On Feb. 23-24 seniors Minko Brown and Jason Kirk, sophomore Micheal Rossomanno, and freshman Donovan Brown all headed to Mizzou for Class 3 Boys Wrestling State.
Head wrestling coach Brent Batcheller said that practices were more vigorous leading up to State to prepare them for the experiences they will have in their matches.
“Traditionally we shorten our practices down but they’re more intense. So more live volume wrestling, more specific and common positions, a lot of heavy wrestling and heavy drilling. We’re trying to match the intensity of the matches down at state,” Batcheller said.
Senior Minko Brown said he wrestled to his full potential but his matches did not reflect the outcome he wanted, though they were very close matches.
“I think I wrestled to my best ability but the matches just didn’t go the way I wanted them to go. I won my first match pretty close in overtime and the other two I only lost by one or two points respectively, so I don’t think I wrestled poorly by any means,” Brown said.
Sophomore Michael Rossomanno said he anticipated the tournament to be difficult but he just focused on what he has been doing throughout the year and making sure he was eating right to prepare for his matches.
“I knew it was going to be a tough tournament so I was just going in there to try my best and do what I do. In practice I worked on moves that I do a lot in matches and outside of practice I was eating healthy, staying active, and staying on weight,” Rossomanno said.
Freshman Donovan Brown said throughout the season he started to have more faith in himself to make it to State but he wants to be more combative in matches to earn more points for himself.
“I didn’t really think that I was going to make it earlier in the season but I gained confidence and I made it. [Next year] I want to work on everything to get better and being more aggressive and more offensive and not just depending on the other person to get more points,” Brown said.
Batcheller said that the boys did well in being offensive in their matches but they need to work on consistency to finish their match strong all the way through.
“The matches that we wrestled where we were close but we didn’t sustain some of our early success in the matches so we’ve got to be more consistent from beginning to end. I think we were aggressive, I think we went for our matches but I don’t think we finished very well,” Batcheller said.
