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Finnigan having breakout senior year

Unremarkable before, he has emerged as a force in football and wrestling.

After suffering a broken wrist early last season, Badin High School senior wrestler Colin Finnigan is 25-3 with 22 pins so far this season. Staff photo by Samantha Grier

Samantha Grier After suffering a broken wrist early last season, Badin High School senior wrestler Colin Finnigan is 25-3 with 22 pins so far this season. Staff photo by Samantha Grier

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Updated 12:31 AM Friday, February 10, 2012

By Jay Morrison

Staff Writer

HAMILTON — Colin Finnigan is having a breakout senior season ... again.

After rushing for a grand total of 19 yards in his first three seasons with the Badin High School football team, Finnigan burst onto the scene in the fall and gained 1,033 yards while scoring 10 touchdowns.

And now he’s doing it again for Dexter Carpenter and the Rams wrestling program.

The owner of six career varsity wins coming into the season, Finnigan began his senior year 22-0 before suffering his first losses last weekend.

“I’d say my senior year is going pretty good,” said Finnigan, a 182-pounder who is 25-3 with 22 pins heading into this weekend’s Greater Catholic League tournament, where he is the No. 2 seed behind Moeller’s Quinton Rosser.

“I am kind of surprised to have this kind of record,” he said. “I was just looking to have a good time wrestling and seeing how many matches I could win.”

Actually, he nearly skipped the season altogether.

Finnigan wrestled from sixth grade through freshman year, but he gave it up his sophomore year to try swimming. He came back to the mats his junior year only to suffer a season-ending broken wrist after a 6-2 start.

Discouraged, he said he wasn’t going to wrestle his senior year. Those words were like a chokehold to his dad Jim, who was a state qualifier in Nebraska and went on to a four-year career at St. Joseph College in Indiana.

“There was a little prodding,” Jim said. “I didn’t put a lot of pressure on him, but about every other day I would say something along the lines that it was a shame he wasn’t going out for wrestling.

“I think what finally did it was the one time I told him ‘It’s a shame you’re not going out this year because now you’re never going to be able to beat me.’ ”

Colin reversed course and has, in fact, beaten his dad, along with just about everyone else who has crossed his path this season.

“Nobody in our room can go with him,” Carpenter said. “I’ve been on the mat with Colin, and it’s not too cool. It just feels different. It’s like wrestling cable. He’s just so strong. And I’m always worried: ‘That wrong move and I’m done.’ ”

So the coaches invited a mixed martial-arts fighter they know to wrestle Finnigan in practice, and the results have been dramatic.

“I’ve seen an improvement in him just in the last couple days of having somebody in there who is forcing him to go underneath,” Carpenter said, referring to Finnigan’s reluctance to shoot and instead rely on his strength and quickness to counter his opponents’ shots.

“Physically he can hang with anybody out there, state champ or whatever, I don’t care who they are,” Carpenter continued. “But technically, they may close the gap. They definitely will the deeper he gets in the tournament.”

Finnigan said his goal is to become just the second wrestler in school history to qualify to state (Eddie Sanders was the other).

“At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t really thinking about making it to state,” he said. “I was focused on making it to district and doing well there. But now I think I can make it state. After I won my second tournament (Deer Park), I started thinking it was a possibility.”

Finnigan has won four tournaments this season – Fenwick, Deer Park, Reading and Simon Kenton (Ky.) – and he’ll go for a fifth this weekend at Moeller.

“I’m so glad he decided to wrestle this year,” Jim said. “It meant so much to me when I was in high school, and I want him to experience that. You only get that chance once, and then it’s gone.

“It’s the fairest sport in the world — just you and your opponent going one-on-one. And it helps you with everything in life.”

In a few months, Finnigan will move on to track, where he just might have another breakout season. He came within one spot of qualifying to the regional in the hurdles each of the past two years.

“I think I can get there this year,” he said. “But right now I’m just focused on wrestling and going to state.”

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2193 or jmorrison@coxohio.com.

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