Last year, a group of students from Jones College Prep and Walter Payton College Prep created a joint wrestling club. Despite almost all the members being novices and receiving little support from either school, the team achieved remarkable success in their debut season.
Jones-Payton Wrestling, now upgraded from a club to a full on team, is determined to keep their momentum going through their sophomore season.
“This is our second year with the wrestling program, and we’ve done a lot for such a new team and such a new idea. So the season has been great so far,” said Ethan Rii ‘26.”
In the early days of their first season, the team’s inexperience forced a wake up call within the group.
“Being first years competing against established teams was tough. I remember one of our early duels was against Whitney Young and Crane…. We got our butts handed to us, but honestly, that was one of the best things that could’ve happened. It set the standard early for what we needed to do. It built the foundation for our team.”
Learning a sport essentially from scratch, and then attempting to compete against other schools, is no easy task. The wrestlers, however, seem to embrace the challenge.
“Yeah, I mean, it was kind of rough because it’s so new, but that’s just how it is. We’ve been matching our competition a lot better this year and training really hard to, like get up to their skill levels and beat them, ” said Rii.
This drive to outperform competitors has raised expectations significantly.
“The standards have definitely risen,” said Christopher Chen ‘26. “Individually we want to be better, and the coaches push us more.”
The team said they’ve seen a surprising level of success throughout this season.
“I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress,” said Chen. “We recently got our conference champ award, which was really big for us, especially being only in our second year.”
Although wrestling is widely considered an individual sport, the aspect of camaraderie and culture that are synonymous with most team sports exist in wrestling as well.
“So even though it’s an individual sport—you’re wrestling one-on-one—it’s also a team sport… You can’t have just one person doing well while the rest of the team isn’t performing. You all have to be good to win.,” said Chen.
Improvement is the focus of the team this year, and, according to Chen, “If you keep showing up, keep practicing, keep pushing, and don’t let your will break—that’s how you improve.”
