I wrestled my first match at Hotchkiss at age 14. I was about 122 pounds. Though I had been wrestling since a young age, I had yet to undergo fundamental character building and grow into the person and wrestler that Hotchkiss Wrestling and Coach Puls have helped me become today. No other team, experience, or coach has taught me as much about myself, my values, and the importance of hard work and dedication in accomplishing a goal as Hotchkiss Wrestling and Coach Puls have.
I am incredibly grateful to each of the wrestling teams I have been on at Hotchkiss. From the leadership and guidance of Dean Parenteau ’18 during my Prep year, to Peter Coumantarous ’19’s fun, yet serious captainship, to Nick Adams ’19’s personal guidance, I am who I am today because of what the wrestling program at this school has taught me.
More so than anyone else, I am grateful for Coach Puls. He has taught me the value in being true to myself, how to win and lose with dignity, the importance of timeliness, how to lead by example and to support oneself and one’s teammates, and many other life lessons that I couldn’t possibly quantify the value of. I would be a fundamentally different human being had he not accepted the position of head coach during the 2017-2018 wrestling season and dedicated himself to our team that season and each season thereafter.
This past season, through a healthy amount of bloody noses and bruises, I wrestled my way to a second-place finish in Western New Englands and a fourth-place finish at New Englands, the second of which qualified me for nationals in Maryland, where I made it to the round of sixteen. My prep year, I lost two matches in a row at Westerns, not even qualifying to wrestle at New Englands. From an underweight 14-year-old, I wrestled my last match as a Hotchkiss student at age 19 at 195 pounds.
Thank you to my team and, most of all, to Coach Puls, for helping me grow as a wrestler, but more importantly for guiding me to become the person I am today.
