Jimmy Barnett is almost at the finish line of his first year coaching wrestling at Franklin High School (FHS). On Monday afternoon, Feb. 3, he and some students were getting ready for individual regional tournaments as the season winds down.
Barnett was proud of what the team had accomplished, but thought it had room to grow in the coming years.
“We’re very young,” he said. “We only had one senior on the boys’ side and one on the girls’. We got our tail handed to us this year by a lot of other teams. It’s a rebuilding year.”
On that Feb. 3 Monday evening, only four student wrestlers were in attendance, two boys and two girls. Barnett coached them sitting atop a cafeteria table at the Macon Middle School (MMS) cafeteria, where they are practicing while the high school is under construction.
Barnett, previously a wrestling coach at MMS (his wife, Christy Barnett is assistant principal there), was asked by FHS last year if he wanted the high school gig, following the departure of previous coach Coley Tyler.
Recruitment problems
The big difference Barnett has seen between coaching middle and high school is the difficulty in keeping athletes interested in the sport.
The team’s numbers have been dwindling all year, starting out with 31 wrestlers total at the beginning of the season last October and now down to 15, with nine boys and six girls. The team’s decline has hampered their ability to fill weight classes when they go to compete at tournaments, and Barnett admitted FHS was not “a wrestling school” – though he hopes to change that.
Construction going on at the high school has only made the challenges more complicated.
“We don’t have our own facility,” Barnett said. “The middle school practices from 3-5:30 p.m., and then we come in and warm up. [Some high schoolers] don’t want to come back – they get home at 3:30, and they don’t want to come back to practice. I don’t blame them. If they’ve got a job, they can’t participate. That’s one of the battles we face.”
He said the process of moving students from the high school to the middle school daily for practice makes it more of a hassle than it could be if they could practice at the high school.
He said he was assured there would be a space for the wrestling team at the new high school.
Barnett said the local wrestling club he helped found, KLAW (Kids Learning About Wrestling), is a way to get younger kids interested in the sport. He said it helps to keep the sport on students’ minds when they get old enough to start competing seriously, and several students involved in middle school wrestling may keep at it when they come to the high school in the fall.
Barnett said things have changed from when he was wrestling in high school. Back when he was wrestling at Virginia High School in Bristol, Va., (Class of 1991), wrestlers were told to eat less to maintain their weight class. Wrestlers typically lose weight quickly when they play the sport, so telling them to eat less proved unhealthy in the long run.
“I didn’t like not eating,” Barnett said with a laugh. “Kids were malnourished; they looked horrible. It’s a good thing [that thinking] changed. I don’t encourage [athletes] to lose weight. I tell them to eat a lot, get muscle, get better. Our freshman heavyweight was 40 pounds under when we started. He was at 190. He’s up to 240 now. He’s doing it right, eating better, going to the gym.”
Season wind-up
Last month, the team competed in the Mountain Seven Conference (M7C). It went well for such a young team, according to Barnett, even if they did not get as many wins as they would have liked. Three of the girls placed: sophomore Cassie Willoughby, third in her weight class; senior Malaina Alberry, second; and, junior Carrie Holland, the top spot, which Barnett said was a first for Franklin.
“She’s the first M7C girls’ champion in Franklin history,” he said.
None of the boys placed first in their respective matches, but sophomore Branch Browning placed fourth in his weight class, as did sophomore Preston Douglas. Freshman Garrett Young placed second.
“Garrett is pretty viable, he got beat 5-6,” Barnett said. “That was the closest we got without winning one.”
As of the last week, they were preparing for the 3A West regional tournaments at Pisgah High School, which took place Feb. 8. Malaina (7 seed) and Carrie (10 seed) were selected to compete. On Monday, Feb. 10, Barnett said Carrie went 1-2 and Malaina went 0-2.
The boys’ regional takes place Feb. 14-15, and Barnett is taking Preston, Garrett, and freshman Devlin Bailey to compete. Garrett is a 5 seed, Preston, 11, and Devlin a 13.
‘Way of life’
Carrie won the January Athlete of the Month award from FHS for her focus and commitment to the sport.
“It’s a big deal for a girl wrestler to get it,” Barnett said. “Garrett got it earlier in the year. Now having Carrie get it as a female, it shows this is both a boys’ and girls’ sport. For years, it was male dominated, but this shows girls are doing it too.”
Girls’ wrestling is the fastest-growing sport in the country in terms of the number of new girls-only teams popping up in an increasing number of states sanctioning the sport, and Barnett said he is glad to see the change happening.
Carrie expressed that she appreciates the demands of wrestling.
“I like to be able to challenge myself, to get stronger physically and mentally. It’s definitely a mental sport,” she said.
Barnett said wrestling is something dear to him and he is glad to be doing it now at the high school level.
“It’s a way of life,” he said. “It’s a sport, but it teaches you how life is. You have good days and bad days. There are days life kicks your butt and days you kick life’s butt. That’s how wrestling is. I deal with a lot of emotions from kids. Struggles from their home lives. Wrestling gives them an outlet, I think.”