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Soapbox Philosophy: Moving up from basics to wrestling style
Op-Ed · November 28, 2014
With so many years of consistent success behind them, West Branch Wrestling continues to amaze and inspire on the mat.
This is despite several head coaching changes over the years. However, several years of players seeing Will Kober and Jason Feuerbach, whether at assistant or co-head-coaching positions, at mat’s edge have helped maintain that high level of success without the dip that often follows changes at the top.
JJ Buttress comes in this year as head coach, and we wish him well in continuing the tradition of Bears wrestling. One of the hardest parts of the coaching job seems to be not telling them how to wrestle, but how to adapt their instructions to a wrestler’s strengths.
I have no wrestling background and have been picking up the sport by talking to coaches, wrestlers and team managers over the years, as well as watching. I have been surprised to see at how wrestlers can maintain the fundamentals from player to player, but wrestle with their own particular style.
Some examples I’ve seen here:
• West Branch’s first state champion in 2009, Kyle Kober wrestled at heavyweight, no doubt learning a lot from another great West Branch wrestler, his father and coach, Will. Kober was also a great lineman on the football team and was amazingly intuitive. His disadvantage was his height. Most heavyweights are over 6 feet tall. Kober was also probably one of the more balanced wrestlers I’ve seen, not overly aggressive nor overly defensive. He was particularly muscular, though, which is what made him heavy enough to fall into the top weight category. He also liked to go the distance, racking up points not for points sake, but to build up his experience rather than take his opponent out and get off the mat. One time at the Solon tournament, he went up against a guy who looked absolutely ripped. He must have been six inches taller than Kyle with well-defined muscles head to toe. And while he proved a strong opponent, Kyle simply had better technique and more experience.
• Casey Pence, part of the 2014 graduating class and wrestling at 160 pounds, liked wrestling and was very good at it — and before I go on realize that I don’t know these guys like their friends and family do — but I always got the impression he saw wrestling like a distraction, almost like homework, something that needed to be done before he could go back to talking to his teammates or listening to his music. He would go on the mat with a bland expression, pin the opponent quickly — often in about a minute or less — step up to have to referee give his hand the obligatory wave, then jog off and go back to what he was doing before. If the opponent was particularly good, Pence seemed to get a bit irritated — not frustrated by the challenge, but irritated that this would take longer than he planned and would keep him from something else he could be doing. This seemingly blasé approach to wrestling must have driven his opponents’ crazy, because most know how to adjust to someone who is hesitant or fearful or angry-looking, but what do you do when the guy looks indifferent? It also drove me nuts trying to get a decent photo when he would roll these guys in such a short time.
• Cade Jones wrestled at 195, is the team’s second state champ and first two-time champion. This guy clearly had a wrestling persona and fed off the adrenaline. When he went on the mat, he was locked in the zone and ready to eat somebody alive. Despite his size, he was incredibly quick and nimble, not blundering around like others in his weight class. Jones wrestled East Buchanan’s Tyler Hoffman in the state semifinals in 2013 and made a move I’ve never seen before or since: Hoffman lunged for Jones’ leg, but Jones didn’t block the move. Instead, in one fluid motion, Jones sidestepped Hoffman, pushed Hoffman’s head down and spun around to his side, putting Hoffman in a cradle. Hoffman never knew what hit him, and Jones pinned him soon after. Jones saw possibilities in wrestling that most others did not; he thought outside the circle.
• Tyler Donovan wrestled at 152 and was probably the most curious to watch. He was also a very good wrestler and, like the others mentioned above, qualified for the state tournament. But from my spot at the side of the mat, Donovan always seemed to approach wrestling like one might approach reading a recipe. He did not seem too emotional on the mat, but interested, leaning heavily toward inquisitive. When his opponent made his stance across from him, Donovan would give a “Well, I’ll be …” look, which was incongruous with the fact that he very well knew what he was doing out there. Donovan also made very deliberative moves on the mat, as if he did not trust the odds of scrambling.
So I’m looking forward to seeing who will shine in the 2014-15 season, showing not only what they can do, but how they do it. Go Bears!
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