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Editorial: Success, even in a rough season
Op-Ed · April 23, 2015
West Branch Wrestling met adversity both on and off the mat this past season, and overcame those difficulties to nonetheless succeed.
In high school wrestling, coaches hope to put forth a full line-up for each contest. There are 14 weight classes, from 106 to 285 pounds. Oftentimes, small schools struggle to fill all of those classes. Sometimes a lot of students sign up for the team but several fall into the same weight classes, yet only one may wrestle in each dual or tournament. Sometimes, not enough students show an interest.
This year both, to some degree, happened to West Branch. As many as 10 students showed up for practices, but only five or six could compete. It is very difficult to win a dual when your team spots the opponent up to half the possible points.
So the Bears focused on the one-on-one matches. There, they won more than they lost. Stripping out the forfeits, the headlines showed West Branch winning 60 to 75 percent of the time they sent a wrestler into the circle in a dual meet.
Not bad.
Not bad at all.
Coaches play a big part in any team, and it can be difficult to find long-term coaches in high school sports. West Branch lost its new head wrestling coach halfway through the season, yet sometime-assistant, sometime-head coaches Jason Feuerbach and Will Kober stepped up and carried the team through that transition.
At the awards ceremony, Feuerbach assured the crowd that he and Kober “expect to be here a long time.”
That’s just what we needed to hear. Undoubtedly, these two deserve a big thank-you from the wrestlers, families and fans.
Coaches also need to recruit. When a coach is also a teacher inside the school, this becomes much easier. Since neither Feuerbach nor Kober is, they had to find another way. And they did, forming a partnership with the youth wrestling club, a private wrestling club for children up to eighth grade.
It started by the two teams hosting a joint awards night. While the two must keep certain things separate because of the limitations placed on publicly funded activities, the real value of the partnership is allowing the younger wrestlers to get to know the high school coaches and players, giving them an opportunity to familiarize themselves with whom they would meet at the next level. Author Anthony J.D. Angelo said knowing is half the battle, and in a young wrestler’s battle over the anxiety of whether to continue wrestling at the high school level, we think he’s right.
And even with small numbers, the high school team sent two wrestlers to districts -- junior Ryan Grosvenor and senior Jacob Giese -- and then Giese made it on to state. Giese finished 1-2 at state.
When the team gathered to look back on their season, they noticed that Grosvenor made the Bears all-time 70-plus-wins list, and Giese made it to the 80-plus-wins list. It is worth noting that Grosvenor missed half the 2014-15 season due to injury, and we expect to see him move much further up the list in 2015-16.
So congratulations to West Branch Wrestling for pushing through a very, very tough season, both on and off the mat. We hope the roughest spots are in the past and that the team can move forward in renewed health and future growth.
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