New Haven Independent

In its fourth year, New Haven Wrestling, the only high school wrestling team in the city, gets few spectators and little citywide cred. Especially since it won no matches at all last year.

Still as they prepared Tuesday afternoon at the East Rock Magnet School gym for their first match, the wrestlers were undaunted.

The season starts tonight with a match against a tough team from Xavier High School in Middletown.

New Haven Wrestling, a district-wide team, has two new energetic young coaches. It has 15 team members, as opposed to six last year. And it’s trying to establish the sport in town.

Oh, and Tito Slaughter is ranked first in the state in his weight category. He’s also a contender in A.P. Calculus.

Wilbur Cross seniors and good friends Slaughter (in the gray T-shirt) and Sanchez are the veterans on a team. Freshmen and sophomores make up half of the team. It’s a cooperative or district-wide team, with players hailing from Hillhouse, Hyde Leadership, and several other high schools. So, unusual for often rivalrous New Haven high school sports teams, the evident camaraderie among these boys is not school-based.

Slaughter came to wrestling from his primary sport, football. He’s a middle linebacker on the Cross football team. But at 5-foot-10, he’s relatively small. When a friend introduced him to wrestling, he sensed he had a knack for it. And it helped him on the gridiron.

“I got to deal with some big dudes [coming at me]. I use angling and grip control [learned from wrestling],” he said.

“There’s no shape like wrestling shape,” said Chris De Block, the young head coach. He said that six minutes on the mat — each match has three two-minute periods of fury — is like an hour of another sport. All your muscles are being used, all out, all at once, he said.

Many football players on every level stay in shape through wrestling, said Assistant Coach Mike Zurlo.

The Diamond, Not The Gridiron

Jimmy Sanchez is not a footballer but a baseball player and runner. While Slaughter’s uses wrestling improve at the sport he hopes to play in college, Sanchez has a different focus. He said the discipline of wrestling was good preparation for his post-high school move: the Marines.

“They’ll see I’m motivated,” he said. He plans to enlist after graduation. Sanchez, who goes to Hyde Leadership Academy, said his math teacher suggested he might enjoy wrestling, and he has.

Winning has little to do with it.

“I lost all my fights in the first season,” he said. Then he won a third of his matches in last season’s contests. He credits his new coaches for his success.

Coach De Block said that last year, the spectators consisted of a few parents, the coach’s girlfriend and her dad. Sanchez said he’s not bothered by the lack of audience.

“It doesn’t bother me if nobody comes. It’s a sport that’s about you. It’s your character. It’s all about a will to win,” said Sanchez.

De Block agreed. He said that the kids need “mental toughness” when they’re out there on the mat alone against one other person. “You got to push yourself when you’re tired.”

“If you lose, there’s no one to blame but yourself,” said Sanchez.

But the team is not planning on losing. Certainly not their leader, Tito Slaughter. He wrestles in the 189-pound weight category (there are 13 others) and won 24 of his 32 matches last year.

And this new season?

“I want to go undefeated,” he said.

Slaughter said he is going to attempt more take downs and pins and not win on points, as he did last year. In other words, more mental toughness and desire.

“It’s a big test of character, this sport,” he said, concurring with Sanchez. “When you get to the third period, and lots of overtimes, it comes down to who is in it more.”

With a 3.2 grade point average, an interest and acumen in math, Slaughter aims to play football for a college that will also support a future career for himself in architecture, engineering, or accounting.

But first comes tonight’s match in Middletown.