JV Wrestling Update

By David Zheng
<dzheng@hilite.org>

Practices for the junior varsity wrestling team started last Monday, although the first meet for the JV team is not until Nov. 24 against Anderson Highland, according to Assistant Coach Jeremy Stacy.

“(JV) practices alongside the varsity,” he said. “There’s no distinction in the wrestling room between varsity and JV. It’s not like basketball where the JV practices separately in a different gym; everybody’s together. They’re thrown in the mix wrestling with the big boys.”

According to wrestler and sophomore Cody Taulman, morning practices mostly consist of running and conditioning, while after-school practices consist of running, drills and live wrestling. “Live wrestling is just when we try to wrestle each other,” Taulman said. “But spots are not going to be determined until Nov. 22, so these practices are going to help us prepare for that.”

On Nov. 22, the team begins wrestle-offs, when wrestlers compete for spots in their respective weight classes. Although not everyone makes varsity, the JV and freshman teams usually have much depth and perform well during their seasons.

Stacy said, “The JV team has predominantly been undefeated many years in a row, so the tradition is the JV team is pretty deep so we can compete with a lot of the schools.”

“This year we have a much stronger team,” Taulman said. “We always try to train harder than we did last year and work to get better.”