Tough fight leads to victory during Senior Night against Fossil Ridge
January 31, 2020
With multiple matches entering overtime, last-minute victories, and tough competition, Coppell fought hard to ensure a sweeping victory at Senior Night in the CHS Arena last night.
At the end of the night, both the Coppell girls and boys were victorious in their duels against Keller Fossil Ridge.
Prior to the duels, all senior wrestlers and one athletic trainer were accompanied by their parents and family as their college commitments were recognized.
Duels began with girls and moved into boys matches for the second half of the night. As District 6-6A is considered one of the most competitive in the state, Fossil Ridge proved to be a challenging competitor for Coppell.
“We won both [girls and boys matches] but we had some individual matches in there that didn’t look great that gave us a lot of stuff we’re going to need to improve on,” Coppell boys coach Chip Lowery said. “We are happy we won overall but we shouldn’t have lost some of those individual matches.”
Although most matches were just in preparation for districts, Coppell sophomore Maria Husain was provided with the opportunity to secure her varsity spot for the upcoming district matches with a challenge from senior Trinity Zapata. Upon her victory by pin, Husain won a varsity spot, giving her the opportunity to advance through districts and regionals to compete in state.
“I’m very excited. Wrestling taught me a lot about how hard you have to work to achieve your goals and that even if you don’t win, you have to understand you can always get better,” Husain said.
These past two weeks have allowed wrestlers a time to focus on individual progression and skills in preparation for districts and the end of the season.
“You can really refine technique in these two weeks,” Briscoe said. “It’s always grind time in wrestling for the most part but you really get two weeks not having to worry about health because you have a tournament and not having to worry about needing to conserve energy. It’s just two weeks of straight training and preparation and this week helped a lot with that.”
Senior Night brings a bittersweet ending to the season. For seniors, this is the last home tournament and for others, this is one of their last wrestling tournaments if they do not advance past district.
“[Senior Night] is always a sad night,” Lowery said. “We’ve got a lot of great seniors and that will be their last time wrestling here. That’s always hard on me. I’m close with all the kids and I miss them all terribly, so it just means we’re one more step away from having them graduate from our program.”
Coppell will compete in District 6-6A matches on Feb. 6 at Prosper High School.
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