Our boys could barely contain their excitement and nervousness when facing the ultimate test of their skills against opponents known and unknown.
Overall, the first round went pretty quickly as the unskilled or new wrestlers fell to more skilled, better seeded opponents. Our boys also had a rough start, often fighting defensively before turning on the aggressive offense towards the second half of each match. Most were sent to the consolation round and had to fight back to earn a spot on the podium. Even when following the coaching given from the corner of the mat and giving it all they had, many still fell prey to opponents with much more experience. We couldn’t be more proud of those wrestlers. Even in the face of losing a hard fought match, our Tigers showed more dignity than many others, including some coaches.
Out of nearly 400 wrestlers, and some pretty stacked teams, we have two medal earners: Addison Saleh bringing home a 7th place, and Cameron Spangler taking 4th, earning him the opportunity to compete in the National Preps wrestling tournament at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA.
For this past season, we took a bunch of new athletes who thought they’d try out the sport mainly out of curiosity and ended up enjoying learning one of the oldest sports in history. As a “one-on-one” sport, wrestling teaches patience, hard work, dedication, strategy, strength, coordination (with more body parts acting in unison than ever imagined), genuine sportsmanship, facing your fears, as well as how to win with grace and lose with dignity. I enjoyed watching our guys turn mortal enemies on the mat into respected kindred combatants off the mat. I’m proud of the bunch of guys that learned to work as a team. And we couldn’t have done it without the significant support of my assistant coach, Jason Medlin, HMA staff, and parents.
