Kin, character and competitive drive One-of-a-kind family enterprise turns out not only accomplished wrestlers and fighters, but well-rounded athlete-scholars ready to take on the world By: Taylor Allen Posted: 1:29 PM CDT Friday, Sep. 6, 2024

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This article was published 06/09/2024 (365 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

How did Danny Coles — a homeschooled, multilingual amateur wrestler from Winnipeg with 10 siblings — end up in a prestigious Ivy League program like Princeton?

It’s a question that intrigued Toronto criminal lawyer Karen McArthur, who happened to be at a Princeton-Harvard wrestling meet last winter with her 16-year-old son Beau when a spectator informed her of the Canadian’s unusual background.

“My curiosity was definitely piqued,” McArthur said in a recent interview.

Determined to find out more, the McArthurs introduced themselves to Coles after the final match.

“He was thoroughly engaging, intelligent and spoke four languages and explained to me how he made his way to Princeton, and I was very intrigued,” McArthur says.

“And then he said, ‘You know, a lot of schools are just babysitting services,’ which kind of resonated with me.”

At the time, McArthur was paying US$72,000 for her son to attend a preparatory school in Connecticut. But she figured if Coles, along with several of his brothers and sisters, can learn to speak English, French, Spanish and, most impressively, Mandarin, through homeschooling while also being among the top young wrestlers in the country, then clearly his family must be on to something.

The McArthurs spoke with Cory Coles, Danny’s father, several times before travelling to Winnipeg to see first-hand how the family lives, teaches and trains. With the decision left to Beau, he decided this family was his ticket to not only growing as a wrestler but furthering his education.

But it comes with a sacrifice.

Instead of having a private dorm to himself on a luxurious prep-school campus, Beau, who moved in with the Coles family in April, now sleeps on an air mattress in the basement — with 10 other boys.

There are 17 children and young adults in total ranging between the ages of seven and 22 living in the house. Seven are offspring of Cory and his wife Michelle.

While the boys have the basement, the girls — including a 21-year-old Spanish-language teacher from Mexico — split two bedrooms upstairs. There are also two schnauzers: Strudel and Schnitzel.

“If you want to be normal, you do normal things. If you’re gonna do what everyone else is doing, you’re going to get the exact same results that everyone else is getting,” says Beau, explaining why he left the boarding school for the homeschooling route.

“Say we’re starting here, and everyone’s walking and you’re running, someone might say, ‘Why is this one guy running? We’re gonna get to the same place.’ But I’m gonna get there differently, and maybe to a different place as well.”

Welcome to the Pan-American Institute of Combat Sport, a.k.a. Combat School — an unorthodox living, educational and training environment for wrestlers eager to learn in more ways than one.

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It’s an unassuming,1,160-square-foot bi-level home in St. Boniface.

From the outside, it looks like a typical family residence. And then you open the front door to a sea of sneakers.

It’s just before 9 a.m. and the dining table upstairs is surrounded by students and their laptops working on Accellus — an NCAA-accredited homeschooling program — while tutor Johana is in the living room helping a few younger children pronounce words in Spanish. A pot of oatmeal, with apples and raisins mixed in, sits on the stove while everyone helps themselves to a bowl.

You’d expect chaos, but there isn’t any. It’s a laid-back environment — significantly quieter than any public school classroom — where everyone works independently, knowing what they should be doing and are responsible for.

“Vamos, chicos,” orders Gabe Durocher, a 22-year-old amateur mixed-martial arts fighter from Strathmore, Alta.

It’s time to do a walkthrough downstairs to make sure the sleeping quarters are neat and tidy. While Cory, 48, and Michelle, 47, oversee Combat School’s operations, Durocher and the Coleses’ daughter Mika, also 22, are the main wrestling coaches.

Durocher — who shares a room on the lower level with 18-year-old Niko Coles — leads the boys downstairs.

“It’s definitely different,” says Durocher of his role. “But it’s a cool story I’ll get to tell my kids one day. I get to coach these guys, in exchange, I get to train full-time and do what I love. It’s just an amazing experience for me.”

It’s hard to see the colour of the carpet since the floor is covered in air mattresses and sleeping bags.

The troops, however, pass the check: all sleep-sacks are rolled tight and everyone’s belongings are packed away. The students, no matter their age, are expected to clean up after themselves and handle their own laundry.

For wrestlers, who already know a thing or two about operating in extremely tight spaces to gain an upper hand over their opponents, the home’s cramped quarters are no big deal.

“We make it work and have a good time,” says Jerin Coles, 14, on the sleeping arrangement.

“I would rather sleep on an actual bed, but you get the sleep you need… It’s not terrible.”

The boys march back upstairs to resume their schoolwork and Durocher reports back to Cory.

“Bathroom could be a little cleaner, but everything else looked good,” says Durocher, who first began training with the Coles family in 2017 before moving into their home in 2020. Durocher is 4-0 as a fighter and recently won Throne MMA’s flyweight title in Devils Lake, N.D., with a first-round TKO.

Unless someone is chatting with Cory or Michelle, a visitor is not going to hear much, if any, English spoken inside the home.

The Coleses’ kids mostly communicate in Mandarin, while the rest are instructed to speak Spanish.

“If we don’t, we’ll lose it or develop a very strong (improper) accent,” Jerin says. “There’s not a lot of people to speak Mandarin to and currently we don’t have a Chinese teacher, so we have to continually speak to each other to keep it.”

Combat School recently completed its first official year. By spring, kids who didn’t previously know Spanish, were capable of carrying on a conversation.

“When I first arrived in January, the kids didn’t talk much Spanish, but now they’re fluent and it’s very cool to see that,” says Johana, who studies business management in Mexico but agreed to work with the Coles family because of the unique experience and for a chance to improve her English.

“I love the kids. All the kids are very funny and amazing. They treat me like another sister.”

Much like wrestling, learning a language requires discipline. One of the reasons for the quick study is that the kids are placed on what’s called sentinel duty — silently standing still for several minutes — if caught speaking English when they’re not supposed to do so.

“Ever since I’ve been with them, I’ve been getting better grades and moving along much faster,” says Jasper Bench, 14, from Kalispell, Mont. “In public school, I goofed around a lot with my friends. Not even blaming it on them, we just goofed around a lot. Here, we still have fun, but when it’s time to do schoolwork, it’s time to do schoolwork.”

To prove that point, Cory poses a question to the room: “Hey, you don’t come to this school for what?”

“Takedowns, strangulation, or joint dislocation,” the students respond in unison.

“If that’s what you come to us for, then we’re not the right fit for you. If you can get excited about your kids talking different languages, if you can talk about how sport can change your lives in much, much bigger ways, then maybe we’re the right fit for you,” Cory says.

“Our goal is to educate them in a way that no preparatory school in North America educates their children. And that’s a bold statement.”

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So, who is Cory Coles?

Longtime friend Curtis Brigham offers this story.

Brigham, who was in his late teens at the time, was set to make his professional MMA debut in November 2000 in Omaha, Neb., a 10-hour drive from Winnipeg. People he thought were coming to support him backed out, leaving Brigham without anyone in his corner.

“So, Cory called Michelle and said ‘Listen, Curtis is going by himself for this’ and she went ‘Yes, Cory, you can go and take care of your friend,’” he recalls.

“He ended up cornering me in many of my fights, leaving Michelle at home taking care of the children. I think I thank her for that at least once a year.”

On that same card, a fighter’s opponent dropped out at the last minute. Cory, an accomplished wrestler for the University of Manitoba Bisons who also had trained in Brazilian ju-jitsu, volunteered to fill in.

“So, after my fight, we reboiled my mouth guard and he put it in and had his pro debut on an hour or two notice. He got in there and finished the guy with an armbar in the first round,” says Brigham, who now owns the Winnipeg Academy of Mixed Martial Arts.

“It was a tough, tough fight. And then, after those fights, we drove him to a different state through the night to get him on an airplane to fly to Toronto for a wrestling tournament.”

Cory initially made a name for himself in wrestling at St. Norbert Collegiate before turning that into a scholarship at the University of Manitoba. He was an academic all-Canadian in 2004, with fourth being his best placing at nationals. However, Cory often sat out conference and national championships in order to retain his eligibility and financial assistance until he finished his law degree.

But Cory, who is warm, inviting and one of the most spirited people one will ever meet, has no interest in talking about his days on the mats — although his slightly cauliflower ears make it clear he likely has a few stories to share.

“I was a nobody,” he says.

Instead, his eyes light up talking about his kids and students.

In addition to helping get Danny to Princeton, he also guided Danny’s best friend Adam Thomson, from Calgary, to the University of Pennsylvania, another Ivy League school.

Only eight Canadians have wrestled in the NCAA and Cory is responsible for coaching two of them. That didn’t happen by chance, Brigham says.

“Even in the early ’90s, I feel like Cory was someone who trusted the experts. For things like weight-cutting, he wouldn’t just do it the way his coach told him to do it — he’d go talk to really smart people at the university who have some medical knowledge,” he says.

“He would find out ways to do things and would be very diverse in how he approached stuff.”

Cory may be the driving force behind the wrestling side of the family’s operation, but Michelle is the rock, Brigham says, calling her an unsung hero.

“Cory’s an exciting and very energetic face of things, but all of it is due to their teamwork and her backing him up on everything. She’s an amazing woman.”

“Sports will get them through to their mid-20s, maybe till they’re 30, but their character is what’s going to be with them for the rest of their lives.”– Michelle Coles

Michelle first became a mother when she was just 13 and has devoted her life to her family.

“I’ve been a mom forever. And when I was in my early 20s, when I had just three or four children, people would ask me if I would go to university when they got older and I always found that question offensive,” Michelle says.

“I always felt like, isn’t this a huge job? An amazing job? You hear people say, ‘If I could just change the life of one person it’ll all be worthwhile.’ But here I am, moulding the lives of multiple people.

“I think my career has been a great success so far.”

Michelle handles all the scheduling — in itself a full-time job considering all the travelling and training involved — monitors everyone’s online schooling, teaches the students who are in Grade 3 or below, communicates with the parents and takes care of all the paperwork.

“I just really love kids and I think I’m really good with children,” Michelle says. “Almost every place we go, people say my children are kind and they’re helpful. Sports will get them through to their mid-20s, maybe till they’re 30, but their character is what’s going to be with them for the rest of their lives.”

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While schooling is the top priority, wrestling offers the means to potentially get the kids into the university of their dreams.

Instead of gym classes, their physical education involves trips to the Winnipeg Academy of Mixed Martial Arts where they work on everything from conditioning to suplexes.

“I started when I was about 12. At first, my dad just said, ‘This is like your gym class, because you have to do something. You can’t just sit around all day,’” says Kaura Coles, 17.

“To be honest, I did not like it at first because it’s a very hard sport. Back then, I didn’t really like hard work because it’s hard to like that. But over time, I saw the benefits of putting in the hard work and seeing where it can get you. So, with all of us wrestling, it teaches us to put in the hard work where other people aren’t used to that and it really translates into other aspects, too. Not just on the mat, but off the mat also.”

On the day the Free Press visited the Coles family home, the majority of the kids would later pile into three minivans and head to a wrestling tournament in Thief River Falls, Minn., scheduled that night, followed by another meet in Grand Forks, N.D., the next day.

But being based in Manitoba is problematic for Combat School: the wrestling scene isn’t competitive enough here and it’s difficult to draw potential training partners here from the U.S. For that reason, they’re only in Winnipeg for roughly four months of the year.

The rest of the time, they’re renting accommodations in Montana, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, Illinois and North Carolina — to name a few — to train and compete at a level necessary to make it as far as possible in the sport.

They often stay in hotels that are $59 a night, with free breakfasts. They’ll load up on food in the morning — take a little extra for lunch — “and you do what you gotta do,” Cory says.

All the travel isn’t about wrestling. It’s also about seeing and learning new things in each locale.

“We don’t have set dates where you must do the schoolwork on this day. We can take time off,” Kaura says.

“When we were in Pennsylvania… we went to Washington, D.C., and saw a lot of cool places. And we took two days off to go to New York to see historical things.”

Cheap hotels or not, the obvious question is how the Coles family can maintain the lifestyle with such a large group. Never mind the travel, there are also the three trips to Costco each week, which ends up totalling around $2,000 a month.

“To give you an idea of how we’re able to do this, the stuff we’re doing academically with the kids is on par with prep schools,” Cory says. “For some of these parents, cost is not an issue — which also helps subsidize the kids (in our school) who can’t afford anything, or very little.

“This was necessary for our children, and people came along for the ride.”

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Cory had a vision for his young family: he wanted to move to China so the children could learn Mandarin.

A good — though unusual — idea on paper, it still seemed unrealistic. It was the late 1990s and Cory and Michelle — who became parents in their early teens and had two children at the time — were just barely getting by. But Cory was determined after studying developmental psychology at university.

“I’m reading how kids can learn multiple languages if given the right environment, like all the possibilities you can do with children. And because we were young, and I hate to say this, we didn’t know any better, (we thought we could do it),” says Cory, who often brought their oldest child, daughter Jackie, to class.

The kids were already poised to learn French, with Michelle being Métis, but knowing Mandarin — which, along with Spanish and English, is among the most-spoken languages in the world — could open many more doors.

“When I met them, Cory was still in law school and respectfully, was getting by on not much. They were homeschooling, and if Michelle wasn’t pregnant, she’d be nursing a baby,” Brigham says.

“They lived in one of those little side-by-side-by-side-by-sides in St. Norbert and they had this horrible little minivan, and nobody was complaining, but they weren’t living well. They were stretched thin with all the things they were trying to do. And Cory was telling me, ‘I’m going to take my whole family to China so we can be really immersive and get them to learn the language.’ And I remember thinking, with love, ‘Sure, buddy, good luck with that.’”

Michelle supported the idea from the start, but had one condition.

“Michelle said, ‘Cory, I’m willing to do this, but please let’s just go when we don’t have a child in diapers,’” recalls Cory, who graduated from the U of M in 2004 but has never practised law. He made a living building houses, decks and fences, while also running a linen business.

“The problem is, we always had kids in diapers. It never ended. There were always diapers.”

The years went by and the family kept growing. There was never going to be a perfect moment, so after saving up enough Aeroplan points, the Coleses, with nine kids in tow — Christoff, then 15; Daniel, 13; Mika, 11; Sasha, 9; Niko, 7; Kaura, 5; Jerin, 3; Timi, 22-months-old; and Aime, 10-months-old — made the trip in 2013 for nine months. Their 11th and final child, Marco, now nine years old, wasn’t yet born.

“There was a one-child policy for a long time (in China) so that was a huge shock for people there,” Niko says. “They usually haven’t seen more than two kids.”

Prior to their departure, the family was living at Cory’s parents’ property in Bragg Creek, Alta. — a five-bedroom house on four hectares in the Rocky Mountain foothills. They left for Shenyang, the capital and most populous city in Liaoning province, to live in a three-bedroom apartment on the sixth floor of a building with no elevator.

“It wasn’t easy. After a couple months, our kids still didn’t know any Mandarin,” Michelle says.

“So, we had to get very structured with it all and we had to hire a lot of people, and we really had to force the language on them. It really didn’t happen organically, at all. In fact, we had met people in China who lived there for a couple years, and their children didn’t speak any Mandarin because you can just get by with English.”

The couple hired four women to come to their apartment every day, teaching the children in different groups. Once the kids started to grasp it, Cory would put them to the test in the real world.

“I was a very introverted kid,” said Danny, now 25.

“And my dad and I would ride the subway, with no destination in mind, just for the purpose of having me go and initiate conversations with strangers. That’s kind of a daunting task to even do in English for a 14-year-old Danny, but to do it in Mandarin, where I was linguistically limited at the time, it was even more daunting.

“So, we would go on the train, ride a couple stops, get off the train, go back the other direction just so we constantly had new people to talk to. After a while, there was a lot of character development that happened. I mean, I hated it at the time. I was totally mad at my dad for making me do that stuff when I was younger, but it’s been really beneficial.”

That’s an understatement. Several months ago, Danny was part of a policy task force at Princeton that delivered a presentation to the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C., on how Indigenous people are impacted by pollution.

“(My dad) called them mastery experiences, which is basically putting you in a position where your only option is to make it happen and rely on yourself,” says Danny, who was named NCAA wrestler of the week during his sophomore year in 2022. “And that’s been very integral to my success here and to my success in getting here.”

The China trip is just one example of how the Coles family hasn’t been afraid to travel to get what they need. It was a similar story with learning Spanish. They spent a month in Colombia to get immersed in the culture and language. And it’s been the same approach with wrestling.

Their combat sport of choice has three main variations: folkstyle, freestyle and Greco-Roman.

The latter two are featured in the Olympics and are the primary focus of Canadian athletes. But folkstyle, commonly referred to as collegiate wrestling, is what’s practised at the post-secondary level in the United States and is essentially nonexistent in Canada.

Danny and Adam Thomson rented a cheap apartment in Iowa in 2020 and trained at an NAIA college to get more accustomed with folkstyle. A short time later, Danny connected with Princeton’s coaching staff.

His sister Mika, meanwhile, moved to Pennsylvania before the pandemic to train at the M2 Training Center, which is owned by David Taylor, an NCAA, Olympic and world champion who now coaches Oklahoma State’s wrestling program.

Mika didn’t just go to become a better wrestler, it was about fully understanding the folkstyle technique and sharing that knowledge with her younger siblings.

“At the time, I was the only female at the gym (out of 75 people). Of course, nobody wanted to be my partner,” Mika says. “I’d go up to someone and ask, ‘Would you be my partner this round?’ And they’d say no, so the coach would have to assign someone.

“I think I scored a point one time there.”

Mika is one of the very few, if not only, female folkstyle coaches in Canada.

“There’s no reason, based on what she’s doing now, that she won’t become a national team coach,” Cory says.

“There’s Americans in this room right now, who are living here to learn folkstyle wrestling, which is insane — to come to Canada to improve your folkstyle wrestling.”

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There’s a secret Winnipeg Academy of Mixed Martial Arts facility in an unmarked building on Main Street that only opens its back door to the very best in town.

Kaura — a three-time national wrestling champion, a U-17 Pan-American champion, and a North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) champion — was invited to train with an experienced, undefeated female MMA fighter.

“Be honest, did you dominate her?” asks Cory, who caught the end of the session.

Kaura, not prone to boasting, reluctantly nods her head and says “yes” in her soft-spoken voice.

Training with older and more experienced competitors has paid off for Kaura who just won gold at the U-17 World Wrestling Championships in Ammar, Jordan, at the end of August.

She took down foes from Kazakhstan, South Africa, India and the U.S. before outlasting Japan’s Nana Kozuka in the final to finish on top.

“My brothers have won many national championships and have had top-10 placings at worlds, but now, whenever they get a little bit of attitude with me, I can remind them where they sit in the hierarchy of Combat School wrestling,” Kaura jokes.

“They know that I’m kidding, but it will still get a reaction. But really, being a world champion means now I have more opportunity to impact the lives of other young athletes, especially females.”

Kaura is the first Canadian ever to take first place at the U-17 worlds. Her ascension in the sport has not gone unnoticed.

“Kaura had an outstanding performance that was a result of a tremendous amount of work put in by her, her family, and her coaches,” says Wrestling Canada’s high-performance director Chris Woodcroft.

“There are significant jumps from U-17 to U-20, and then again to the senior level, but we consistently witness former U-17 world medallists win at the next levels.”

A future in mixed martial arts, possibly even with the global MMA juggernaut UFC, could be hers for the taking. She plans to accept one MMA bout just for the experience, but due to the head trauma associated with the craft, she will remain focused on wrestling, having no shortage of NCAA Div. I programs from which to choose.

“Her technique and hard work have made her a high-end competitor at her age,” Brigham says.

“She’s ahead of the curve for everything. She’s gonna absolutely succeed in wrestling, but her potential in ju-jitsu and MMA are enormous for her. And she is a lovely, quiet, polite, smart girl who is also immensely tough.”

Kaura hopes her recent world title is just the start of greater success on the international stage. She has her sights set firmly on qualifying for at least two Olympics, possibly as soon as the Los Angeles Summer Games in 2028.

“So, my goal is to go at 21,” she says. “I know that’s really young, but I think if I train hard, I think I’ll have a good shot at making it to the Olympics.”

Older and younger brothers Niko and Jerin are making names for themselves as well.

Niko has two national titles and an NAIG gold medal on his resumé, and hopes to take his talents to Western University in London, Ont. Jerin has won two Canadian crowns, and claimed silver at the 2023 NAIG event at the age of 13 where he lost the championship match to a 19-year-old from Nunavut.

The three have also dominated in Montana, where they’re allowed to compete in the state tournament since they’re homeschooled and spend a chunk of the year there. Niko and Kaura have won the Montana high school championship, while Jerin ended up in the top three despite being in Grade 8.

“My goal for wrestling is to be an NCAA champ,” Jerin says.

“I think it’s 100 per cent possible. And I also want to be a world and an Olympic champion, and I think that all of those are doable.”

In July, the three siblings attended a national team camp in Spain while Kaura will return there in September for the U-20 World Wrestling Championship.

“They’re a beautiful family, they’re helping not only their own children, but other children as well and I think they’re doing it for the right reasons.”– Wrestling Canada’s Chris Woodcroft

Their younger siblings will be in a position to reach similar heights by training at what’s referred to as the ‘South Campus,’ a 13,000-square-foot facility being built in Kalispell, Mont. The riverfront facility is owned by Maverick’s Army Foundation, a charitable organization honouring Jasper Bench’s brother Maverick who died in 2021 at the age of nine due to complications from a rare blood disorder.

The Bench and Coles families met through the wrestling community and have worked together to make the campus a reality.

Once completed in November, no one will be living uncomfortably. There are five bedrooms (featuring two to three bunk beds in each), separate housing quarters for coaches and guests, and a massive training facility with weightlifting equipment and wrestling mats. Plus, there will be no shortage of activities to keep students and athletes entertained since the 12 hectares of land will feature a 15-metre indoor rock-climbing wall, a 300-metre zip line, a dirt-bike track, Frisbee golf course, jet skis, kayaks and more.

The Coles family and their students won’t live there full-time, but they plan to set up shop for extended periods and host training camps.

“This is a combat resort. We will do more for Manitoba wrestling out of Montana than Manitoba has been able to do for itself in the last 20 years,” Cory says.

“Anywhere in Western Canada can access it in a one-day drive, and that’s super-important because that’s the key to helping kids.”

Wrestling Canada has been blown away by the Coles family’s efforts to grow the sport.

“They’re a beautiful family, they’re helping not only their own children, but other children as well and I think they’re doing it for the right reasons,” Woodcroft says.

“They’re allowing their kids to train at a higher level for a longer period of time while being very successful in school as well. It’s a successful program, for sure, and it’s working for them on and off the mat.”

Combat School remains in the early stages. The plan is to eventually have up to 30 participants, which would make it profitable while ensuring everyone receives quality care and attention.

The Coles family’s nonconformist way of life isn’t for everyone. It’s outside the box, to say the least, but the results speak for themselves.

“I think that kids are capable of a lot more than you think,” Danny says. “And if you put the pressure on them, more often than not, if you put them in a sink-or-swim situation, they will swim.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca
X: @TaylorAllen31