BHS wrestling up 'River,' luckily brought paddles By JAKE LINGER Sports Editor
On the heels of big wins against Parkdale and Long Reach High Schools, Bowie High wrestling coaches Pete Ward and Dave Potorff led the team across county lines to compete in the 16th annual South River Wrestling Tournament at South River High in Edgewater. The competition featured over 20 schools mostly from Maryland, and even New Jersey was represented. Approximately 200 high school wrestlers stretched, practiced maneuvers, jogged and lined up for skin check - to ensure each athlete is healthy - in front of a nearly packed house in the gymnasium.
Schools like Oxon Hill and DeMatha, the latter of which seems to excel in every sports outside of jai alai, featured some familiar faces for the somewhat "green" BHS team. First-year coach Ward figured his team would place about average in the tournament, but he also knew that having several first-year wrestlers, including one first-year athlete, would factor into the team's overall performance.
The first day of action was intense as the athletes took to the mats and sized up the competition. Tyler Smith pinned his opponent in the 119-pound class in three minutes, 33 seconds. Smith is one of the top Bowie wrestlers as he entered the tournament with a 12-0 record and all but one of those wins coming by way of pins. Eric Bulger won his 130-pound match in just 30 seconds while Ronnie Sinclair, 140-pound class, and 145-pounder Jordan Cherry each won their initial matches.
With a roster of about 15 wrestlers - Ward lost a few due to academic ineligibility - nearly half of those athletes are first-year participants of the sport. Between the inexperience of half his squad and the fact that he is coaching teenagers, Ward does not believe in manipulating a wrestler's weight, which is generally not an uncommon practice throughout the sport. "I really don't push weight loss," said Ward, "because I understand (that the teenage body is constantly changing and developing)."
Those changes are why Ward said he adamantly stresses technique over power and muscle to his team. "Don't try to muscle (opponents)," said Ward, "because the kid who is a technician is going to outwrestle you every time."
Ward believed that the BHS meet versus Long Reach was a serious benchmark for his group. Long Reach has a similar makeup of first-year wrestlers and veterans, and based on the outcome of the matches, "the kids we have pretty much dominated," said Ward. He credits his team's conditioning as a reason that they are able to compete in and complete their matches. D'Angelo Kinard and Daniel Silva, via their company Advanced Sports Performance, volunteer between one and two hours each week during practice to run the wrestlers through conditioning exercises.
BHS placed third in the 2007 South River tournament, but Ward called that squad "a more senior team" and he hoped that this year's team could place 10th or better. Ward acknowledged that wrestling "is a tough sport to coach" because, as he said, wrestling is not the same as football, which is a sport totally based on team unity and effort. While there are team aspects to high school wrestling as far as scoring is concerned, the individuality, Ward said, presents the real challenge to a coach, to be able to take an athlete and to take the natural talent and couple it with strength and technique. For those reasons, Ward said he really likes tournaments like the South River event because his team "gets to see kids with different (wrestling) styles."
Three seniors really did the damage for Bowie during the weekend-long tournament. Sinclair placed fifth among the 140-pound class. A four-year member of the Bowie High team who has been wrestling since the second grade, Sinclair said though the two matches he lost were "winnable matches," he knows that there are things he can do the next time to win those types of matches. He did "tweak" his knee a bit during the tournament, but regardless, Sinclair, winner of 75 percent of his matches this season, hopes "to have a good senior year and finish well in states" before making the leap to college, where he said, "I just want to go to school and be a student."
Smith nearly won his finals match in the 119-pound class, but was still happy to bring home the second-place finish. Smith is looking toward his college future, and he would prefer to wrestle for a Division I or III school. He said that last season he "lost a couple of close matches at states," but this year he wants to finish his four-year run on a more positive note at the season-ending championships in March.
Bulger, like Smith, hopes to maybe wrestle for a Division III school as well. He won his 130-pound class at South River, but the success is part of the journey for Bulger, and not the destination. "I could've done a lot better," said Bulger, referring to the South River tournament, "maybe earned some extra points or pinned a couple more guys."
With a few more tournaments and dual meets between now and the states, Bulger thinks he may know the recipe for his team's success as the season's end approaches. "We just need to work on not burning out beforehand."
