Big things have been happening with wrestling this past year. This is the first year the school was able to start a girls wrestling team at Bingham. Mr. Walker, the wrestling head coach, has been working hard to get a girls team at Bingham and finally the pieces fell into place.

Although there are only five wrestlers on the girls team, they really have spirit. “I’ve noticed that the girls teams are much more friendly to our competition. It’s probably because there aren’t a ton of girls yet, so we’re excited to see other girls who love the sport just as much as we do,” said Angella Van Valkenburg, a wrestler on the girls team. 

Both Girls and Boys Wrestling teams qualified for state this year. On the Girls team one wrestler, Angella Van Valkenburg, got third place in state. 

“State went great! Our girls left it all out there on the mat and brought back a couple medals. Next year they’ll be first place medals for sure,” said Van Valkenburg.

 On the Boys team, they had six state qualifiers and had two wrestlers place. Banks Love took third and Carson Neff took fifth. 

Just like all the other sports, wrestling didn’t remain exempt from the effects of COVID-19. The pandemic has put lots of added stresses on the Bingham wrestling team. For example, having to cancel or postpone duels, wrestlers getting quarantined, and dealing with cross contamination.

 As soon as they were supposed to have their teams tryouts, the school closed once again. “We were all wondering if we were going to get a wrestling season because right when we were supposed to do tryouts the school got quarantined again so that pushed the season back,” said Hannah Sasine, one of the team managers.

Nevertheless, the wrestlers pulled through in these hard times and were able to have a season. Though they weren’t able to have some of the duels they originally scheduled due to other schools having to get shut down, they made the best of their season. 

“… honestly for the time that we did get it was great, I think that our wrestlers did well and pushed themselves hard for the time that we had,” says Sasine.

Wrestling can seem like a very confusing sport to someone who has never played or doesn’t know what’s going on. So, to help you better understand the sport, here is a basic overview of how they can score points.

 There are different ways of scoring points. You get points as an individual in the match, but then you also get points that go to your overall score as a team.  

There are many different ways you can win a match. Those ways can be through a minor decision which is where you get six to seven points, a major decision which is where you get eight to fourteen points, a technical fall which is fifteen points in a match, and when a wrestler is able to pin their opponent.

If a wrestler wins a match by a minor decision the team gets three points. If they win by a major decision they get four points. If by a technical fall they get five points, and if it’s a pin or forfeit they get six points.

A match is broken down into three rounds. Each round is two minutes. Wrestlers start the first round off in the neutral positions, which is where they’re on their feet bent over and staring at each other. Then, whoever wins the coin toss at the beginning of the match gets to choose if they want to be top, bottom, neutral, or defer to the other team.