It was down to the final tiebreaker, and East wrestler Stephen Halsey was neck to neck with his opponent on the mat. His fellow wrestlers and coaches eagerly watched from the side. After weeks of competition, the Wildcats had made it to the final conference match of the season against their cross-town rivals at Chapel Hill High, Jan. 19. One more win and they would have leveled the playing field, with hard-fought prestige in their grasp.
“It was so nerve-racking. We actually had to hold one of our captains back by the mouth because we weren’t allowed to cheer,” said Floriana Sueldo, a sophomore and new member of the team. “There was so much energy, so much excitement, and I can’t even imagine how people who have been on the team for a while must have felt.”
Despite no cheerleading, the Wildcats championed by criteria after a 39-39 tie due to having no forfeits and having won more matches than the Tigers, taking the conference champion title and banner for the first time in East wrestling history.
“It was probably the biggest achievement of high school, because it’s something that no other team has been able to do for East. And to be a part of the team and be a team captain, and for the team to get to where we are now, it’s definitely one of my proudest achievements,” said senior Asher Yeo, who has wrestled since seventh grade.
A few years ago, the Wildcat wrestlers would have never dreamed of becoming number one in the 4A region, the most competitive conference in N.C., or even coming anywhere close to their current caliber.
“When I started my freshman year, we were a very, very small team,” said junior Kyle Parker, who has wrestled for seven years and serves as a captain alongside Yeo and senior Joshua Resnick. “All the other teams in our conference looked down on us, but now, I’ve been through it all. We’ve started scaling up the ladder. And now, we’ve won conference.”
The progression of the team’s skills and work ethic has been a long time in the making, emphasize their coaches Evans and Clark and the captains. After making the state tournament for the first time last year, a forward trajectory of growth and achievement became clear.
“A lot of people saw just how serious we are about the sport, and it gave a lot of our wrestlers greater motivation to work even harder,” Parker said.
At the same time, the team has also realized the limits of pushing itself too hard, and has begun to understand the importance of rest alongside hard work as a result of facing several challenges this season. While their conference victory qualified them for the state playoffs, the Wildcats could not participate because COVID-19 spread throughout the team.
Moreover, they were forced to compete without one of their best wrestlers and team captains, senior Joshua Resnick, who tore his meniscus early in the season. Nonetheless, Resnick focused his energies on helping his team succeed, developing his own “distinct style” of leadership as well as learning to “compromise in order to guide the team in one direction and one direction only… so as to attain the most efficient and productive results.”
“As a senior, I really wanted to make as best of an impact as I could on the team. I came to all our practices and matches, and I used my past experience to help lead the team and encourage our new members, while building a solid foundation for future years,” he said. “This season I definitely focused on our new wrestlers, whereas if I wasn’t injured, maybe I’d be focusing a little bit more on myself, trying to achieve my own personal goals as a wrestler.”
Resnick’s selflessness not only helped the team realize its potential, but also inspired an atmosphere of collaboration and camaraderie that has made East wrestling so inviting and worthwhile for many of its members. Especially on challenging days, Wildcat wrestlers know that they can rely on each other. Through constant practice, strenuous workouts and traveling to matches statewide, wrestlers trumpet their ultimate source of support stemming from their coaches and fellow teammates.
“We have a really supportive and tight-knit team. The people on the wrestling team probably have the tightest bond out of any sport that I’ve participated in, and I think that’s partly due to the physical and mental toughness needed to compete,” said sophomore Adrian Hito, who joined the team last year. “Our practices are really really tough, and we get put through that together. Overall it’s a very rewarding experience—my teammates are some of my best friends and are almost like family to me, and our coaches push us to be the best versions of ourselves.”
For Sueldo, who has wrestled with her own self-consciousness and fears of judgment, the team has provided a uniquely safe and welcoming environment. Acknowledging that “many people feel exposed in wrestling,” perhaps due to wearing skin-tight unitards, she emphasized that it is an accepting sport.
“I’ve definitely had my struggles socially with other sports, but on the wrestling team I always feel included. It’s such a big team, and we’re all really close,” Sueldo said. “I feel like it’s easier to get along with people in wrestling, because in other sports you have to work together in the match and the game, but in wrestling, it’s just you and the other person. So I feel that there’s a slight aspect that changes the relationship between wrestlers since you’re not on the mat with them while they wrestle.”
While their shared trials and experiences as a team are collective, each wrestler has also confronted individual challenges, both physical and mental.
“Being the smallest person on the team at all times is definitely a hurdle I’ve had to overcome,” Yeo said. “I was always the smallest until last year, and going through growing and in general being smaller than everyone else, I had to work around it and figure out ways to beat other people without being the better, bigger person.”
Parker emphasized that mental strength has been a hurdle, at times almost comparable to that of cultivating body strength.
“It’s crucial having the psychological capacity to actually push myself through all these really difficult workouts, especially after losing a match thinking that it’s all done and I can’t do it,” he said. “The mental aspect of wrestling is so important and yet overlooked, because it takes a lot of drive to actually keep working that hard and get on the mat.”
Having overseen the Wildcats’ growth, Yeo confirmed the special nature of his team’s resilience.
“We’re some of the most dedicated people, and it’s one of those sports that you’re literally going to get broken down and you still have to get back up. Wrestling consistently requires the utmost motivation.”
In addition, East wrestlers want others to realize that their sport is highly multifaceted and cerebral, not simply involving brute strength and aggression. Every match requires significant technique, specificity and thoughtfulness, according to wrestlers.
“It’s a really complex sport. Despite what people might think, it’s working your hardest and wrestling your hardest, even when you’re tired, and still being able to think clearly about what moves you need to execute, how you can score and win the match,” Resnick said. “It’s almost like a game of chess, but when you’re physically exhausted, it heightens the intensity and makes it even more challenging.”
While East wrestlers believe that they may come across as unapproachable to their peers, “wrestlers are some of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet off the mat,” Hito said. Affirming the magnetic nature of her team, Sueldo encouraged others to join her sport, as well as to “put greater respect on wrestling’s name.”
“Don’t be scared to join wrestling because you think that you might be too weak. I feel that people think, ‘Oh, I’m too skinny and frail—I could never do wrestling.’ But that’s not how that works,” she said. “It actually is one of the most fun sports I’ve ever done, and one of the least judgmental because everyone is different and everyone wrestles differently. It’s certainly one of the most diverse sports you can join.”
Photo courtesy of Phil Stapleton
