Middle School success story in NC

Posted on Thu, Dec. 30, 2004

Wrestling on upswing at Harris Road Middle

More wrestlers turn out to help school shoot to an 8-2 record

JOE HABINA

Special Correspondent

Imagine how much success a basketball team would have if it started every game by spotting its opponent a 25-point lead. How would a football team fare if it played the entire game with only seven players instead of 11?

Those scenarios explain the dismal 1-9 record the Harris Road Middle School wrestling team had in its 2003-04 season.

Nearly doubling its number of wrestlers from last year explains the dramatic turnaround the Patriots experienced this year. They were rewarded with a second-place finish in the recent South Piedmont Middle School Conference tournament, posting an 8-2 season mark.

There was little reason to think that this season would be much different from the last for Harris Road. Only four starters returned from a team that finished at the bottom of the eight-team conference.

Last year, the weights of the team’s 21 members were not distributed enough to fill the 14 classifications. The Patriots often had to forfeit four or five individual matches, putting them as many as 30 team points behind their opponent before any wrestlers hit the mat.

When the team’s head coach for the program’s first two years resigned, the school’s administration tabbed assistant Jim Tovornik to lead this year’s team.

Tovornik, a nonfaculty coach whose son wrestled for the Patriots for two years, previously coached at Northwest Middle School before Harris Road opened in 2002, and at the AAU level.

He had recently converted part of a warehouse at his construction company headquarters into a wrestling training center, especially for those in his AAU program.

Tovornik says a majority of the wrestlers from last year’s team attended AAU camp during the off season.

James White, who competed at 103 pounds, said he and his fellow returning eighth-graders and seventh-grader Jordan Lattiker (who was team manager as a sixth-grader) encouraged their classmates to give wrestling a try.

But even the first-year coach was surprised when a preseason meeting to survey interest in wrestling at Harris Road (only seventh- and eighth-graders are eligible to play sports) netted 75 students. Fifty-eight showed up for the first practice, a number that eventually dwindled to 39 for most of the season.

Tovornik, who was assisted by Jeff Lattiker, father of wrestler Jordan Lattiker, said the only way he could handle the pleasant surprise of so many wrestlers — many of them new to the sport — was to keep instruction elementary.

“I try to teach my kids the basic moves to win, “he said. “There are hundreds of moves but you need to know only eight to win.”

The Patriots had no problem filling all 14 weight classifications, partly because football coaches Nathan Gray and Raymond Daugherty encouraged their players to try wrestling. Also, many of the previous year’s lightweights had grown enough during the off season that the heavier weight classes were stocked with experience.

White says he realized the team was on its way to a successful season when it defeated highly touted Mount Pleasant around mid-season.

The Patriots’ shift made an impression on at least one opposing coach.

“The Northwest (Cabarrus) coach asked me, `What are you all doing?’ ” Jeff Lattiker said. “He asked if we were doing anything unusual. I said we have them for two hours Monday through Friday. We’re concentrating on some moves and we keep repeating them. We work on conditioning and the basic moves.”

Tovornik says he made sure that even the Patriots’ reserves had opportunities to compete in “preliminary “matches to maintain team chemistry.

He said the team assumed an identity of working hard and doing whatever was necessary to win.

For example, Jordan Lattiker, weighing only 68 pounds, often gave up 15 pounds to opponents in his 83-pound weight class. He was one of only two seventh-grade starters.

Sean Mears, a 152-pound eighth-grader and unassuming first-time wrestler, finished runner-up at the conference tournament.

“He was shy, “Tovornik said. “He showed no emotion. You sort of wanted to poke him before he hit the mat, but he just went out and did his thing. He wrestled smart. He would take them down, work behind them and work his moves. But you couldn’t get him to say `yippee.’ He would just come off the match and say, `I won, OK.’ “

The Patriots’ only two losses were to undefeated Mooresville, the conference regular season and tournament champion.

Mark Goodpaster (112 pounds) and Eric Peterson (119 pounds), both eighth-graders, won championships at the Dec. 11 conference tournament at J.N. Fries. Runners-up were eighth-graders Mears, Eric Bridges (93), Mike Skiptunas (145), Clint Kluttz (171), Kendal Self (189), and seventh-grader Austin Pierce (125). James White finished third.

Tovornik says he tried to graciously and politely refuse the stipend for coaching — $175 — but will simply donate it back to the school instead. He said having the opportunity to teach wrestling to eager students was payment enough.