Wrestling is not just about pinning your opponent to the ground, the sport is a little more complex than most people think.

“You can get points a few different ways,” explains senior Austin Burns. “You can take someone down to the ground and get control of them, or you can get them over on their back and stay on top of them for a few seconds.”

Burns said there are many ways to control an opponent during a match.

“You can reverse, which means they’re on top of you and you switch it around and you end up controlling them,” Burns said. “Or, you can do a stand up and get away from them. This means they are controlling you and you stand up and get away.”

Wrestlers often face the struggle of losing weight before their season begins.

“I have to lose fifteen pounds before my first match in a few weeks,” said Burns. “It kind of sucks because you definitely have to cut back on what you eat, you have to run more, and go to the gym.”

But, not all students can lose enough weight before their match so they do things that are a little unhealthy.

“Sometimes before a match people cut about four to five pounds a night and the next day they’re low on energy because they haven’t eaten anything, but it’s part of the sport. It gives it a little extra challenge and that’s fun,” said Burns.

Even with the sport being rather difficult, Austin still has a substantial amount of faith in his teammates.

“I think we’re going to do pretty good this year,” he said. “We have a lot of seniors coming back. We have about three or four state champions: Colton Krawford, Josh Bell, and Noah Hightower, they’re all pretty good. I expect all of them to win in the agility.”

This year, with all their after school practice and working out, the wrestling team looks forward to a great year.

“In the future, we’re going to have a good team because we’re going to have a lot of people coming back and we’re getting a whole lot of matches this year; a whole lot more than normal,” says Burns. “We’re getting about sixty plus matches and we usually only get about twenty to twenty-five, so they experience is definitely going to help us when it comes to winning state.”