By: Rohan Bommaraju — Sports Editor

The 2021 Sharon Wrestling season was one for the ages. As the Covid-19 pandemic was still ongoing no one knew if the season was going to happen or not. 

The season was moved to the spring instead of the winter, so several key players did not wrestle the season. Sharon High School junior and wrestler Conor Grew says it was a letdown “I’m glad we have a season, but this isn’t the kind of season I wished for. I feel bad for the seniors with this being their last season. Since a lot of people aren’t wrestling this year, that means there are a lot of holes in our lineup that we needed to fill,” said Grew.

Sharon High School junior and wrestler Adam Landstein says that the season was successful even though they lost two matches. “We’re looking forward to the sectional tournament starting on the 19th and hopefully, we can take on the title even though it won’t be a traditional individual tournament but rather a dual meet tournament, ” said Landstein.

“There was definitely a lot of uncertainty for the season but we just had to keep working hard in the offseason and be ready as soon as we heard if there would be a season,” Landstein added.

Sharon High School Wrestling Coach Mr.  Jeff Sonis says that they were glad they had a season to compete. “We had great leadership from our two senior captains and the entire senior class.  The growth and improvement that was made from the start of the season to the end is really a testament to the programs and the kids in the program doing what they needed to do to stay focused and compete,” said Sonis.

“We were competitive in all our matches and the coaching staff was extremely pleased with the success of the team.  We are lucky to have tremendous support from the athletic department and from all the parents involved in the program.  And we couldn’t ask for better student-athletes to get to coach each day,” Sonis added.

Landstein says that the addition of masks to go along with their mouthguards made wrestling tougher. “You can see that people would get tired more easily during matches. It was essential that we continued to push ourselves hard enough so we weren’t tired in matches,” Landstein said.

Grew says that masks were not as big of a factor as he thought they would be. “With the headgear on, they don’t come off too often. When they do come off, referees usually wait until a move is over to call it. We had a cool match where we wrestled on the football field and didn’t have to wear masks,” added Grew.

Sonis says that due to COVID protocols there were fewer opportunities to live wrestle different people during practice. “There were fewer opportunities to wrestle with different teammates due to the contact tracing and covid guidelines and wrestling with masks on created more stoppages and it was a little harder to build up endurance,” added Sonis.

Grew says that their practices had to be moved along with other challenges due to the time shift. “We needed to face new challenges with the heat. We’ve had to adjust when our matches are, we’ve moved from Wednesday-Saturday matches to Tuesday Thursday matches,” Grew added.

Sonis says that due to their dedication, COVID had minimal effect on their team. “There were pretty clear expectations about how to best make the season safe and successful and everyone involved followed the guidelines.  We had wrestlers working out in ‘pods’ and just one or two drill partners throughout the season all within those pods,” said Sonis.

image from bostonglobe.com