Senior Ryan Carpenter was recently awarded first place at the Regionals wrestling competition, held at Colorado Springs Christian School. This accomplishment sent him to State, where he would represent Manitou Springs High School Wrestling by himself. His coach, Brad Borkowski, said “We were happy with Ryan, he’d been working since last season, continuously, to get first at regionals and that’s what he did, so we were pretty happy with him.”

At the State competition, Ryan placed ninth. Commenting on his own success this season, Carpenter said, “I reached my goals in Regionals, so I’m happy about that, but I could’ve gone farther in State.”

Wrestling is an individual sport, but in the end, the entire team plays into results. “Wrestling is a real close sport, so we’re all really close,” said Carpender. Coach Borkowski was also very proud of how well the team worked this year. At Regionals, one senior and five underclassmen placed.

Ryan plans on continuing to wrestle in college. “I talked to the wrestling coach at [Colorado School of] Mines, and he said that I can walk on, but I have to try and stay on the team,” said Carpender. Colorado School of Mines has a very elite wrestling team. According to the School of Mines wrestling website, “Nearly 13,000 students each year try for the 875 spots in the incoming freshman class”, so Carpenter walking on is no small feat.

This summer, Ryan received training at the Olympic Training Center. “I basically got to be their training dummy.” “A friend of mine, Coach Smith, got me in because he had a few connections.” Carpenter remembers this time fondly, “They’re all about technique. We worked on every basic little step,” he said.

Coach Borkowski was incredibly proud of Ryan’s off-mat training. The single thing he was most proud of the season unsurprisingly, was Carpenter’s success.

“[The greatest success] would definitely have to be Ryan because he set his goal way back last season and went to the Olympic Training Center and, you know, worked his butt off all last summer and all offseason long. He was able to come back and perform and wrestle really well,” said Borkowski.