After taking last year off from the sport, Wright City junior Joe Rice returned to the wrestling mat this year and placed in the Missouri state wrestling tournament.
Rice finished in fourth place in the Missouri State High School Activities Association Class 2 wrestling tournament in the 126-pound weight class. Rice won his first two matches of the tournament to advance to the state semifinals and guarantee he would place in the top six in his bracket. He pinned Aidan Bollinger of Blair Oak High School in the first round. He defeated Zeke Moreland of St. James High School in the quarterfinals to advance to the semifinals.
“Before going in, I really wanted to place,” Rice said. “My goal was to place. But with how I had stacked up against the competition before that, I was starting to get a little nervous if I would. But I had a really good draw in the bracket so I made it to the semis.”
Rice lost his semifinal match to Tanner Riley of Cameron High School. Rice defeated Dalton Coe of Pleasant Hill High School in his first consolation match to guarantee a top-four finish. He lost to Hunter Tarr of Kirksville to finish in fourth place.
After he made it to the semifinals, Rice’s focus changed to not being happy with anything other than a top-four finish, he said.
“It’s wild how much your expectations change once you’ve guaranteed a placement spot,” Rice said. “Because going into it, I just wanted to place. I would have been happy with sixth. But the second I made it to the semis, I kind of decided that I would not be happy with anything under fourth place. That I had to place top four. So just wanting and seeing the possibility of being top four definitely gave me more motivation to try harder. So just the expectations that I put in myself kind of helped me to place higher than I think I could have otherwise.”
This was the second time Rice competed at the state tournament. He qualified for the state tournament two years ago when he was a freshman. He did not participate in wrestling as a sophomore before returning to the team this year. Rice believes his experience at the state tournament his freshman year helped prepare him for his state tournament run this year.
“This year for whatever reason it all felt smaller,” Rice said. “It all felt more normal. So it was a lot easier to kind of just like chill in between matches. And then the hardest part was after winning my quarterfinals match and guaranteeing a placement spot, it was a lot harder to get focused because I was so happy having already guaranteed a placement spot. It was a little bit harder just like getting back into the same mindset that I had for my first two matches.”
Wright City Wrestling Coach Fred Ross believes Rice’s experience at the state tournament his freshman year helped change the approach at this year’s state tournament. First time state wrestling qualifiers Demetrice Lenoir and Elizabeth Riggs were just like Rice was his freshman year, Ross said.
Rice wrestled in the 126-pound weight class after wrestling in the 120-pound weight class as a freshman. Rice did not have to contend with as much of a size difference with his opponents as he did his freshman year, he said.
“I think the main difference is my freshman year, I weighed about 122 (pounds) and wrestled 120,” Rice said. “ And then this year I weighed naturally about 130, 131, and wrestled 126. So I was still the smallest person in the placement for my weight but the size difference was a lot closer than it was my freshman year. I was by far the smallest person my freshman year. So just being on the same zone as everyone this year was a lot easier.”
Ross added Rice is stronger now than he was his freshman year.
With starting wrestling at a young age, Rice felt prepared for wrestling when he started competing at the high school level. Rice began wrestling when he was four years old. Rice’s older siblings also were involved in the sport and he thought it looked fun.
Rice stressed wrestling has so many technical aspects that a wrestler is not going to know what to do if they have never done it before. Unless a wrestler is really athletic, they are usually not going to be able to compete at a high level unless they have three or four years of prior experience, he said.
“I think three or four years is a good level to where that’s when the other years kind of don’t matter as much,” Rice said. “A really cool part of having done it for so long is you don’t have to think about the moves anymore that you’re doing. You can just focus on what the other person is doing. Because when you start, you have to focus on what the other person’s doing and you have to process it. Try to figure out what works best and do that. But after awhile, you can just kind of just do it and it makes it a lot easier. It makes thinking a lot easier especially.”
Overall, Rice is happy with the progress he made this past season. However, there are a couple things he wish he would have accomplished.
“I really wanted to have single digit losses and I ended the season with exactly 10 losses,” Rice said. “I wanted to feel good about all of my losses. And in order for me to do that, I would have had to win my third-place match because that was somebody I had lost to earlier in the season and I didn’t get it. I’m disappointed about that. I really wanted to win that match but overall, I think it was a pretty good season. Definitely stuff I could have done better.”
Rice added a lot of his joy with the season came from being with the Wright City wrestling team.