CMorgan

Coach Wilk not having a champ is something that will haunt me forever. Great coach and mentor!

Might be biased but Graham Calhoun his Senior year. He went into the state series undefeated and without giving up any points. Out of his 46 matches he scored bonus points on 39 of them. He scored 249 team points with a 60% fall rate. Not being taken down until the state semi finals where a last second controversial call put the match into OT.  Ended his senior year with a 3rd place medal.

If you get a chance, please listen to our podcast Sunday and our interview with Clint Gard. You’ll be glad you did 

Skill and Perseverance, that I’m not losing is unacceptable the next 2 days goes a long way. We all Witnessed it Saturday Night .
Eye of the Zebra mindset, not no Tiger .
Congrats Champ ! 

You might be able to see it happen at 182-220 if you have an absolute freak of an athlete, but from 106-170 I don't think you'll ever see it.

Deondre Wilson won a title in his third year. He beat some hammers on his way including two-time champ Drew Hughes. Then his senior year beat Brandon James who is in the conversation of the best to never snag a title.

Zebra Power

Does anyone think that someone with 3 years experience could be a champ in any other weight class these days ? I think Lee Kemp started his sophomore year too - was a NCAA finalist at 17. It could happen but odds maybe be better at winning da lotto. 
 

This kid is amazing all around. My son went into semi-state and caused some major bracket upsets at 285. He didn't get to wrestle Fishback there, but we have been watching him all season. Great talent and sportsmanship! Amazing season! Follow your dreams!
 

Didn't make it out of sectionals his first year, got pinned by Muncie in the ticket round at semi-state last year to State Champ this year.  That is a great progression.  Great job.

The best part is he expressed interest in getting a teaching degree and coaching to help kids who were like him!

I feel he needs to go around the state and promote how wrestling can help with football.  

Kid just started wrestling a couple years ago and now a State Champ.  Great story and congratulations young man. 

Great for them, that's a wonderful accomplishment.. My good friend that was a 2x placer in the 90s Jeremy Motl told me that Hummel was one of the best big men to never win a state title.. I coached my guy against Bryce Baker and he was tough as well, congrats Zebras!

By STEVE KRAH
stvkrh905@gmail.com

Rochester was enjoying a super wrestling season going into the second and third stages of the 2022 IHSAA state tournament series.
The Clint Gard-coached Zebras placed second to Tell City (losing 36-33 in the championship match) in the Class 1A Indiana High School Wrestling Coaches Association State Duals (Rochester were 2A State Duals qualifiers in 2015 and 2019) and won the sixth team championship at the Three Rivers Conference meet (2000, 2002, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2022).
Rochester reigned at the Peru Sectional, running the program's all-time sectional title total to 12.
Then came the Zebras’ first regional crown, won at Maconaquah.
After that, Rochester (enrolled around 510) finished on top at the Fort Wayne Semistate.
The Zebras edged out Adams Central 82.5 to 80 and clinched the title with a win in the 285-pound championship bout by senior Marshall Fishback.
“I would have loved to have just loved it without the theatrics at the end,” said Gard, who has been coaching wrestling at Rochester for 26 years. “But we’ll take it any way we can get it.
“These don’t come along very often with schools of our size. It’s taken years to build this. A lot of the kids you’re seeing are kids that wrestled for us in our youth club. It takes a lot to get to this point.”
Gard, who counts Derrick Holloway, Bryce Roberts, Damic Beck and Tristan Wilson among his assistant coaches, notes that the last three Fort Wayne Semistate champions — Western in 2020, Oak Hill in 2021 and Rochester in 2022 — have come out of the Peru Sectional.
“That’s big for our area of the state,” says Gard. “It’s big for our sectional. It’s big for our regional. It’s big for our conference.
“It’s a pretty awesome experience. It’s kids have worked really hard to get there. It was a team effort.”
The Zebras brought eight semistate qualifiers to Memorial Coliseum Saturday, Feb. 12 and four walked out as State Finals qualifiers. There was champion Fishback (41-1 at 285) plus three runners-up — freshman Wyatt Davis (27-4 at 113) and sophomores Alex Deming (41-2 at 195) and Brady Beck (40-2 at 220).
Juniors Ethan Holloway (39-1 at 120), Aaron Swango (33-8 at 126) and Greyson Gard (33-8 at 152) lost in the second aka “ticket” round and senior Kaleb Shaffer (19-12 at 182) was beaten in the first round.
Holloway, Swango, Deming, Beck, Fishback all won TRC, sectional and regional championships. Davis and Gard also placed first at conference and sectional.
Gard has carried a roster of 32 boys and five girls this season.
“We focus on specific things that we like to do as a team,” says Gard of his practices. “Two or three days a week we’ll try to do a game. We do a lot of dodgeball and try to keep things light.”
There’s around 40 wrestlers in Rochester’s middle school program and 60 to 70 at the elementary school level.
Wrestling has long been a big deal at the school that had been a regional site when the IHSAA sent the Zebras toward the Merrillville or East Chicago Semistate (prior to 2017-18).
“We like to put (wrestling) at the forefront in our community,” says Gard, a physical education and strength coach at Rochester after 23 years of teaching math.
Gard is a 1991 of Richmond High School, where he was a state qualifier as a senior. He went on to grapple for head coach Tom Jarman and assistant Rick Troxel at what is now Manchester University.
Historically, Cory Fornal (Class of 2006) is Rochester’s all-time victory leader with 154. He was a state runner-up at 140 as a senior.
No. 2 on the victory list — Damon Hummel (Class of 1994) went to the State Finals four times (qualifier at 189 in 1991, second at 189 in 1992, second at heavyweight in 1993 and third at heavyweight in 1994).

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Pretty big for our regional to win semi-state the past three years. Rochester has a great program and they're extremely young. Clint has things going in the right direction there with some studs coming up as well.

Camden Eppert v. Brandon Wright
 
I do not know how you beat this one... they met under the lights in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Eppert won the title at 103 in 2007 and at 119 in 2009 - Wright took the title at 112 in 2008. Three years in a row the same two guys met under the lights. The two also met in the finals of the Regional and Semi-State each of those three years, too. 

During the regular season I wasn’t too bad, but when tournament time came, I felt it from the first round of sectionals until we were done. My first trip to state as a coach, my heavyweight finished runner up…He made a remarkable run that not many people expected. I remember after the match he came over and apologized for not winning. I hugged him and told him how proud I was and how proud our community was of him. We preached the 4 Ds. Desire, Discipline, Dedication, and Determination. We told the wrestlers almost every practice, that nobody would care if they knew how to do a double leg, or how run a cradle. It was more important to take those core values and use them as an employee, a husband, and a father. I still get nerves watching in the stands as a fan now. I know the hard work these men and women have put in every day, but in the end, they will all be better off for wrestling.

Coach do you have any kids?  If not, then it will only be worse yet.  I had the honor of volunteer helping Coach Gard at Rochester for nearly 18 years at all levels until roughly 8 years ago.  We would "what if" and strategize ALL the time (still do, just not as much).  I did struggle with the seniors last matches, but did not have much trouble any other time.   Until.... My son started wrestling.  I had to leave the gym after his first match and collect myself.  It hit me like a ton of bricks as I had no problem in the room or our internal wrestling events. 
 
Long story short, you are in the extreme norm with your stress and as aoberlin said, "Once you no longer feel that way you should quit".  The excitement for Saturdays is what got me through a lot of weeks and still does to this day as a spectator.   It doesn't go away.

It's the second worst part of coaching.  The first is saying goodbye to your athletes.  Whether is to graduation, quitting, or worse, saying goodbye is never easy.  I'm a mess every awards banquet.

Coach do you have any kids?  If not, then it will only be worse yet.  I had the honor of volunteer helping Coach Gard at Rochester for nearly 18 years at all levels until roughly 8 years ago.  We would "what if" and strategize ALL the time (still do, just not as much).  I did struggle with the seniors last matches, but did not have much trouble any other time.   Until.... My son started wrestling.  I had to leave the gym after his first match and collect myself.  It hit me like a ton of bricks as I had no problem in the room or our internal wrestling events. 
 
Long story short, you are in the extreme norm with your stress and as aoberlin said, "Once you no longer feel that way you should quit".  The excitement for Saturdays is what got me through a lot of weeks and still does to this day as a spectator.   It doesn't go away.

I do not have kids currently, but I can only imagine what it’s like. When coaching, building that relationship and developing a bond with some of these kids is like having a bunch of little brothers who you’d give anything in the world for to make sure they go as far as possible.

At the end of the day though, like @Coach Brobst said, they’re going to be much better suited in life because they’ve wrestled and they’ll understand what it means to overcome adversity when faced with challenges life presents. When they apply for jobs or go to start a family, I think the last thing people will think to ask is how many state titles they won if any at all because it doesn’t matter in the long run. What matters are the lessons learned and I try to make sure I tell them that and keep them looking towards the bigger picture.

My go to response when people ask me how I'm doing during a tournament is to say, "ask me in six hours, so I can be honest." Good luck to the Bombers, I say that honestly except for maybe a few matches against the Bricks. 

You'll feel even worse not coaching those kids and being in even less control than you are now. As coach you have only so much control, but you do have control. As you gain experience coaching, the nerves don't go away, but your ability to handle them increases.
 
You may not remember feeling a ton of nerves as a competitor, but you are probably remembering the end of your competition career; what if you thought back to the beginning? Would there be a difference in the nerves you felt from the beginning to the end? The same can be true of your coaching nerves. 

Coach do you have any kids?  If not, then it will only be worse yet.  I had the honor of volunteer helping Coach Gard at Rochester for nearly 18 years at all levels until roughly 8 years ago.  We would "what if" and strategize ALL the time (still do, just not as much).  I did struggle with the seniors last matches, but did not have much trouble any other time.   Until.... My son started wrestling.  I had to leave the gym after his first match and collect myself.  It hit me like a ton of bricks as I had no problem in the room or our internal wrestling events. 
 
Long story short, you are in the extreme norm with your stress and as aoberlin said, "Once you no longer feel that way you should quit".  The excitement for Saturdays is what got me through a lot of weeks and still does to this day as a spectator.   It doesn't go away.