Sharon, MA: Co-Ed Wrestling and a Lake
Sharon is seven and a half miles from Canton, thirteen minutes on a clear road, and its high school lists a co-ed wrestling team. For a town this size, that combination is worth a page.
Route 138, thirteen minutes
From Sharon Town Hall at 90 South Main Street it is 7.6 miles and about 13 minutes to Canton, out South Main Street and Sharon Street and then down Route 138. Raynham is 22.2 miles and around 31 minutes. From Sharon High School on Pond Street it is 8.1 miles and 15 minutes to Canton.
Clear-road figures from OpenStreetMap routing, with the usual caveat about Route 138 at 5 PM. Thirteen minutes is a school run, not a trip.
Co-ed wrestling at Sharon High
Sharon High School’s athletics program lists wrestling as a co-ed sport, which matters more than it used to. Girls’ wrestling has been one of the fastest growing sports in the state, and a program that lists co-ed means a girl in Sharon does not have to choose between wrestling and being the only one in the room.
Jiu-jitsu is the natural companion. Same balance and grips, no weight cut, and the technique is built so a smaller person can be effective, which is exactly the point for a lot of kids that age.
Lake Massapoag
Lake Massapoag is 353 acres in the center of Sharon, and the town’s own recreation page calls it the town’s greatest natural recreation resource: fishing, boating, swimming, sailing and windsurfing, with town beaches that open in June and close in August. Sharon Recreation runs the beach passes and the programming out of 219 Massapoag Avenue.
That is the summer. The winter is the part nobody puts on a town website, and it is the part where a mat matters. Two nights a week from November to March is what keeps a kid moving when the lake is frozen.
A town shaped by one lake
The lake is in the middle of town, the beaches are town-run, and the recreation department’s address is on the shore road. In summer that is where Sharon is. In winter the town’s calendar moves indoors, which is the gap a gym fills.
What Canton runs
Mondays and Wednesdays: kickboxing at 6, grappling at 7. Tuesdays and Thursdays: jiu-jitsu at 6, kickboxing at 7. Saturdays: grappling at 11, open mat at noon. That is the entire Canton adult schedule, and it fits on an index card.
Kids
The kids’ bands at Canton run Monday to Thursday: 5 PM for the 3 to 5s, 5:30 for the 6 to 9s, 6:15 for the 10 to 13s. Ages, not sizes, which is how a small nine-year-old ends up in the right class instead of the wrong one.
One road to the gym
Route 138 is the road the Canton gym sits off, which means the Sharon drive is one road from the town line most of the way to the parking lot. That is the sort of detail that decides whether a weeknight class happens: no turns to miss, no alternate route to argue about, and a drive short enough that leaving ten minutes late is not fatal.
Sharon Recreation runs programs out of 219 Massapoag Avenue all year, from beach passes in July to indoor classes in January, so the town already has the habit of signing up for things. Jiu-jitsu is one more line on that list, with the difference that it is the one activity a parent and a kid can do in the same building at the same time.
What a Sharon week looks like
Tuesday and Thursday jiu-jitsu at 6 PM, with Saturday open mat at noon as the third session when the week allows. For a family with a kid in Cobras at 6:15, a parent can take the 6 PM adult class on the same trip, which is the only reason some parents get to train at all.
If you want a bigger schedule, Raynham is 31 minutes with 11 AM classes, morning no-gi, women’s jiu-jitsu Sunday at 9 and marathon classes Thursday and Friday nights. It is a weekend trip from Sharon, not a weeknight one.
Walking in cold
Most people who come through the door have never trained anything, and the first five minutes are the part they worry about. The intro handles that: 15 minutes, a tour, a conversation about what you want, and a short lesson on the mat with a coach, before any class is watching. By the time you take a real class you have already been in the building twice.
The first visit
The way in is the free intro: 15 minutes, a tour, how membership works, and a short lesson on the mat. Shorts and a T-shirt are the only requirement.
How to start from Sharon
Fill in the form: program, location, phone number. Someone from the gym calls you back. Canton 781-499-8302 or Raynham 508-219-0418.