Emmanuel Daigbe is ready. His coach says so, he thinks so, and now there are only three weeks and five athletes between him and a Class 4A high school state wrestling title.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The soft-spoken Kent-Meridian wrestler and wide receiver is working to stay focused on the prize. Last year Daigbe made it to the state championships as a sophomore, with an impressive record that featured less than five falls. A split-second decision dropped him to second place in the 170-pound division.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Coming out strong at the Mat Classic, Daigbe says that he was \u201cshaken up, because there\u2019s a lot of people watching and it\u2019s a new place to be because I was at the Tacoma Dome for the first time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n The nerves got to him, and he took a pin in the final round off of a single mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I was gonna get thrown,\u201d he said. \u201cI came up the wrong way and I didn\u2019t see it coming and I got caught. In the finals if you got caught, it\u2019s hard to come back so you can\u2019t make those little mistakes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n In the year since, Daigbe has looked at improving more than just his technique, strength and speed. It\u2019s also about mental resilience, he says, as he moves into regional tournament on Friday at Kent-Meridian. The Mat Classic is Feb. 20-21 at the Tacoma Dome.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Last year Daigbe went through a difficult time as he worked to secure himself a slot in district matches, but during his 2015 season he\u2019s seen nothing but victories as he coasts on a 26-0 record.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n He credits his football season as a wide receiver to helping him shrug off mistakes, saying that he learned how to let mistakes go and put them behind him while focusing on his goals.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Wrestling, he says, is much less forgiving of errors than football, where a dropped catch can be anyone\u2019s fault and there are plenty of opportunities to correct for a mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n The season also taught him not to be overconfident and keep his mind in the game, instead of letting success get the better of him.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cDuring football, during our second game we got caught up with everything, and when we went against Todd Beamer we had chances to score but we made mistakes and that cost us the game,\u201d he said. \u201cTake the right steps, don\u2019t make no mistakes, do the right things, listen to coaches, \u2018cuz they know what they\u2019re talkin\u2019 about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n As he works his way through challengers this season, Daigbe remembers that mistakes are costly, but it\u2019s the pin, not a score, that often determines a wrestling victory.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re losing 7-0, if you pin the dude you win,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emmanuel Daigbe is ready. His coach says so, he thinks so, and now there are only three weeks and five athletes between him and a Class 4A high school state wrestling title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":23079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23078"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}