While 125-pound Jhared Simmons and 141-pound Alfred Bannister took different paths to College Park and had contrasting expectations placed on them, their paths have crossed lately for the Terrapins wrestling team.
With the wrestlers struggling at their respective weight classes, coach Kerry McCoy benched them in favor of other Terps in the team’s 32-6 loss at Purdue on Sunday.
Simmons hasn’t found much success this season, going 2-7 in dual meets. His seven losses in those bouts are tied for the most on the team. Bannister, meanwhile, started 6-1 before dropping five of his last six contests, including three in a row.
“[After Minnesota on Jan. 8], I told them, ‘We just want to focus on the good things and recognize the good things, and acknowledge the bad things and put it past,'” McCoy said. “‘Be upset about this, you should be upset about this, we don’t ever want to get those moral victories, we want to go out there and win.'”
Against the Boilermakers, McCoy inserted 125-pound Michael Beck and 141-pound Billy Rappo into the starting lineup. The shakeup didn’t work, as the replacements lost by a combined score 27-9.
Since the conversation after the meet at the Golden Gophers, Simmons has wrestled in just one of the three dual meets, where he lost by tech fall.
Simmons, who only began dedicating himself to wrestling late in high school, still has a long way to go to get on the level of other Big Ten wrestlers, McCoy said. While Simmons is striving to improve his wrestling IQ, he also has to focus on keeping his weight under the 125-pound threshold.
“He wasn’t the best kid coming out of high school,” McCoy said. “He’s a guy that just has to improve and get better. The weight management piece kind of hinders that, because if you’re too heavy, you can’t focus on getting better because you’re focused on losing weight.”
For Bannister, it seems to be a more mental barrier in addition to cutting weight. For the winningest wrestler in Maryland high school history, losing hasn’t been something the La Plata native is accustomed to.
“He’s still a freshman, and he’s wrestling fourth- and fifth-year guys,” McCoy said. “Bannister takes losses pretty bad. Coming back, having to make weight, it’s hard. These experiences are going to make him tougher.”
McCoy has faith in Bannister, who’s a team captain as a redshirt freshman, but for the Terps to be successful in the second part of the season, they need him to return to form despite going up against tougher competition than he’s used to.
With the Terps touting a 1-5 record in Big Ten matches, 133-pound Geoffrey Alexander isn’t placing the struggles on any one wrestler.
“It’s a collective team effort, and that’s just what we’re trying to keep going this week and the rest of the year,” Alexander said.
As Bannister and Simmons fight for their spot in the rotation, McCoy maintains that the entire team needs to work harder in the gym to achieve their goals.
“The focus is, and always has been, just get better every day,” McCoy said. “If we’re going to win a national championship, we have to work like national champs. We can’t wait until we’re ranked No. 1 to start working like the best team. When you get knocked back, we have to learn and build from it.”
