By Berlinda Beauvais (Reporter ‘23)
Wrestling Coach and substitute English teacher, Cary Snider, has recently joined our FCS community! Cary was inspired to get involved in wrestling by a legendary wrestling coach and science teacher named Doug Ross, a bionic man who has had multiple hip and shoulder replacements, and who was able to recruit Cary’s older brother. It was Cary’s older brother who encouraged Cary to join wrestling.
I asked Cary to describe how his wrestling career began in 3 phrases. In response, he chose: “Moves, Coaches, Self Reliance.” To summarize his journey, he said, “I remember first learning wrestling moves and the fascination I felt. I realized there were so many tricks to taking someone down or pinning them, and I loved how these moves combined into sequences, and I learned to flow. Then I remember my incredible coaches, who talked me through the intense nerves I would feel before matches, and the pain I would feel after losing the tough ones. I think of Doug Ross, Ed Soto, and Ron Tirpak, these three coaches who really defined those moments for me. In a scary sport, they made me feel safe and confident.” Cary chose some very motivational words of wisdom to close his reflection, “But in the end, wrestling always becomes a practice of self-reliance. As you learn to dig deep and trust yourself and your training, that’s when you start winning.” As for the most difficult parts of wrestling, it is not solely about the physical aspect of it, but also the strategic part of it as a whole. Combining those two facets together is very challenging on the mat, or red zone. It is hard to think about strategy when you are pushing yourself, sweating, and panting to the point of feeling sick; so it is important that you get enough repetitions, so your strategy becomes second nature. Hence, Cary felt pretty close to quitting his first varsity season. Even so, through all the hardship, he has been doing wrestling for about 18 years.
Cary was even recruited for college wrestling, but decided against it to pursue other opportunities at school. After college, he decided to coach back here at FCS. His younger brother Jackson wrestled at FCS, and when he was in college in 2014-15, Cary coached Jackson in middle school with Doug Ross and Tom McDaniel, and then again a few years later in high school with Jacob Fogel.
Originally, Cary’s brother brought him back to FCS, but at that time he was also thinking about teaching as a career, so he wanted to see what it was like to be a coach, and he ended up loving it!
And finally, the question we have all been waiting for – Who is the better wrestler, Cary or Mr. Fogel? Cary faithfully proclaimed himself the better wrestler, but he maintains that Mr. Fogel is a pretty good wrestler, as well.
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