Boys varsity wrestling is a powerful group of boys running through the season at Jonathan Alder, winning multiple meets, including the Ron Thomas Invitational.
Senior AJ Delong says, “I mean, right now, we’re on fire. I mean we are going to the state duels … we’re a lot of dogs, like a lot of kids that if they do want to put in the time, they will be something, you know, in a good way.”
Wrestling takes a lot of mental and physical power, with practicing hard almost everyday.
Wrestling is a combat sport that involves a lot of different types of moves to pin your opponent.
Freshman TJ Maynard says, “it’s [your] weight class and you just go [on the mat] and wrestle until you get points. [For the time] Six to five minutes, sometimes with pins, two minutes.”
During a wrestler’s matches, you can usually hear his team cheering him on from the side.
For a mostly individual sport, teamwork and empowerment is a big part of helping their team get better.
Delong says, “[They] push each other in practice, telling someone they’re doing something wrong, and just not being afraid to tell someone that hey, you’re not doing this right, or you need to fix this, you need to fix that, stuff like that.”
All good seasons have their ups and downs, and this season is no different.
According to Delong, one of the lows was losing to teams in Wheeling Park, but winning the Ron Thomas Invitational, which is hosted at Alder, was certainly a highlight.
The JA boys wrestling won the entire competition and also won a trophy for their success and hard work paying off at the tournament. Delong was the wrestler who finished off the win after not even being told he was the one to decide if they won the whole tournament. It was up to AJ to win the tournament but he didn’t know that so they didn’t tell him because he would have been way more nervous than he already was.
“I wrestled, got the pin and the crowd just went crazy,” says Delong.“Like I’ve never heard a crowd get so loud…I mean, I’ve heard a crowd get happy for me. But I’ve never heard a home crowd just erupt. It was something I’ve never experienced.”
Delong says “It felt really good, I felt not that I got their respect, but like, they’re like, okay, this kid, he is not just strong; he definitely knows he knows how to wrestle.”
While many may think that wrestling is about fighting, it’s a lot deeper for a lot of people. Maynard, for example, started wrestling to get in shape, but Delong is more motivated by the physicality of it. “I get to beat people up for free,” Delong says. “Well, not for free, but it’s legal.”
The boys next host a tournament at Alder on Feb. 15 at 10 a.m.
