Winter sports are here, and the wrestling team is looking to have another successful season, but before that success comes hard work at practice.
“We do a lot of conditioning to get people caught up (on their weight). We have about a month from when we start practice to our first dual, so we have time to get back into shape. We want to do well in our duals during the season, but our main focus is on the state and district tournaments,” fourth year head coach Kellen Laws said.
One factor unique to wrestling is how wrestlers are forced to stay in a certain weight class in order to be able to wrestle.
“Usually making weight is only as hard as you make it. We want to keep you between 10 and 15 percent of your weight class during the offseason. There are state and national guidelines for how far down into a weight class you can drop,” Laws said. (I.E. 170lb person can’t drop 60 pounds and wrestle in the 110 weight class.)
Throughout the wrestling season, it can be hard for a wrestler to maintain his or her weight, especially during Thanksgiving Break.
“All the horror stories you hear (about cutting weight) are from people who cut weight wrong,” senior Marcus Prosser said. “I will probably have to lose around 10 pounds, which isn’t bad at all.”
With the construction this year, the wrestling room has moved into the life skills building in the front of the school.
“Biggest thing we want to improve on is chain wrestling—being able to go from move to move. Say your opponent counters one move; we can move onto the other and have more success. It’s like a secondary option; if one move doesn’t work we want to have somewhere to go from there,” Laws said.
As with every team, the wrestling team is focused on succeeding in the state tournament, but the wrestlers and their coaches like to have some fun along the way.
“All the varsity kids have nicknames, and the coaches have natural disaster nicknames; mine is ‘Monsoon Marcus’. Our coaches’ nicknames are ‘Lava Flow Laws’ and ‘Sandstorm Sells,’” Prosser said.
