On Tuesday, December 6, Irvington’s wrestling team competed in a dual meet with Washington’s team in Irvington’s big gym. In the dual meet both boys and girls from up to 14 weight divisions for boys, and 12 for girls, wrestled each other. Each wrestler tried to earn the most points by taking down their opponents, escaping from their opponent’s grapple, or trying to pin the opponent with their shoulder blades on the ground, automatically winning the match. The winner of each match was tallied up, and ultimately the team with the most wins would secure a point towards their MVAL position. Washington defeated Irvington, winning 23 matches versus Irvington’s 6 wins, from both the boys and girls. Despite this loss, Irvington’s wrestlers have been working hard towards this meet and improving each and everyday to reach their goals..
During their practices, the team put a lot of emphasis into cardio. “We run about three miles a day,” says Head Girls Coach Peter Denyer, who runs the cardio and conditioning for the whole team. “ We do 3 sets of 25 or 30 pushups, jumping jacks and sit ups.”
Some students thought that more mat time might be good for the team.
“We could have done a lot more mat time, more time on the mat wrestling, and more time to practice our technique and moves more,” Vincent Le (11), “and if we did this, we would have been more prepared for this meet.”
“We spend half of our practices running and conditioning,” says Kaarthikeya Nedunuri (11), “and although I understand that conditioning is important, I think we should have spent more time actually wrestling.”
In addition to just cardio however, the team did work on techniques, takedowns, and weightlifting.
“We prepared the basics, and then we try to work with the one-on-one to tailor to their individual groupsets,” says Head Coach and Head Boys Coach Ivan Morales “everyone wrestles differently, everyone has different weights, and you need to take that into account if you want to effectively help them during the matches.
With it being Irvington’s first dual meet, some challenges were to be expected, with some wrestlers like Kaarthikeya having their old weight class removed from competition and other wrestlers moving up to a new weight class. It will take the team time to adjust to these changes.
“Some kids have new weight classes, some kids are just coming back for their second year,” says Head Coach Morales, “and everyone is just trying to get their feet running”.
For the most part Irvington was able to hold its own, keeping each match close and exciting. During one of the matches, one Irvington wrestler, Andrew Kwok (12), suffered an injury to his hand during his match. However, he persevered through the setback and ultimately ended up winning the match.
Despite these challenges, Irvington put up a good fight against one of the top ranked schools in our area, and has really gained a lot of experience and ideas on how to improve from it.
“Our work practicing on technique, specifically shots, paid off, where we were able to capitalize on all of our shots,” says Coach Denyer, “but we could have definitely worked on our defense, specifically against pins.”
A position that wrestlers often got caught up in was a half-nelson, and also during scramble, however the coaches believe that through practice and drilling, the team will be golden for future meets. Both the coaches and players are optimistic for future meets, and as Coach Morales puts it, “they’ll only get better from here.”
You can catch the Irvington wrestling team at another dual meet at John F. Kennedy High School, on Wednesday December 13.
