To kick off the season, Coppell wrestling hosted its annual Round-Up, a Round Robin style tournament that lets wrestlers to wrestle in multiple matches and allows teams to analyze what they need to work on before heading into the rest of the season. Instead of brackets, each wrestler wrestles against every other wrestler in their weight class at all the schools that attended. 

For boys, Frisco Memorial, Frisco Centennial, Frisco Heritage, Northwest and Skyline all attended.

Coppell defeated Skyline (40-38), Memorial (66-9) and Heritage (45-27), while losing to Northwest (45-36) and Centennial (66-12). Varsity boys placed 3rd overall.

The Coppell Round-Up is also a way to give back to the Coppell community with wrestlers from all of the schools bringing canned goods and other non-perishable goods that will be donated to Christian Community Action (CCA) to distribute for the holiday season.

“We are giving [the goods] to CCA this year instead of the North Texas Food Bank because they are going to keep it local,” Coppell coach Chip Lowery said. “If we have the ability to use our platform to give back to the community like this Round-Up and the Coat Drive later on, then we want to do that.”

The first meet of the season also provided Coppell with what they needed to improve on going into the rest of the season.

“We definitely could have done a lot better as there are always improvements that can be made and rooms to improve in,” Coppell sophomore Ty Rauschenbach said. “We definitely need to work on stamina going into the next meet because we are getting tired really easily over a short amount of time.”

Coppell only returns four varsity starters from last year’s group and there are substantial amounts of underclassmen in the line up this year. The experienced upperclassmen were looking to provide both tactical and motivational support for the younger members, as some of them are wrestling for the first time against other boys in varsity.

“The ability to be there for my teammates and try to apply my experience by telling them what they did wrong when and how to improve on it was really important for me going into the meet,” Coppell senior captain Jackson Briscoe said. “Just trying to use my experience because I have been wrestling for a while, especially because we have so many younger guys this year is very important for me.”

Overall, the team was in high spirits as they look forward to their upcoming season.

“This meet was a great way to set the tone for the rest of the season,” Briscoe said. “This meet was an eye-opener for a lot of people because we lost nine or 10 members of our lineup from last year and we only have one returning starter, so many had doubts over how good we were going to be this year.”

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