Kokomo’s wrestling team hasn’t been shy about its expectations this season. Even before the school year began, the Kokomo crew was talking about getting to the state finals — not just with an individual or a few individuals, but with a full bus.
“We think we can go far,” said Kokomo 160-pound senior Jesse Goodnight, who wrestled at state as an individual last season. “We’ve had a couple injuries here and there, but we still plan on going to team state this year.”
Team champions from this Saturday’s individual sectionals will qualify for the team regionals on Feb. 1, with the eight surviving squads advancing to the team state competition on Feb. 25 at Center Grove High School.
The current Wildkat squad is the strongest since Ryan Wells took over as coach in the 2008-09 season. Kokomo won the North Central Conference on Saturday in Logansport.
Wells called the quartet of Goodnight, 182-pounder Fletcher Miller, 195-pounder Bo Butler and 220-pounder Cameron Colby his go-to wrestlers. Combined, their record is 156-3 this season.
“Especially this year with some guys getting hurt, we’ve had to make up some points at other places and those guys haven’t just gone out and gotten wins for us, but they go out and get pins for us, they get six-point matches for the team” Wells said. “Every time they step on the mat we know we can count on them for a win. Not only have we been able to do that, but they’ve been getting us extra bonus points by getting pins for us. That’s been huge, especially when you’re wrestling quality teams like our team’s been wrestling.”
Wells stressed that every Kat had a hand in winning the NCC meet. They’ll need that effort this week if they’re to win the Oak Hill Sectional. Kokomo was second to Eastern last season.
“We want to be down there at team state and in order to do that everybody’s got to wrestle their best,” Butler said. “We’ve got to score points when we can, we’ve got to pin when we can pin the kids — a 1 seed vs. an 8 seed, we’ve got to pin there. We’ve got to get all the bonus points that we can so we can help our team score.
“Coach Wells tells us every single meet as a team … there’s always one of us he says, ‘Hey man, this is a big match for you. You’ve got to go out there and we need six [points]. We need six right now.’”
Kokomo put 23 points between itself and second-placed Logansport at the NCC meet. It gave the Kats confidence heading into the postseason.
“First off is to win the sectional and then take care of business at the team regional, and then go have some fun at team state,” Colby said.
“The way we wrestled last week at conference and the way our lineup is coming together right now, I think we have a good shot. I see us being one of the top teams in the state.”
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