High school wrestling is a sport that has grown a lot over the last few years for both boys and girls. The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) reported that the total number of students that participated in wrestling and the number of schools with a wrestling team increased from the 2017-2018 season to the 2018-2019 season. It seems that here at Parkway Central, the numbers have been trending in the opposite direction.

“Some adversity that we have faced this year is keeping kids interested in the sport,” junior Yousef Ahmad said.
“We had a couple kids quit because they were not up to the intensity of the workouts that we have.”

Ahmad has been wrestling since his freshman year. Even though the team has faced the challenge of replacing some players, the team has performed much better than they did last year.

“We have won a lot more matches this year than we did at this point last year,” sophomore Elijah Wheaton said.
Wheaton started wrestling last year as a freshman.

“As a whole, we’re able to perform much better because we have more upperclassmen rather than freshmen and sophomores,” Ahmad said.
“We went .500 last year, meaning we won half and lost half, and we are on pace to do better than that this year.”

10 out of the 17 players on the wrestling team are juniors or seniors. The team also has some players that are on track to compete at State.

“I am on track, Liam Hipp is, Joab Hackman is, Yousef Ahmad is, Kalob Duncan is and Hisham Al Ahmad is,” Wheaton said.According to the NFHS, boys wrestling is the 7th most popular boys sport in terms of total participants and the 8th most popular in terms of total schools with teams.