Amy Cohen laughed last week when she recalled that experience, while she watched her son pin a Long Reach opponent in just 85 seconds, drawing raucous cheers from his teammates.
He didn't even break a sweat.
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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"When Ethan first showed up, he could barely do a push up," Smith said. "Now he leads the team when we do push-ups. You see how far he has come, and that shows you how hard he works."
Cohen wrestled at 103 pounds for three seasons before a growth spurt bumped him to the 119-pound class this winter. He's a captain for the undefeated Golden Bears (20-0), who entered the week with more wins than any other team in school history, already claiming the county dual meet title, their first since 1999.
"You watch Ethan wrestle, and there's no way you think that he's been wresting for four years, because he's so good," said sophomore 130-pounder Vince Taweel. "When I saw him, I thought he'd been wrestling for a long, long time. He just looked so natural and really knew what he was doing. He's good at teaching moves to the rest of us."
Cohen enters Saturday's regular season finale against Laurel with a record of 24-2 to raise his career record to 90-30. He won the county and 2A/1A South Region tournament titles last year, then lost, 10-1, to Casey Kamp of Northern-Garrett County in the finals of the 2A/1A tournament to finish last season 29-2.
Cohen will wrestle next year at Williams College, a Division III school in Williamstown, Mass. But his biggest high school matches are still ahead -- beginning with the 2A/1A South Region Dual Meet Tournament on Feb. 9 at Hammond. Hammond last won the state dual meet and state tournament titles in 1998.
"This is what I've been hoping for since I got here," Cohen said. "Hammond has great tradition and we want to be the team that builds it back up to where it used to be."
