A click as the timer starts for the first period. Not long after, a thud as the referee signals a fall. Coppell senior Brooke Massaviol won the bout only 10 seconds in. In Coppell’s Round Up Tournament Saturday, Coppell took first place by winning a majority of the bouts. 

To open the season, Coppell hosted the annual Round–Up, a round robin style tournament that gives wrestlers a chance to play more than a few matches and allows athletes to practice ahead of the season.

“We had a lot of kids do really great today,” Coppell coach Chip Lowery said. “We had a lot go undefeated, and a lot of the JV kids did really great, too.”

 Instead of brackets, each wrestler competes against all other wrestlers in the same weight class at all the schools that attended. For girls, Allen, Frisco Memorial, Frisco Centennial, Frisco Heritage, Northwest and Skyline all attended. Over the course of four rounds and a fifth, voluntary round, bouts were fought in order of ascending weight class on one mat out of five in the turf room. Coppell wrestled in around half of the more than 80 girls’ bouts, winning most of them.

“I think everyone has done very, very well, especially for this [preseason] tournament,” Coppell junior Ananya Sampathkumar said. “We’ve been dominating; it’s been going really well. A lot of the girls are new and they’ve been showing that the work that we’ve put in has been paying off Everyone’s super proud and excited.”

The tournament is a good opportunity for many girls who have only begun wrestling this year, since they can get their feet wet before the season begins.

“All of our starters have been doing amazing and then even our new girls and some of our freshmen have really improved and shown out today,” Coppell junior Dorian Villalba said.”I’m just really proud of us, and I’m really excited for this season. We never know who’s going to be on varsity when season starts kicking in and everybody starts getting competitive.”

Overall, the team was in good spirits as the tournament wrapped up, and are looking forward to their upcoming season.

“This was a really good foundation for us,” Massaviol said. “We definitely did better than the other teams so I think that sets an expectation for future tournaments. We have our eyes on them and we know our competition a little bit better than we did yesterday.”

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