By Christopher Tremblay

Junior Norwood High School wrestler TJ Wyman got involved with wrestling in middle school where his dad was a coach. He found that he liked the contact that comes with the sport as well as being able to put moves on his opponent and then pin them to the mat. As a wrestler on the Mustang squad, the now junior decided to forgo his freshman year of the sport due to the Covid Pandemic, but looking back, he wished he hadn’t.

“My freshman year was the Covid year and wrestling was moved from the winter to spring, where I played baseball, so I didn’t wrestle that season,” Wyman said. “But now, looking back, I should have gone the other way and instead of playing baseball I should have wrestled. I feel by not wrestling that year I got behind and had to reestablish myself the next year.”

Norwood wrestling coach Bill McDermott also wishes that Wyman would have taken part in the wrestling season that year, but he knew that he played baseball in the spring and that was his sport at the time. 

“TJ was a wrestler in junior high school and when he got to the high school we were involved with covid and things got moved around,” the Mustang Coach said. “It would have been nice to have his talent on our roster, but he played his normal sport that spring and rightfully so.”

During his first season as a varsity wrestler in is sophomore campaign, Wyman wrestled at 220 lbs., and although he felt that he was undersized for the weight class, he had himself a pretty decent season.

“That first year didn’t go exactly as I was hoping for,” Wyman said. “I thought that I would have been able to go further in the state tournament. I won a few matches but didn’t place. The experience really helped me to take my game to the next level this year though.”

Prior to this season getting underway, the Norwood grappler took part in a couple of camps over the summer to help improve his wrestling. He also continued to wrestle when ever he got the chance right up until the beginning of football season.  According to Wyman, the camps were a really good experiences to see how the top wrestlers took to their craft. The exposure to better wrestlers allowed him the chance to put his skills to the mat and see where he actually fit in with the elite grapplers.

Coming into his second season with the Norwood squad, Wyman was looking to qualify for the Sectionals with the hopes of advancing into the State and All-State Tournaments. Although still in the early part of the season, the Norwood junior has already achieved the first part of his goal and has qualified for the Sectional Meet.

Wrestling in the 220 pound weight class once again this winter, Wyman has finished second in the Devin Ness Tournament and captured the top spot at the Whitman-Hanson Tournament, and at the time of this writing he was 25-5 on the season.

“I figured that I’d have a better season than last year, and although I’ve already won 25 matches, I expected to be better,” Wyman said. “There were a couple of losses that I should have won.”

Having already qualified for the Sectionals, Wyman will be working on his skills to achieve the goal of making it to the All-State Tournament, but in order to do so, he must perform better at the State Tournament than he did last winter.

“He did a lot of off-season work to get better,” McDermott said. “Once the season started, we realized that he was deserving of being a captain as everyone not only listens to him, they respect his performance on the mat.”

McDermott went on to state that he believes that his junior captain will not only get to the States, but this year will go further and hopefully advance into the All-States.

Wyman likes his Coach’s thinking and whatever happens this year, he believes he’ll do better next year as a senior.

“Next season I am hoping that I can win a State Championship; everyone around me says that it’s a realistic possibility,” Wyman said.