Wrestling coaches said a focus on conditioning launched the Glacier Bears to a strong start during their first meet in Craig over the weekend.
“We were really hard to beat in the third period,” said Bears’ head coach Andus Hale. “I was really pleased with our conditioning.”
Eight wrestlers flew into Craig for the event and competed Friday and Saturday. The event was marred by news that a wrestler from one of the communities had died by suicide the day before. Coaches met in the morning and decided to continue with the tournament to give kids something to focus on. Wrestlers sat for a moment of silence before the second day.
“It really put a cloud on things,” Hale said. “Wrestling is a pretty tight-knit community in Southeast Alaska.”
Because of the limited number of athletes, wrestlers competed in a round-robin style. Unlike in a tournament bracket, each wrestler takes on every other wrestler over the course of the tournament, sometimes more than once. The format gave the athletes a good chance to hone their skills on new wrestlers.
Hale said the Glacier Bears are known to start out the season slow and build steam throughout the winter. This year, he focused on getting the athletes primed for the first meet, an effort that turned out pretty successful.
“We came out a little sluggish in that first round, but the first round was all we needed to shake it off,” he said.
Hale said one of the highlights was watching a showdown between two top-ranked wrestlers from last year: Jonas Anderson from Petersburg and Leo Wald of Haines. The two were in different classes last year, but converged this year in the 171-pound weight class. Hale said he expected a pretty even match, but Wald, who is a senior this year, ended up winning, 17-1.
“That blew a lot of minds,” said Hale. “He’s focused, he’s driven, he does all the right things.”
Hale attributed the early success to rigorous practice schedules that focused on conditioning and visualization exercises. He said during warm-ups, athletes pretend to have a competitor on top of them and then visualize moving out from under them. Conditioning includes running laps as well as running in place.
Wrestlers are sitting out a planned meet at Thunder Mountain in Juneau this weekend in order to focus on academics, but will be back on the road on Oct. 27 for a meet at Mount Edgecumbe in Sitka.