The Palisades boys wrestling team had two meets this past Saturday, December 2nd. The Junior Varsity team competed in Olathe and the Varsity team competed locally, at our very own Colorado Mesa University. The JV team played incredibly well at their meet, having one of their wrestlers, Ayden Martinez, place first place in his weight bracket, and the team placed fifth overall.
All wrestlers use a website called Track Wrestling, which tracks when their next match is. At both meets, this system was down for 30 minutes, which prevented them from competing in any matches for that time. The system going down wasn’t anyone’s fault and officials were trying very hard to fix it but in the meantime, the wrestlers had to do something to occupy them while they waited. A few of the wrestlers found a football and started a little game of football to pass the time. I interviewed a Senior, Trevin Brannon, who stated “It’s been super fun to play through my four years of high school, and I’ve been trying hard this year as my last year wrestling for Palisade.” Brannon says, “My goal for this season is to make it to state. I placed fifth last year in my weight bracket, and I want to beat that this season.”
“Practices have been getting increasingly harder this week with conditioning days and wrestle-offs. Wrestle-offs are basically when you wrestle everybody on the team that’s in your weight bracket to see who is going to be on varsity and who’s going to be on junior varsity.” says Brannon.
The team had a long four-hour bus ride up to their meet, which is usually where most of the players get their rest before competing. Palisade did great this meet, and are set up well for the rest of their seasons.