The Mat Cats are back for another winter season.
After taking over the program last year, head coach Coley Tyler has been hard at work, filling out the team’s roster and teaching Panther athletes the finer points of wrestling. Against two elite programs in Enka and Union County, Georgia Nov. 16, Franklin opened their regular season in front of the home fans on Tom Raby Court.
“Our numbers have increased a little bit, and we do have new faces,” said Tyler of the team’s new-look roster this year. “We’re young, but we have some experience from middle school, so it’s good to have that.”
After struggling against larger teams last year due to lack of wrestlers on the roster, the team emphasized recruiting this offseason among the sport’s two genders and 14 weight classes. In one of the most physically demanding sports played in N.C. high schools, Tyler says the team has been preparing rigorously for the season.
“We started our preseason with conditioning in September and part of October,” he said. “Early to mid-October we transitioned to half-conditioning, half-mat time and trying to refresh our techniques, and then building into the season for official practice. We’ve had a pretty good turnout.”
Since the first official day of practices allowed by the state Oct. 30, the Panthers have been hard at work honing their skills on the mat. While the team hasn’t quite reached the level of elite programs just yet, Tyler said he was pleased with the team’s performance Thursday night.
“I saw a very good mental headspace that we were in, and then wrestling-wise, we wrestled fundamentally sound,” he said. “We didn’t make any egregious mistakes. There’s technique that we need to clean up, but this was our first match of the season, and so we’ll start working on that now, looking at our video of the matches, looking at our analytics and figuring out things that we can start tweaking. Those were two teams that are extremely tough, high-caliber year-in and year-out, and that’s done for a reason.”
Against elite competition in Enka and Union County, the Mat Cats performed admirably, with senior Wyatt Browning (126 lbs.), sophomore Zayne Chambers (138)and senior Miguel Diaz (215) pinning their Enka opponents. After their first regular-season meet however, Tyler said some wrestlers would need to focus more on their conditioning.
“I think after our first match yesterday, it’s gonna sink in a little bit more about the importance of the preseason and being consistent with it,” he said. “Once you get into the season, it’s very hard to build that base conditioning that you need, and that’s very, very critical with wrestling if you don’t already have it. ... I think one of the things that you figure out early in the season is you’re never in as good of shape as you thought you were.”
While the meet’s results did not reflect the rigor of the team’s offseason training, it did serve as a litmus test to gauge their readiness for the season. With plenty of work still left to do however, Tyler says he was encouraged by the team’s mental fortitude.
“We’ve focused a lot this season on training our minds just as much as we train our bodies and focusing only on the things that we have under our control, which is our preparation, the effort that we put forward, the attitude that we bring to competition and our aggressiveness,” he said. “What I saw last night was that they were ready to compete.”