How Two Seasons and Two Coaches Has Impacted Jaden Dwyer By Max Valladares

For sophomore Wrestler Jaden Dwyer, his two seasons on the O’Dea Wrestling team have been defined by change, change from the normal season time, change in coaches, changes in meets, changes in rules, all sorts of change.

People are taught from a young age that change can be a good thing. People change all the time. But in sports, change can be a distraction, change can keep athletes from achieving their best and getting into a rhythm. It’s one of the few places where stability is not only welcomed, it’s encouraged.

For years the O’Dea Wrestling team was a place of stability. Coach Anderson manned the ship for decades, helping bring O’Dea’s program to new heights, State and Metro championships becoming a common occurrence.

But in the past two years that stability has been upended. Covid-19 hit O’Dea in March of 2020, right as the 2020 Mat Classic was ending. For this year at least, the stability was upheld.

But then came 2021, with a new year, new wrestlers, but the same Covid situation. Luckily Coach Anderson was still there to man the ship, but for the new Wrestlers, such as Dwyer, their season would not be the normal one they were expecting.

For starters it would be in spring, which meant that many wrestlers would be doing other sports instead, leading to a smaller team. Secondly, there would be restrictions in place, limited fans, no tournaments, and mask-wearing for example, this smaller size would lead to a disadvantage for newer Wrestlers, who would have to rely on themselves or coaches instead of their older teammates.

This year, Wrestling is back at its normal wintertime, which according to Dwyer, is much better.

“Because of there being fewer sports going on at this time, the team is bigger, and we have a lot better wrestlers,” says Dwyer, the team is now able to function at full strength again, after being weakened last year.

“Last year it was hard to get into the full swing of things, because of all the things going on. But this year has definitely felt more normal”

However just because certain things are back to normal this season, doesn’t mean it hasn’t come without change. Coach Anderson retired after last year, handing over the reins to Mr. Balinbin, a long-time assistant and teacher at O’Dea. This obviously impacted the team and created major change.

There is a definite change, says Dwyer, even if one coach isn’t necessarily better.

“Last year Coach Balinbin would take the Freshmen and younger wrestlers and teach them the basics. While Anderson and the other two coaches would take the more experienced wrestlers.”

“But this year Balinbin has mixed it up, and has everyone practice together, which is good because even the Varsity Wrestlers need a refresher at times.”

In a way that means that Dwyer has gotten the best of both worlds. He was able to receive focus as a freshman when there were fewer wrestlers from Coach Balinbin and this year was able to experience the full team aspect.

However this change was also apparent outside of the team, when the team went on Christmas break Coach Balinbin was always available on Teams, and kept up with the team, something that Dwyer says was very helpful.

For him, running was something that he made sure to do over break to keep in shape, something brought on by more change in the form of the highly contagious Omicron variant. Being quick to mention that even though people don’t think of Wrestling as a demanding sport endurance-wise, it really is.

“A lot of people think that you need to be strong and that’s it, but it’s really tiring.”

All this change must be tiring as well, and in his two years on the wrestling team, Jaden Dwyer has had a career defined by change, but takes it in stride and keeps going, helping freshmen and learning from others.

“The best way to learn is to teach (The Coaches) always tell us,” he says.

Dwyer and the rest of the team look to keep learning and growing next week when they take on Nathan Hale and Rainier Beach on the 19th.