Courchaine Rolls On

3A wrestling

For a baseball player, David Courchaine is a heck of a wrestler.

Courchaine tired of baseball in seventh grade and poured his energy into wrestling.

Today, the Cheney junior takes a 37-0 record into the 145-pound semifinals of the 3A Mat Classic in the Tacoma Dome.

“He deserves everything he gets,” Cheney coach Aaron Mason said. “He works his butt off. No shortcuts.”

Mason was Courchaine’s seventh-grade football coach and thought the energetic youngster was cut out for wrestling.

“I got my butt kicked in junior high,” Courchaine said. “Now it’s fun. I got tired of baseball and decided why not try wrestling. I had an older brother, B.J., who was always kicking my butt anyway.”

Courchaine improved to 14-2 as an eighth-grader, lost in regionals as a freshman and finished seventh at state last year.

The improvement came because of his determination. He used his conditioning to make up for his inexperience and outlasted tiring opponents. He took up freestyle wrestling in the summer to improve his footwork.

It also helped that his brother, the one who used to whip him if he struck out or to get him to do the dishes, didn’t mind playing second fiddle and would take a whipping in the wrestling room after practice.

“He’s probably my biggest fan,” Courchaine said. “He’s always been there for me.”

Now, it’s all paying off.

“I’m wrestling the best I can probably wrestle,” he said. “My weight has been down the last couple of weeks. I had to cut a lot of weight to get to 145.”

Courchaine is joined in the semifinals by 275-pound teammate Blake Falor. Clarkston also advanced two, 135-pounder Anthony Johnson and Matt Phillips at 140. The Bantoms are third in the team race with 32 points and Cheney is sixth with 30. Lake Stevens leads with 41, a half-point ahead of Steilacoom.