8. Wrestling

As a student at Perry, it was very exciting following wrestling team through all of their

glory. It was especially easy for me to follow considering I had very good friends on the team, such as Evan Nichols and Aaran Gessic. Also, the team was lead by a great man and great coach in Coach Rowan. It was evident that he was a leader in all of the wrestling teams success for the four years I was there. This even was displayed by the “Rowan Trained” t-shirts that all the wrestlers proudly wore on occasion. Mr. Rowan was also fortunate enough to have his great staff as well. But great coaches don't get the job done on its own. Hard work from the athletes, as well as buying into the system their coaches display for them makes a great team. Their run this year was very impressive, to say the least. The team qualified for the state duals in convincing fashion in front of a very loud home Pirate crowd. Unfortunately losing in the first round there, they would all rebound for the individual tournament. The wrestling team’s dream of crowning a state champion was still at this point a very live dream with 5 wrestlers qualifying to the state tournament. The first day of the state tournament I was in Mrs. Traina’s room updating her AP Calc class (this was a perk of being a teacher’s aide). Good results were filing in all morning until out of the blue I saw a tweet that was to the dismay to many. My good friend Evan had been defaulted for slamming a kid the ground, disqualifying him for the championship bracket. Everyone was questioning what happened and were in complete shock. But fear not, even though Evan couldn’t win the state title he rebounded back for a third place finish. Also at the Perry-West Geauga sectional basketball game at Lakeside High School (day 2 of the wrestling state tournament), our student section was focused on what was going on in Columbus. We had four wrestlers still alive in the semifinal round. But at that point the bad news kept pouring in as we had three wrestlers lose in the semis. Fortunately, Billy Miller at heavyweight won his match, landing him a spot in the state championship match. Although I did not get to have the opportunity to go down and watch, I was at a party and refreshing twitter every five seconds to see new updates during it. The party I was at actually had a lot of interest devoted to Billy’s match so the whole time everyone was refreshing twitter and cheering at points. With Billy up late in the match, the time updates kept happening on twitter as well. I remember seeing 5 seconds left and at that point I counted to 5 and refreshed the page. Billy Miller had done it. He had become Perry’s first state wrestling champion. This helped the team to a second place finish in the team standings, even with only five guys (compared to schools having a few or a lot more there). Congrats on a great season guys, it was fun to watch and be a part of.