport you love but no messing around was a message, a very meaningful one coming from two of the sport’s premier coaches and trainers who are young themselves.
Bravo-Young is a 2018 graduate of Sunnyside High School, and Dassan graduated from Saunders High School in Yonkers, N.Y., in 2016.
Bravo-Young is 27 and Dassan 28, yet they have the prestige of sage veterans when it comes to their knowlege of the sport. Like the old E.F. Hutton commercial, when Bravo-Young and Dassan talk wrestling, people listen. Young people listen.
The youths, boys and girls, participating in the camp are mostly from Tucson and also from Phoenix, neighboring states, Minnesota, Wyoming and Hawaii. Another clinic is planned at Kansas City from June 12-14.
“I met Roman his senior year in high school; he came down to train with us, and ever since, we’ve been good friends,” said Dassan, who began operating a wrestling club out of his uncle’s gym in Yonkers shortly after graduating from high school.
“I was in his wedding, just recently in December, and now we get to pick each other’s brain. Now, he’s running a club. When I was just getting to be a coach, I was picking his brain. Now he’s running a club and trying to pick my brain a little bit. One hand washes the other and we’re excited to help each other grow.”
Bravo-Young opened the RBY Wrestling Club near Park Avenue and Benson Highway in mid-December, shortly before marrying professional soccer standout Ellie Wheeler. The club has flourished with an abundance of participants of youths of all ages. Many guest coaches and trainers have participated in sessions, including Indiana coach Angel Escobedo and Olympic wrestler Mostafa “Tiger” Hassan of Egypt this month.
Dassan, known as “Coach KD” in the wrestling world, branched out of his uncle’s gym because of high demand of his coaching services from top-level wrestlers and generated the KD Training Center in 2022. His collaboration with Penn State coach Cael Sanderson has served as a pipeline to the Nittany Lions’ successful program that featured Bravo-Young and his two national titles there in 2021 and 2022.
The KD Training Center has more than 200 members and has expanded to two locations, one in Westchester County, N.Y., and one on Long Island.
The club features some of the top wrestlers at the U17 and U20 age levels, including Penn State sophomore PJ Duke and highly-touted Nittany Lions Class of 2026 recruit Jayden James.
Coach KD has also coached and mentored 2024 U20 World silver medalist Zack Ryder, now at Oklahoma State after starting his collegiate career at Penn State. Rocco Welsh, 2024 NCAA runner-up with the Nittany Lions who will represent Team USA in the U23 Worlds, has been coached by him.
Camryn Howard, 2025 U16 Fargo champion, is one of many high school-age wrestlers who are under the tutelage of Coach KD.
Duke, who hails from Slate Hill, N.Y., traveled to Tucson for the first time to help coach and mentor the campers in the event at Desert View.
Bravo-Young was finished with his career at Penn State by the time Duke started his there, but they met each other through Coach KD after Duke committed to the Nittany Lions.
“KD and Roman have obviously been pretty close for a while, and KD kind of asked him to help me out,” Duke said. “He brought Roman in the room, and Roman just beat me up for three hours.
“That was the first time I ever met him. He just torched me in practice, and then he taught me a lot. After I committed, I would stay at his house, and train and stuff. He’s been amazing to me.”
Welsh, a teammate of Duke’s at Penn State, is also one of the coaches who are taking part in the KD x RBY Clinic.
Former UFC bantamweight world champion Dominick Cruz, a Tucsonan who graduated from Flowing Wells, is helping to train the wrestlers at the camp along with Jet Sports Training owner Bobby Rodriguez (the best man at Bravo-Young’s wedding) and members of Bravo-Young’s staff at his club.
Sanderson is scheduled to make an appearance Monday along with Nick Lee, a former teammate of Bravo-Young at Penn State who is serving as an assistant coach with the Nittany Lions while he continues to compete at an international level.
A wrestling camp of this magnitude is unique with its length of five days, array of high-level guest coaches and the training time of at least three to four hours every day.
“I do camps everywhere, so it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s do it too. Let’s get some big names,'” Bravo-Young said. “We’ve got to set the standard high. You gotta show people it’s possible. People really don’t know the limit, and I’m just coming here and setting it.
“I hope this inspires everyone else to try to do big things and try to keep up, and that’s just gonna help grow the wrestling community.”
Coach KD lauded Bravo-Young for his community approach with the clinic.
“The point of having this camp is Roman can show (the young wrestlers), ‘Hey, it is possible,'” Coach KD said. “A lot of these guys come from areas where there are not a lot of funds and they need financial support.
“Roman made it happen. Roman supported a lot of the kids. Even some of the kids you see here today, Roman sponsored them. He raised money to get these guys in here today, so it’s pretty special. Just giving those guys life, showing them that it is possible, it can happen here. Obviously, it’s showing now with multiple national champions coming from Tucson.”
In addition to Bravo-Young’s national titles in 2021 and 2022, fellow former Sunnyside graduates Audrey Jimenez (Lehigh) and Sergio Vega (Oklahoma State) won national championships in March.
All of them were four-time state champions at Sunnyside and are Olympic hopefuls. They give back to the community with wrestling clinics and mentoring youths.
The work Bravo-Young puts into his new club and the clinic with Coach KD is all geared to make the young wrestlers realize their dreams and ambitions in the sport and beyond.
“We need more work; we’ve gotta put our head down and work,” Bravo-Young said. “We’re not quite there yet. The goal is not to be only good in Arizona. We’re trying to go into state and and also graduate from college.
“Some people graduate high school and they’re celebrating. You finish what you start. We’ll celebrate when you graduate from college. That’s the mindset I’m installing with these kids, is we’re going above and beyond here. We’re reaching for more, and just telling them, ‘Hey, you guys can do it. There’s more out there, not just graduating high school. Let’s go to work.'”
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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