{"id":368,"date":"2015-11-25T22:21:37","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T03:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acutabove.wpengine.com\/?p=368"},"modified":"2015-12-03T15:46:41","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T20:46:41","slug":"in-it-to-pin-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?p=368","title":{"rendered":"In it to pin it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brianna Billard<\/strong>
\nThe Voice
\nEverett HS
\n1st Place
\nDivision 2, News Writing
\nSports Feature Story<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The building is cold and the lights are bright. As the wrestlers begin their matches, you can smell their sweat, and hear the squeak of their shoes. It\u2019s sophomore year, and Christopher Tidwell prepares for his first match of the day. When his eyes meet his first opponent, he\u2019s instantly intimidated. Jacob Stewart is wrestling at 140 pounds, but he looks nearly 160. Although Tidwell was nervous for his first tournament, his teammates cheered him on throughout the match and talked him through his first loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe beat me real bad,\u201d said Tidwell.<\/p>\n

For the past few years, the wrestling team has always been there for one another, and a close knit family with nearly 40 members. However, there aren\u2019t as many wrestlers for the 2014-2015 season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really looking forward to wrestling with all of my teammates,\u201d said Tidwell. \u201cNow that we don\u2019t have a lot of wrestlers, we automatically lose matches.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senior football player and ex wrestler James Fredd said that he enjoys football more than wrestling, and was just looking to participate in a winter sport to keep in shape.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou physically have to be more in shape to do wrestling. After the first thirty seconds, you\u2019re exhausted but you have to keep going,\u201d said Fredd.<\/p>\n

Due to the lack of wrestlers, they don\u2019t win as many meets as they did in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t have a full line up then we have to give the other team six points for each weight that we don\u2019t have somebody,\u201d said wrestling head coach Chad Foster.<\/p>\n

Mat maid Antonella Benavides says that sometimes it\u2019s hard for the boys to focus and they don\u2019t do as well, which makes them want to stop wrestling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s hard for them to stop thinking so much about what they should and shouldn\u2019t do during a match,\u201d said Benavides.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the boys feel pressured to please their coaches, parents, school, etc like most athletes do. However, even when the wrestlers do their best, they can\u2019t always pull through.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating [when an athlete doesn\u2019t do well] because you know that they\u2019ve been working hard and putting in a lot of time, and it sucks because the results aren\u2019t coming. It\u2019s tough to keep their mental aspect of wrestling up,\u201d said Foster.<\/p>\n

When losses happen, the coaches make sure to build the players back up and try to have them make corrections in a positive way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they don\u2019t do well, you try to focus on the good things that they did, instead of tearing them down,\u201d<\/p>\n

For the 2013-2014 wrestling season, they had nearly 20 more wrestlers than they have this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main reason that there\u2019s not as many wrestlers is that there\u2019s not as many new kids. There\u2019s only about five this year when there were almost 15 last year,\u201d said Foster. \u201cKids are just getting lazier and wrestling is super tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having many seniors on the team is helpful because they usually have more experience. However, having freshmen on the team is great in the long run.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeniors mean that hopefully they\u2019ve been aggressive for a while, I don\u2019t mind young kids who are fresh to the sport, you can teach them what you want them to know,\u201d said Foster.
\nHe includes that wrestling is a difficult sport that you have to be in shape for, and dedicated to in order to improve.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be strong minded, you have to be able to deal with different bruises and injuries, you have to be mentally strong,\u201d said Foster. \u201cYou have to be able to tell yourself that you\u2019re not tired. A lot of kids like to be lazy, but wrestling is a sport that you can\u2019t be lazy in.\u201d<\/p>\n

By being mentally strong, players can\u2019t let the little things get to them, they have to trust in themselves and let their body do the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tell a lot of our kids to stop thinking. When you\u2019re thinking your mind is telling you one thing but your body is telling you that you can do more,\u201d said Foster.<\/p>\n

Like any sport, every athlete is different. Humans learn things differently and perceive things in different ways than their teammates might.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood coaches don\u2019t treat everyone the same, because they have different circumstances, and different personalities,\u201d said Foster.<\/p>\n

Although a few of the athletes couldn\u2019t manage wrestling this year, many wrestlers still have a strong passion for the sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love learning new moves, it makes you understand how the human body works,\u201d said Tidwell.<\/p>\n

Even though the team has been through struggles this season, the wrestlers have done well individually.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen an athlete does better than expected it shows that they\u2019ve been working hard and it\u2019s paying off,\u201d said Foster. \u201cMaybe they are getting better every day like you expect as a coach. It\u2019s rewarding to know that it\u2019s paying off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brianna Billard The Voice Everett HS 1st Place Division 2, News Writing Sports Feature Story<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,67],"tags":[48,21],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-nw","category-sportsfeaturestory","tag-48","tag-division2","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kelsey Parkinson","author_link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?author=3"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6K0n6-5W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}