Knowing how to pin other people to the ground and having them admit defeat just comes natural to Harrison. It’s something a Harrison native doesn’t think about. Watch out, Cleves and Delhi…
I, someone who did not grow up in Harrison (but rather actually inside of Cincinnati) (I moved here in 2024), have something to say. How? Why?
Ohio is consistently top 3 in wrestling in the country. Not where I’m from. I didn’t even know my old school had a wrestling team. That’s how bad we were. I’m not going to name names, but my school being good at wrestling is not something I’m used to.
Something I’m slowly getting used to, however, is a plethora of school activities. One of these activities is, obviously, wrestling. Harrison has consistently been one of the best in the state.
I reached out to the Harrison wrestling coaches for questions, but no comments were given. Instead, I searched through interviews from wrestling coaches from across the countries for information on how a successful wrestling team operates. Below, we can infer that the tips are the same for our own wrestling program.
In a 2022 article from Wrestling Insider Magazine about John Klessinger, South River High school wrestling coach in Maryland, he gives 12 tips for wrestling. His first and most important tip mentions how important it is to relax.
Being under stress is never good. Whether you’re hardcore cramming for a test, a quarterback with a lackluster offensive line and your name rhymes with Boe Jurrow, or you just have a lot going on, it’s not good. You perform worse when you’re not relaxed. Do you do better on a test when you have a full night of sleep the night before or when you’re running on 30 minutes of blinking as “sleep” while you have hallucinations? The same applies to wrestling. The less tension, the less injury as well.
Another reason teams succeed is because the result isn’t the end-all-be-all. The journey matters more than a win or a loss. At the end of the day, the things twisting their bodies and pinning them against mats are humans. They make mistakes. The good thing about mistakes is that you learn to fix them.
Wrestling is tough. It makes you tough, like SpongeBob SquarePants’s abrasive side.
Passion is important for success in anything. There’s no gun to your head telling you to wrestle, or anything for that matter. I have an itch to 100% complete every game I play, but I know I don’t have to. Sometimes I don’t. It’s not like it’ll matter in 1000000 years. Maybe my Xbox account will be in the AP Art History 250 pieces. But I do it because I want to. I can stop at any time. If I don’t like a game, I’ll stop playing it. If you don’t like a class, you can (usually) drop out of it. If you don’t like wrestling, you can quit.
You don’t have to worry about pure skill or strength. You can always get better, right? If you’re really passionate about it, go ahead. You’ll be pretty good soon enough.
In 2023, the Girls Wrestling team won the first team state championship, led by four peat state champion Chloe Dearwester and coach Chris Baird. Harrison has had a long history of individual success, including players like Raegan Briggs and Leah Willen, who have broken school records for wins.
In 1991, we began a Junior Program called “Top Dogs” which have trained over a thousand of junior wrestlers.
With excellent coaching and players, it is safe to say that Harrison’s dominance on the mat will continue.
