COMMENTARY: Wrestlers Learn Plenty

SPORT SLOWLY GROWING IN STATE

By Paul Boyd

Posted: November 23, 2009 at 5:31 a.m.

Anthony Reyes
Rogers Heritage seniors Ty Roderique, left, and Casey Dye were both chosen to be on the Arkansas national wrestling team.

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ROGERS — Name the first sport at Rogers Heritage to win a conference title in its inaugural year of existence.

Forget the music. It’s wrestling.

The sport may still be in its infancy in Arkansas, but the War Eagles were successful a year ago, claiming the 7A-West crown and finishing second in the Class 6A-7A state meet to conference foe Bentonville.

Fewer than 50 schools in the state compete in wrestling thus far, but Heritage coach Randy Steen believes the sport’s coming.

Just slowly.

Steen was disappointed that more football players aren’t coming out. He expects eight or so since the War Eagles’ season ended Friday to push his team total to just under 50.

A few schools like Fort Smith Southside, Conway and Cabot have as many as 20 football players out for wrestling, Steen said.

Steen believes wrestling can help the athletes on the football field in many ways, not the least of which is the head-to-head competition. But because the sport is young in Arkansas, there must be more education and communication.

His team can’t rest on its laurels though. That’s particularly the case since the sport is evolving at a fast pace in the state.

The War Eagles return most of the athletes from last year’s state runnerup team, including 10 athletes who placed and a pair of defending state champions in Paxton Fowler and Jared Arthur.

Eight Heritage wrestlers even represented Arkansas at the Junior Freestyle Wrestling National Championships in Fargo, N.D., over the summer.

They learned plenty.

Seniors Ty Rodrique and Casey Dye called it “an eyeopening experience.”

“I’ve never seen that many athletes in one place before,” Dye said.

First, they had to change styles from folkstyle or collegiate to freestyle.

Rodrique and Dye were state runners-up in their respective weight classes a year ago in folkstyle.

They saw firsthand that Arkansas has quite a ways to go to catch up to other states. They also saw the level of commitment to the sport by some of the elite.

Dye and Rodrique stayed to watch some of the fi nals at nationals and listened to one national champion being interviewed.

“I thought we worked pretty hard,” Dye said. “But this one guy talked about practicing three or four times a day and running five to seven miles. We were running two to three miles and practicing twice a day. We just sorta got our feet wet.”

Then there was the competition.

Dye went 0-2, while Rodrique technically went 1-2 but the win was a forfeit when his second-round opponent did not show up. However, Rodrique’s third match ended pretty quickly.

“This Colorado kid, big ol’ mean, scary kid,” Rodrique said. “He picked me up, took me to my back. It was pretty much over in about 20 seconds.”

“There’s a lot better people out there,” Dye said. “I was pretty disappointed about getting second at state. I thought I should have had it. But there’s just a different level of competition. Arkansas’ got so far to go.”

And these two are pretty experienced by Arkansas standards. Dye has been wrestling for three years and Rodrique four. Both were determined not to get shut out and that didn’t happen.

Now they want to communicate what they learned to others. They want to push wrestling in the state to a higher level.

But they even understand to temper their message to newcomers in the sport.

“We need to get the freshman out,” Dye said. “We’ve got a lot of seniors and we want to keep it going. But we also don’t want to scare them away either.”

PAUL BOYD IS A NORTHWEST

ARKANSAS NEWSPAPERS SPORTS

WRITER. HIS COLUMN APPEARS

EACH MONDAY.

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