Chase Porter
Staff Writer
Coming off a successful season a year ago, the Coppell wrestling team plans to pin this season’ competitors to the mat.
In 2009, the Coppell High School boy’s varsity team won district and achieved second in the region. The team also sent six wrestlers to the state tournament last year and had an impressive run. Five of the six wrestlers placed in the tournament, making the Cowboys wrestling team a worthy opponent for anyone that faces them in this year’s upcoming season.
“I think we’re going to do pretty good,” wrestling coach Robinson said. “Even though some good [wrestlers] guys graduated last year we have some more leaders coming up and I don’t think we are going to have a problem this season.”
The wrestling team has been preparing tirelessly for the entire school year to get ready for this new season because the coaches know that other schools will be hunting to beat them. To prepare for the new season of matches, the wrestlers have been running and lifting to get into the best shape possible. They have also been studying new techniques and learning how to be more lethal with their moves on the mat. Also, they have changed the way they prepare for the matches.
“We have had countless after school practices,” senior Mark McPherson said. “We run, we lift, and of course we wrestle to get ready for the season.”
In the past, the team has been focused on mainly over powering the opponent, but this season the focus is on being your precise with movements in an attempt to pin their opponent. The team has been drilling in certain scenarios that have put them in binds in the past to make sure it will not happen again. Also, many of the wrestlers agree that their biggest strength this season is definitely going to be body positioning so that they can get an immediate advantage on their opponent.
“I think we are going to do really well,” senior Cody Cammack said. “I’m confident that we are prepared for the season so we will see what happens.”
This years wrestling team has many strong competitors including multiple seniors moving up to take the places of the seniors who graduated last year. These seniors include Mark McPherson and Matt Robinson, two of the varsity boy’s captains for the 2010- 2011 season. After the great success of the team last year they seem ready to take the reigns of the team and lead them to another district championship and hopefully another run at state for the two of them and their teammates.
The new season started on Nov. 20th with the Coppell Roundup tournament for JV, boys, and girl’s varsity wrestlers. CHS hosted the tournament and many schools from around the Dallas area competed. Both the girls and the boy’s varsity teams won the overall team competition and won the award for tournament champions.
For the boys team Matt Robinson, Mark McPherson, Bryan Mares, Kaleb Richardson and Dillon Stoffregen were all undefeated throughout the tournament. For the girls Kaci Fullinwider, Lorena Ramirez, Kihana West and Avery Souders also went unbeaten. All of these unbeaten wrestlers and a tournament win is going to give the team good confidence going into the rest of the season to defend their district and regional title.
The season for both girls and boys continues through January, and the Cowgirl Classic, the Santa Slam and the District tournament will be held Coppell High School. If any of the varsity boys or girls qualify, they will continue on to the regional wrestling tournament. The State tournament will be held in Austin, Texas on Feb. 27-28.
