Wrestlers defy myths, outperform competition
Wrestling program boasts history of success despite little attention from students
February 14, 2017
Images of huge, muscled behemoths jumping off the ropes of the World Wrestling Entertainment arena are often what come to mind when someone mentions the word wrestling.
But at high school, wrestling is a real sport where there’s only two wrestlers strategizing on how to pin each other with classic techniques.
“You’re using your body as a tool,” wrestling Coach Roy Tambunga said.
Despite a strong tradition of success on the Akins wrestling teams wrestling often goes unnoticed by the student body. One reason that students do not often know about the wrestling program is that there are not many home matches for students to watch.
Many of their matches are against teams as far away as Frisco, North of Dallas and Klein Collins outside of Houston.
Wrestling is a sport where you have to be mentally and physically strong.
Tambunga said that the toughest thing wrestlers face is being able to gain the confidence to be out there wrestling alone, because in the end it is all up to you. He said not everyone is built for wrestling because of it’s individual nature.
It’s just you. You have to be mentally tough. You look around and there’s nobody there to help you during a match.
— Coach Tambunga
“I played football till my freshman year in college, and you can’t compare how hard it is,”Tambunga said. “It’s just you. You have to be mentally tough. You look around and there’s nobody there to help you during a match.”
Most people assume boys are more likely to want to wrestle, that’s not always the case.
“Getting guys is harder, even though as most kids you wrestling around a lot. Or at least I did,” Tambunga said. “Most boys have this thing where they don’t like to touch other people.”
Wrestling has been at Akins for 16 years and Coach Tambunga has been coaching for 20 years. Coach Tambunga feels that traditionally based o the past that the girls on the team have always done better. In the past there have been two girls who have wrestled for the champion- ship back in 2006 and 2011.
Last year sophomore Leslie Mejias took 3rd place at the state UIL meet. She said it was one of her biggest accomplishments and was a pretty cool experience especially with her being a freshman at the time. Mejias is now captain of the girls wrestling team and she feels that she has learned that with more experience more improvements are to come.
“I learn a lot of moves in wrestling but, I think it comes with experience but the more experienced you are, the more you know,” Mejias said.
This year the varsity team is full of a lot of new talent with there only being three seniors on the girls team. Also, this will be a tough challenge to face with a lot of inexperienced wrestlers starting off. However, Mejias said the season is going well so far regardless of all the new wrestlers.
She says she is very proud of the progress the team is making this year, she said.
Tambunga said he wants the team to do well and have high rankings at district. He also hopes Mejias will come in rst or second in state this year.
Despite their success, it is not alway easy to recruit students to join the wrestling team, Tambunga said.
“It’s hard to get girls on the team. I’ve been more successful with it because a lot of girls are looking for something that’s maybe not as regular,” he said. “Whereas in other sports they’ve been there done that for forever.”
