As Cal Poly wrestling was neck and neck in their match against Oregon State earlier this season, heavyweight Trevor Tinker was pacing back and forth behind the Mustang bench, anxiously waiting for his match.
According to FloWrestling, Cal Poly was tied with the Beavers 11-11 through the first six matches of the dual, with Tinker set to wrestle the then-No. 13-ranked heavyweight, Boone McDermott.
Despite the team score’s tight nature and his opponent’s high ranking, those were the last things on Tinker’s mind.
“I didn’t really feel like I had any pressure on me to win the match,” Tinker said. “My entire focus was just wrestling hard, and at the end of the day, that’s all I can do.”
The Mustangs dropped the next three matches, putting Cal Poly’s team dual score out of reach before Tinker had a chance to put pressure on himself.
The St. Louis, MO native went out and pinned the Top 15 ranked heavyweight in the nation just over a minute into the second period of the match, which had head coach Jon Sioredas and the rest of the staff jumping up and down with excitement.
“Maybe on the scoreboard, we were a little bit short, but all things considered, I felt like we had ten guys go out there and fight their butts off,” Sioredas said.
Considering the Mustangs lost that dual, it may be odd to some to see why the coaches and wrestlers have this attitude.
This attitude comes from Cal Poly wrestling’s mindset and performance coach Coyte Cooper, who just wrapped up his first season as a full-time staff member.
After only being with the team part-time for the past two years, Sioredas says Cooper has worked wonders for the team and has given him a different perspective on wrestling.
“Coyte really introduced a new way of thinking and a new approach that works at the highest level,” Sioredas said. “Not just for the best athletes in the world, but some of the most successful people in the world.”
What Coyte brings to the team
Sioredas says he brought Cooper into the program through a personal connection with him over an entire decade.
Before his work with the wrestling program, Cooper was and still is a motivational speaker, did TED Talks, was a professor at UNC Chapel Hill and wrote books about mental health and how to have a growth mindset.
“He mentioned to me a couple of years ago that he wanted to start working with teams,” Sioredas said. “And I was like, ‘Dude, we’d love for you to help us out.’”
Cooper says they didn’t have an exact plan going into the first few times working with the team. Still, Sioredas was enthusiastic about trying to “give these guys a unique experience.”
While it took some time for the wrestlers to buy into what Cooper was teaching them, it eventually resonated with the team.
Those “rituals,” as Cooper calls them, include meditation, breathing tactics, establishing their values and journaling.
The most significant idea Cooper is teaching the team is not to overly focus on wins, losses, or their national rankings and try to “maximize performance.”
“We challenge them after matches to minimize disappointment, minimize frustration,” Cooper said. “We want them to step off the mat and not be disappointed or frustrated at all. We want them to immediately be looking for ways to grow.”
One of the biggest challenges for Sioredas and some of the wrestlers was disregarding the outcome of matches and solely focusing on getting better.
“I’m a competitor, man. I want to win more than you can imagine,” Sioredas said. “And we are trying to win, but the way you win is by focusing on improvement.”
The most significant pull for the wrestlers with Cooper is he was a former Division I All-American wrestler at Indiana University, so he knows exactly what the wrestlers are going through.
Cooper knows it takes reps for athletes and even humans to try and change their mindset in such a drastic way as they are.
Why this approach matters
Victoria Bradshaw, a Cal Poly kinesiology lecturer with a master’s degree in sports psychology, wishes she had the resources Cal Poly wrestling offered when she played collegiate softball.
“At the time, I didn’t realize I was missing out on those resources,” Bradshaw said.
Bradshaw says having a separate coach for mental performance is vital in a program trying to win, and it should be viewed as another coach who gets the optimal performance out of players.
While playing softball at Willamette University, Bradshaw says she couldn’t talk to her coaches about what she was experiencing. She thinks it’s very beneficial for an athlete to talk with someone who isn’t making playing decisions.
“If there are resources out there that can further help you achieve optimal performance, why wouldn’t you want to use those resources?” Bradshaw said.
Bradshaw and Cooper agree getting initial trust from the players is just the first step in developing them into what they’re trying to accomplish. Still, once that happens, it becomes very encouraging for them to keep working with the athletes.
It initially took a while for Cal Poly’s wrestlers to buy into what Cooper was trying to sell. Once they did, Cooper says it was super easy to bring aside one of the wrestlers and talk to them about their feelings and what to do about it.
Cooper says graduate 174-pounder Adam Kemp was among the first wrestlers to approach him and was eager to work with Cooper more extensively.
“Adam was so critical in being a guy on the team that everybody respected, and from there it was [more noticeable] that guys would start to jump in more and more,” Cooper said.
Seeing results on the mat
The past few seasons have been very successful for the wrestling program, and Sioredas credits much of it to what he and Cooper are preaching.
In the 2022-23 season, the Mustangs began the season with a 3-6 record in duals. Still, against all odds, the Mustangs pulled off multiple upsets over highly ranked Pac-12 opponents on their way to an undefeated conference record and a Pac-12 dual meet championship.
The 2023-24 season started strong for Cal Poly, starting with a 4-1 record, beating Big 12 opponents Air Force and Northern Colorado.
However, they struggled in Pac-12 play and stumbled to a 6-5 finish in duals and a 1-4 Pac-12 conference record.
Despite their late-season struggles, the Sioredas and Cooper say wins and losses ultimately don’t matter to them, and they’re more focused on becoming better people.
“[Sioredas] wants to make extraordinary young men, people who go out and are great fathers, great husbands in any roles that they’re in,” Cooper said. “To me, we have to give them the right tools for that.”
Despite their performance in regular season conference duals, the team had five wrestlers qualify for the NCAA Championships after their performances in the Pac-12 Championships.
Kemp took home the 174-pound title, Tinker placed fourth in the heavyweight division, redshirt freshman Zeth Romney placed third in the 133-pound weight class, redshirt sophomore Chance Lamer took home second place at 149-pounds and redshirt junior Legend Lamer placed third in the 157-pound weight class.
The three-day NCAA Championships contained a lot of ups and downs for the team, and each Mustang was eliminated after only two days at the tournament.
Sioredas says despite not having a wrestler win a national championship or have an All-American award winner, they’re coming back better than ever next season with help from Cooper and bringing in wrestlers who match their philosophy.
“Our mission is always going to be to graduate with a meaningful degree and create All-Americans and national champs,” Sioredas said. “But our purpose is to create remarkable young men for life after wrestling, and that’s never gonna change.”