By Rick Assad
Wrestling is a sport that dates to the ancient Olympic Games in 708 BC and it’s still being contested in college and high school, including Burbank High the last two years.
The majority of the members are boys and just a few girls, and one of the best and brightest is senior Kendall Chapman, who wrestles at 130 pounds.
“During my sophomore year, I heard talk around the school about the possibility of a wrestling team in the works. I didn’t think much of it, and honestly, I didn’t think that this would be created during my time in high school,” she said. “To my surprise, the process started very quickly, and by the time summer came around, I heard about the tryouts and thought it would be fun to just try out.”
Chapman, who will attend and wrestle at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, went on: “I didn’t think much of it, but I just thought it would be something cool to try since it was brand new, and most people were probably new, just like me,” she added. “After the tryout, I enjoyed myself way more than I thought I would and wanted to keep practicing the moves I learned in those days. I eagerly waited for the school year to start so that I could keep seeing what wrestling was about.”
Beside Chapman, the other female Bulldog wrestler who will continue at the collegiate level is Irene Abramyan, who will attend Cerritos College.
Two years into the sport, Chapman has flourished and has enjoyed her time, especially the last year.
“I think my senior season went significantly better than my junior season,” she said. “There’s not any special thing I did to make the jump; I just practiced more and got more experience. I started training at a wrestling club in the offseason, where I put in lots of work and learned a lot of things.”
Burbank coach Jonathon O’Brien started the program and has put the team on the map. He knew immediately who would lead the team.
“As a new program, you want to make sure you get your first captain right by selecting a student that exemplifies characteristics and values at the highest of standards,” he said. “Kendall has cleared all expectations by a mile. Her on mat accomplishments are a mere fraction of the value she has brought to the Burbank wrestling program, off the mat as well as a student, role model, and overall great human being.”
For Chapman, it’s much better not to get too stressed by the moment and opponent.
“I try not to think too much when I wrestle. But it’s still very important that I remind myself of my goals and stay focused. Getting on the mat for competition is the easy part. It’s the moment that all my training leads to, and it’s exciting to compete and just wrestle,” she said. “Before I get on the mat for practices, I usually have just one or two simple things that I need to improve on in my head. I focus on those aspects and make the most of practice.”
Chapman added: “For example, while I’m stretching after the warmup and getting into drilling, I remind myself to perfect the basics (keep a low stance, maintain head and shoulder position),” she said. “If I’m not feeling my best before a practice, I remind myself of my goals and to do everything I do with intention and purpose.”
In most athletic competitions, certain basic ingredients are necessary for success. Chapman knows what they are for wrestling.
“Leverage, strength, and speed are all important in wrestling. However, position is key. In wrestling, leverage is strength. You wrestle against someone who is in your weight class, so they will have relatively the same raw strength as you,” she noted. “So, the person who has the better angle and leverage will win the position. And that’s what a wrestling match is: working through positions to win them. Speed helps tremendously, but not if you don’t know what to do with your strength or speed.”
Being at your best requires a calm, cool and calculated mind.
“I don’t get as nervous before matches as I used to anymore, and it’s because, with more experience, I am learning that every match is the same; none is more important than the other,” Chapman said. “No matter if you are wrestling a playoff match or a regular-season match, you are still wrestling, and so is your opponent. I try to keep my approach the same for every match, despite who my opponent is because at the end of the day, I know I need to go out and get better, and the only way to do that is to put out my best effort and trust in what I worked on.”
Chapman continued: “Of course there are nerves sometimes, but I typically contain them to the best of my ability, so they don’t get in my head and affect how I compete,” she said. “I’m still learning how to apply all these concepts when it comes to the competition, but for the most part I remind myself of these things and try to learn from my mistakes when I make them.”
Though not many people have wrestled, they are intrigued in what Chapman does during a match.
“For the most part, people are interested. A lot of people don’t know about high school wrestling, let alone girls wrestling. So, when I tell them I wrestle, they usually think it’s cool,” she said. “But of course, there’s always going to be those people who think it’s too physically demanding or too dangerous. But for the most part, people think it’s awesome that I’m doing something different than what most people would do for a sport.”
Chapman’s path to the wrestling mat came from another source.
“I was on the softball team before I joined wrestling. I planned on doing both wrestling and softball, since one is a winter sport, and one is in the spring. However, after one season of wrestling, I stopped playing softball because I wanted to take wrestling more seriously and try to close up the skill gap by the next season,” she said. “I decided to put my focus on wrestling in the spring so that I could have a good senior season and could pursue wrestling in college rather than softball, which at that point was not my passion anymore after wrestling was in the picture.”
Wrestling is a rough and tumble sport and not for the timid.
“I love the hard work that wrestling is all about. It is different from team sports, where the win or loss is determined by many moving parts. Wrestling in a match is all on me,” Chapman said. “Of course, my coaches and teammates are the ones who built me in the practice room, but when I’m out there on the mat, it’s just me and my opponent.”
It is mano a mano and it’s often about the work and effort put in.
“I can’t run away or let my team do the hard work without me. If I work hard and build up my skills, it will show. It is tough because taking a loss can be hard when it’s a combat sport, and tensions can get high,” Chapman noted. “But it’s all worth it when I work hard, go through adversity and obstacles, and finally reach my goals. It’s also a very creative sport, so I never get bored. I love learning, and with wrestling, I never stop learning new things and being a student of the sport. For every move that my opening does, there’s a countless number of countermoves that I can do. I can create my own style and find my way, which is what makes wrestling so unique.”
Chapman was asked to recap her two-year career at Burbank.
“Some of my highlights from this year are my overall record, which was 26-12. This was a huge step up from last year, when I didn’t even have a winning record at the end of the season,” she said. “I placed at the Lady BlackWatch tournament in December, which was a big stepping stone for me because it was my first two-day tournament other than CIF, and I had some tough matches where I was able to get the job done.”
Chapman went on: “Another big highlight was winning the Rio Hondo League championship. This was a goal for me that I had set at the beginning of the year, and my work paid off in a place where a year ago I was not as close to winning,” she offered. “Being a part of a new team is exciting because I have a chance to be the first at a lot of things. One of them was that I became the first girl league champion for Burbank High, which hopefully will be a long list of names down the road as the sport grows in our school. Being a part of the first girls wrestling team for Burbank High is a huge accomplishment in itself, because we are paving the way for future girls in wrestling, and to me, that is a big deal.”
Even though Chapman’s two-year foray into wrestling is over, the memories and stories are not.
“I will miss a lot about my high school experience because it was different from what most athletes experience. I got to be part of the first-ever wrestling team at Burbank, meaning everything was new for everyone, and I got to be part of history and help contribute to a developing team,” she said. “I am going to miss mostly my team of girls, who all became my best friends. The tournaments every Saturday in season are where most of our memories were made, because we would be with each other from sometimes 5 in the morning to 10 p.m. I’m going to miss them because they helped develop my skills, and we all went through the grind together. We wrestled in the cafeteria the first year of the team, and a lot of memories were made there too.”
O’Brien has full confidence in Chapman and knows she will make a name for herself in college.
“We have no doubt Kendall will thrive at the next level at Mt. SAC and we couldn’t be prouder, or happier, for her next step in her wrestling journey,” he said.
