After a difficult but successful season of hard fought battles, the boys’ wrestling team prepares to face formidable opponents at the individual tournament Feb. 12-14.
In the team playoff, the Patriots faced off against Spain Park, Mountain Brook, Helena and Calera. The team was required to go 5-1 in order to advance to the quarterfinals. Spain Park and Mountain Brook were their biggest tests. While losing a hard-fought match to Spain Park, the Patriots took down Mountain Brook 42-28 as the underdog. This win advanced them to the quarterfinals, leading to Homewood winning the entire tournament.
In preparation for the team playoffs prior to this upcoming tournament, practices were intentional and purposeful. The team prioritized a fast pace to their practice, emphasizing the importance of intense drilling and challenging themselves physically throughout the entire practice.
Head wrestling coach Frankie McKeown explains the specific strategy in which they focus their practices around.
“We think it’s better to be really good at a couple moves than mediocre at a bunch of moves. move wise.” Mckeown said. “So we try to stick with what we do, and rep that a lot,”
The reason for this method is simple. Like every team in sports, every player is different.
“It’s a team sport, but it’s also individual, so everyone wrestles a little bit differently, we’re really trying to balance team drills while also getting kids the individual work they need,” McKeown said. “So one move that works for one kid is not necessarily going to work for another kid, I think a big key is really trying to get kids individual work within the team setting.”
Wrestling is a team sport, but relies on everyone to do their own part. The captains are elected by the players, based on their leadership and performance. This year’s captains are sophomore William Booker, who placed at state last year, and senior Bardon King who has placed the previous two years. Junior Edwin McBride and seniors Graham Jourdan and Cooper Bailey also play key leadership roles on the team.
Winning the team tournament doesn’t come by easily. Senior captain Cooper Bailey, describes the strengths of the team and how they were able to achieve success.
“I would say we’re all friends and really like a family. We’re close and we joke around a lot, but we’re also super competitive in the wrestling room. No one wants to lose in practice, so we just all push each other super hard.” Bailey explains.
Although people wrestle alone, teammates can have big effects on their teammates and truly change some matches. There are different strategies for this depending on the athlete.
“Encouragement is always good and all, but like, sometimes you just have to be mean, I mean if somebody is about to go out there and you tell them, like, hey, you got this. It isn’t always gonna work,” Bailey said. “Like different ways of encouraging people are what helps a lot and, pushing them really really hard.”
There are noticeable differences about the structure of the team tournament and individual tournaments. The strategy and preparation before and during the event needs to be tweaked. Bailey explains what helped them during the joint-team tournament.
“We’re going to individual tournaments more like, do your best, for what you can do,” Bailey said. “But for the team tournament, we’re going to do whatever we need for the team, whether it’s bumping up a weight class or whatever. Give the team the best outlook.”
