El Dorado learning from first wrestling meet
After competing in their first-ever wrestling meet last week, El Dorado hits the road Saturday for a trimeet against North Little Rock and Springdale HarBer.
For El Dorado co-head coach Cherokee Streetman, the last several days have been about breaking down film and learning from their debut at Sylvan Hills.
“Absolutely,” Streetman said. “We have an iPad that we filmed every match for the boys and girls with. There is a program called Hudl that most teams use, and we don't have that. What we did is we had the athletes take turns filming each other's matches, and then I uploaded it to a drive and I shared it with the entire team. So for the season, every time we record a match, I'll upload my iPad to Google Drive and then post all of those videos. They will have access to those all season long. Coach (Jimmy) Johnson and myself will sit down and go through it and we'll look for what we need to improve on, whether it be offensively or defensively.”
As is the case with watching film in other sports, the coaches will be able to spot where they can begin to work with the team on several fronts.
“There's a lot of different techniques that you have to use in wrestling,” Streetman said. “You look for what needs to be improved the most or where did most of the team fail it. Was it defending a certain shot? Was it getting up from the bottom position out of the bottom? Was it that we're just not really good at takedowns yet, so lets work more takedowns. We watched the film and that's what practice was really focused on was those areas of, ‘Hey, this is what they did and this is how we can either get out of it or fix it to actually beat it.' I was actually talking to another coach earlier about it and I said, ‘Wrestling is awesome because if I teach you how to defend one of their certain shots, it also gets me on topic to now I can teach how to do this since you know how to defend it.' Everything goes hand in hand, and it's kind of a cool process for wrestling.”
Watching film will also help the staff evaluate the team's performance.
“We evaluate everyone. We have extra kids. We have JV wrestlers, and if that JV wrestler wrestles well, then we want him to compete for a varsity spot,” Streetman said. “We have a certain routine we go through when determining varsity wrestlers. We actually have the athletes compete against each other, and there's certain criteria they have to meet.
“They can either earn that varsity spot, or we can say, ‘Hey, that person has earned the varsity spot and we can put them in that spot.' The film really helps us see where they are, what needs to be worked on and then also, ‘Hey, this person deserves a shot at the varsity weight class.'”