The other part of the plan was to consult with other coaches across the state who had built programs.
Coffey showed highlight films during lunch at Fenwick, picked up athletes who got cut from basketball and finally has a feeder program up and running for kids in kindergarten through eighth grade.
“The feeder program was a swing and a miss the first year,” Coffey said. “It has been a whole lot more difficult that I thought it would be. We tried reaching out to all of the parishes, but we are competing against a lot of CYO teams.”
The way the season is unfolding, CYO teams may be competing with Coffey before long.
Behind a schedule loaded with dual meet tournaments, the Falcons head into the Ohio High School Athletic Association State Duals on Jan. 27 with plenty of match experience.
Fenwick has four wrestlers with more than 20 wins already.
Senior district placer Ethan Fessler (152) is 42-3, matching his win total from last year. Junior Alex Kowal is 34-0 at 138, senior Bryson Dowers is 29-12 at 145 and senior Joey Rudy is 23-10 at 160.
Dowers didn’t start wrestling until he was in high school, one of several who began the sport at Fenwick when they reached ninth grade instead of coming in with years of experience.
“When Bryson went home and told his dad he was going to wrestle, his dad said, ‘Great, but I can’t even tell you how to stand,’ ” Coffey said with a laugh. “That’s how it is with a lot of our kids. We aren’t just teaching them the sport. We are educating their families as well.”
Fenwick has wrestled in four states this season, entering dual meets in West Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana as well as Ohio. The thought was to get the wrestlers as much mat experience against other teams as possible and forgo wrestling live in practice.
“With not going live in practice, we have to get at least seven matches in a three-point event,” Coffey said. “It is trying, but with the support of the families, we travel a ton and try to get out of each tournament as much as possible. And it is new experiences and memories for them with their team and their families.”
Duals also have allowed Coffey to keep his top wrestlers on their toes while picking spots for the inexperienced ones.
“We kind of look at it as we have a group who are like an AP class that are ranked, and then we have kids who are in their first year,” Coffey said. “That’s where the schedule helps us out because our better kids see some competition and our newer kids can pull a win out here and there.”
With the disparity in experience, Coffey also had to find a way to reach both groups during practice. Coffey has started splitting the room, putting the experienced wrestlers at one end and the new ones at the other.
“It’s impossible to help everyone in one group,” Coffey said. “It’s hard because we have some who are advanced and some who are starting at square one.”
The Falcons enter the state duals as the fifth seed and will travel to Western Brown on Jan. 27 to face fourth-seeded Carroll, with the winner facing the top-seeded Broncos.
“I don’t think some teams knew how to vote us because we haven’t wrestled a lot of teams around here,” Coffey said. “I’m not saying we deserve higher than the five, but I think we can be a wild card in this.”
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