As Winter sports are in session basketball tends to be the focus, however the Grand Ledge wrestling team is doing pretty well this year. The team record stands at 25 and 4. Coach Mark Buckland, who’s been a wrestling coach since 1999 talks about the quality of the team, “They’re doing about what I thought they could do and I think with a little more focus and effort, we’ll get there.“ Wrestling has continued to grow at Grand Ledge with the team seeing lots of new teammates Coach Buckland shares. “Out of the seven seniors I think 4 possibly 5 are seniors that have never wrestled before.”
As the team strengthens and grows, improvement is reflected in their wins. The team is advancing closer to States, On Wednesday February 7th, Grand Ledge took 1st in the District Finals Tournament at Holt Jr High.
Team captain, Toby Buckland a Junior talks about the performance of the Wrestling team, “I feel like the team is doing a lot better then they ever have, My last few years we’ve been pretty bad and this year we are really good.” When asked why he thinks there’s been such improvement Toby replied, “We got new kids, and the other kids that we had got better.” Toby has been wrestling for 12 years and got into it because of his parents.
Other wrestlers like Logan Tollison, a sophomore whose been wrestling for about 8 years agrees with Toby about the team skills. Logan mentioned some of the reasons the team is looking different compared to previous years. “Mat time, experience wrestling, I just feel like we are fluent.”
Wrestling is both a team and individual sport, and having a strong team bond is important. Coach Buckland says, “They are starting to bond a little better, it’s tough when half the line up are freshmen, we’ve got kids that have wrestled for a long time and been the number one kid at their weight and then we’ve got some freshman coming in to take their spots.”
For wrestling since multiple teammates weigh in at the same weight class they have to “wrestle off” the winner of these matches goes on to wrestle at the next varsity match. In that situation tension may seem high, however team members have spoken on the team bond and morale in an overall positive sense, Tollison says, “The team has a really good relationship. . . I feel like it’s always been pretty strong.” Senior wrestler Logan Allen comments that “Bonding could definitely improve but in past teams we’ve definitely been less close.”
Even with the strong team improvement and success coaches and teammates have expressed how student attendance isn’t huge Coach Buckland said, “We’d like a lot more students there, we do get some but overall, it’s pretty weak compared to most sports and right now with our success we hope it would bring in a lot more student”.
Even the Captain of the team speaks on how students should come to their meets. Toby runs a wrestling Instagram of updates and pictures of the wrestling team (Check it Out)
