No Fish out of water
In a sport in which size is supposedly no object, it certainly appeared it might be for University wrestler Cory Fish when he first turned out.
Fish nearly couldn’t compete because he was too small, giving up as many as 20 pounds to his opponents in the lowest weight class, 103 pounds.
“I had to get a waiver from the state to allow him to wrestle,” Titans coach Don Owen recalled. “You had to weigh 86 pounds, and he wasn’t big enough.”
Then Owen went into an entertaining tale of how they would try to pack enough weight on Fish’s frame to make him eligible for competition.
Before one important GSL match, Owen said, they had Fish pound down milkshakes.
“He was tougher than heck for an 81-pounder, so I’d stuff him like a Christmas goose and he would have to try to wrestle that way,” said Owen. “It logged him down with all kinds of stuff in his system.”
After a week, Owen petitioned the WIAA for a special dispensation.
“By then, he’d bolstered up to 83 pounds,” Owen said. “He had a big growth spurt.”
Owen said he won 20 matches that season, “which is absolutely astounding for a kid that tiny to do as well as he did.”
The notion seems incomprehensible today, considering that Fish is a two-time state placer and returning state champion who has won a national Greco-Roman championship and more than 100 high school matches.
Fish missed by one win of qualifying for regionals as a freshman.
Even though he said he weighed about 95 pounds as a sophomore, his strength began to catch up, and only a bout with bronchitis kept him from finishing higher than eighth in state.
Last year, Owen still considered him a light 103-pounder, although Fish said he was on even footing. He lost only twice during the season en route to the state title.
“Last year was my biggest advantage,” Fish said. “The bigger I got, the better I did.”
Fish has grown into the 119-pound class in this, his senior year, with hopes for a second title that perhaps can help U-Hi win the team championship.
The first step is this weekend’s district tournament at Mt. Spokane.
Fish has compiled a 28-1 season record. His loss came in the Tri-State tournament to Sandpoint’s unbeaten Joey Fio, a transfer from California. It is a match that Fish would like to do over.
“I didn’t know anything about him and didn’t see him at all through the whole tournament,” said Fish. “I found out he’d been watching all my matches and obviously knew how I wrestled. He was a little more prepared than I was.”
Owen said it was the only bump in a season in which Fish has beaten state champion wrestlers eight times.
Fish has been at it since he was a toddler, when he and younger brother Chase, U-Hi’s 112-pounder, would roll around in front of the family’s video camera.
“We weren’t serious then. It was more of a laughing matter,” Cory said.
Fish was competing by age 5, and it wasn’t many years later that he was into freestyle and Greco-Roman tournaments in the summer. The summer after his freshman year, he won the 84-pound Cadet National Greco-Roman championship and finished second in the freestyle tournament.
Last year’s high school state title, he said, was more relief than anything.
“You don’t have to worry about it any more once you’ve accomplished what you set out to do,” he said. “But it also helps you to look forward to next year. It doesn’t stop there. It’s never-ending.”
Six current Titans wrestlers, including Don Owen’s son Tim, were middle school classmates and finalists in the league wrestling tournament.
“A lot of them have been Tim’s friends since they were little,” said Owen. “They’ve been to the house a lot. One of the advantages is you get to know who the good athletes are.”
Those close friends, including Fish, are hoping to become part of a history-making U-Hi state finish.
Owen said Fish overcame the odds because of his determination and competitiveness.
“It’s been an asset, in some ways, him being small,” said Owen. “He learned to use the quickness and power he had in that body. He never shies away from competition because of what he went through.”