There are two sides to Hammond's Ethan Cohen: One half is for everyone to see, the other is revealed only to those close to him.
Cohen is best known for the confidence he displays on the wrestling mat. The soft-spoken senior stares at his challenger before unleashing his aggression, methodically breaking down the opponent, stringing one move after another until he hears the referee's hand slap the mat to signal a pinfall. He's one of the most efficient wrestlers on the area's top-ranked team, with a team-high 18 pins.
Senior Ethan Cohen, standing, wrestles at 119 pounds and has a team-high 18 pins for top-ranked Hammond (20-0). He has gone 90-30 in his career.
(Don Wright For The Washington Post)
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But when Cohen's hands aren't locked around an opponent's head or body, they are expressing his feelings on canvas or paper.
"He's got a very creative side to him that not too many people know about," said Amy Cohen, Ethan's mother. "Half his bedroom is covered with the wrestling brackets from tournaments and medals he's won, and the other half has his watercolor paintings of portraits and cartoon characters like the Road Runner. For my birthday, he wrote a one-page poem and gave it to me as a present."
For Cohen, pens and paint brushes are as much a part of his life as a singlet and head gear.
"I like taking photographs, too," he said. "I've always liked being creative and writing, but I only give the things I make to people I'm around all the time and I'm close to."
Cohen's best story may be his own emergence as a wrestler.
He used to play soccer, where "he was always the smallest kid out there, getting knocked around by the bigger kids, but he was tough," said his father, Jeff Cohen.
In his freshman year, classmate A.J. Smith persuaded Cohen, who weighed just 98 pounds, to come to wrestling practice.
"We needed some small guys on the team to wrestle 103, and I knew Ethan was a good athlete," said A.J. Smith, who wrestles at 152 pounds.
When Amy Cohen picked up her son after the first day of practice, she hardly recognized him.
"He was white as a sheet and could hardly walk, and it looked like there was nothing left of him," she said. "So I patted him on the back trying to play the good mom and told him, 'Well, you don't have to go back.'"
Cohen's response: "Yes, I am."
"I had never been pushed that hard before and never gone through something that was so hard," he said. "If I could make it through the first day, I knew I could make it the whole season."
