The Davis Darts battled at the Utah state wrestling finals. With 3 placers and many matches won, our team did better than many years in the past. Parker Coffey and Heston Percival both took second, and Eli Knowlton took 6th, but many placed top 10 in the state, which is impressive enough.

When I asked Heston about how he felt about how the overall team performance he said, “I was impressed by the wrestlers heart, and that they left their everything on the mat”.

Heston’s performance impressed not only our team, but others too.

I was told by a former opponent of his that, “He really turned it on here, and made many of his matches look easy”.

Parker Coffey, easily the best wrestler on our team, also did very well, performing better than even he thought.

“My matches went better than I had hoped. I thought I was gonna have some really close matches going into the finals, but won all my matches by at least 6 points. I hoped to have a closer match in the finals, but I wrestled as hard as I could,” Parker said.

Yet what he doesn’t explain is his finalist match was against the 7th best wrestler of any weight class and school division in Utah. Parker was the only one he didn’t pin there at state.

Eli Knowlton, wrestled on a torn MCL, and though he didn’t do as well as he wanted, he did as best he could on the mat. Having 3 tough battles and losing to the same kid led to him taking 6th. Going to state in a knee brace is impressive enough. Placing on top of that is a total win.

Not placing in state and the fact that it’s over has made many wrestlers shed tears.

Andrew Shaner, another senior, said what he would miss most about wrestling is “the brotherhood between all of us. Knowing that we’re not just working for ourselves, but also working to better our entire team. The mental toughness it teaches you, one more sprint, one more take-down, one more stand up, even though you thought you couldn’t.”

The brotherhood especially is what us seniors felt. The fact that it’s over is saddening. Us brothers that have spent over 2 hours in matches alone, a year accumulative in high school, and many months in junior high together participating in a sport that we love. We will soon have to part ways in our lives.

Yet those hours together and the memories we made together were worth every second of pain and every loss on the mat or in practice. Though winning matches was great, the brotherhood was the greatest win of them all.