Coaches and players hope increased competition will lead to postseason success.

By Charlie Browning
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This year members of the wrestling team won’t have to deal with the problem of bumping into one another throughout practice. This year, for the first time, the coaching staff was forced to make cuts in a sport that has traditionally been no-cut.

Head Coach John Kopnisky said he thought cutting kids was necessary but not necessarily something he was thrilled about.

“It wasn’t exactly something I wanted to do, but more something that I needed to do,” Kopnisky said. “If we had another wrestling room, I would be more than happy to keep it a no-cut sport.”

The reason for the cuts, according to Kopnisky, was a matter of logistics. This year there were about 80 kids who wanted to be part of the team, but the wrestling room cannot accommodate that many athletes.

“The room we have here is a pretty standard size,” Kopnisky said. “I’ve seen bigger and smaller rooms, but it’s a pretty adequate size for a typical high school. I think you see this type of thing happening with athletics in general at Carmel. Like the track team, for example, you see the same thing. Their coaches are pondering what to do next about all the kids just like we were.”

The process of cutting kids was a new idea for everyone involved. The team went through about a week and a half of practice before the coaching staff decided who to cut.

“We basically just looked at their performance in the room, like how quickly they were picking up technique,” Kopnisky said. “It was just based on attendance and seeing if they were moving along how they needed to be moving along.”

Wrestler and senior Kevin Vanneman said he agrees with the need for cuts. Vanneman has been on the team for four years and said he has the seen the number of wrestlers coming out for the team increase, making cuts necessary this year.

“(When it was no-cut), we would have too many people in the room at once, and it was too hard to practice,” Vanneman said. “It was kind of dangerous because we were always bumping into each other and stuff.”

Vanneman said that, although cutting kids was different this year, he thinks the decrease in numbers of kids could help them become a better team.

“I think (the smaller number of kids) could definitely help us be a better team,” he said.

“We will be able to get more experience in practice. We will have more space, and we won’t be bumping into each other and wasting time. There just won’t be as many distractions.”

Wrestler and senior Ben Sommer, who has also wrestled for all four years of his high school career, said he agrees with Vanneman that making cuts will help them become a better team.

“Although it’s an individual sport, you wrestle with the same guys every day and how hard they push you affects how much you improve,” Sommer said. “Then you make cuts and all the kids who don’t work hard and don’t make you better are kicked off.”

With the cuts out of the way, Sommer said he expects the Senior Class to lead the team to an outstanding year.

“We have 10 seniors on varsity this year out of 14 spots which is amazing,” Sommer said. “And a bunch of them either made it to State or Semistate last year, which gives us a ton of experience. We hope this experience turns into a good postseason run.”

The team finished second in its Sectional last year and had a 16-4 record in dual meets. It also finished second in the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference. Vanneman, though, said he expects bigger and better things from a team this year that is very experienced.

“We have a lot of good seniors and just a good Senior Class in general,” Vanneman said. “Hopefully that will translate into us being a dominant force in the (Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference).”

This Senior Class is Kopnisky’s first class that he has coached all the way through high school, and he said he hopes that proves to be beneficial to the team.

“There has been a long history of good wrestling coaches at Carmel High School,” Kopnisky said. “This is my first Senior Class to go all the way through, and hopefully that continuity will prove to be beneficial to them.”

Vanneman said he agrees that having the same coach for four straight years will help the team raise their performance.

“We have a good connection with him, and he knows how we work,” Vanneman said. “It makes us more comfortable and more likely to live up to his standards. This year we expect to make a good, deep run in the postseason.”