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Posted Dec. 10, 2002
By Annie Fowler
Herald staff writer
Mike Rodriguez and Tyler Sherfey met in a wrestling room when they were 6 years old.
They've been inseparable since.
"You can't talk about one without talking about the other," said Kamiakin wrestling coach Sid Sarver. "They make each other and the team better."
It's hard to get much better than the Kamiakin duo. With Rodriguez taking first at 112 pounds and Sherfey second at 119 at last year's Mat Classic, the Braves finished 11th in the team standings with 48 points.
"Mike has a lot of natural ability," Sarver said. "He's a hard kid to wrestle. He's one of the best I've had come through in eight years. Tyler doesn't have the natural ability that Mike does, but he's the hardest-working guy in the room."
Just juniors, Rodriguez and Sherfey are two of the Braves five team captains, along with seniors Frankie Rivera, Chris Copell and Jordan Smith.
The success that Rodriguez and Sherfey had last year, along with the emergence of others on the team, the Braves were ranked fifth in the first wrestling poll of the season.
The relentless pursuit of perfection is what drives the two, and has led to their success on the mat.
"Mike is kind of a perfectionist," Sarver said. "If he goes out and wrestles and he doesn't wrestle really, really well, he gets discouraged."
Rodriguez said he hasn't had the perfect match, yet.
"There's always something - a wrong move, you set it up wrong, doesn't go the way you want it to," said Rodriguez, who also is an honor student with a 3.8 grade point average. "You just want to improve every match that you have. You want to be great."
Over the past two seasons, Rodriguez has been as close to great as you can get.
He is 78-5, and went 35-0 last year en route to his first state title at 112 - the first for Kamiakin in 11 years. As a freshman, he placed second at state at 103.
"It's tough to lose," said Rodriguez who will compete at 119 this year. "But you think of your mistakes, then fix them the next match so you can win. There's always going to be someone better than you."
Sherfey, 16, went from 103 as a freshman (third at state) to 119 last season, where he placed second at state and finished 33-5. This season, he'll compete at a plump 130.
"He'd like to wrestle 125, but there just isn't anything left to lose," Sarver said.
"I grew a lot, both up and out," said Sherfey, who is 5-foot-7 to Rodriguez's 5-5. "One twenty-five was my goal, but it just isn't going happen. I wrestled up to 25 last year and I want to be a big 130 this year. I will be cutting some weight. I'm 135 right now - I started at 143. It hasn't been too hard, but when I get to 133, it's tough to maintain my energy level."
Through the years, the two wrestled in the same weight class at times. As freshmen, they both competed at 103, which made for good matches, but not a lot of fun for the pair.
Now that they are older, they have grown apart in weight classes, but not as friends.
"Tyler and I haven't wrestled since my freshman year," said Rodriguez, whose five losses include two to Sherfey. "He has improved a lot. We both have our strong points and our weak points and we know them all. It's good that we are at different weights. Before, we couldn't go anywhere without beating each other up."
There are other differences between the two friends besides size - Sherfey likes pancakes and waffles, while Rodriguez does not. And while both are on the honor roll, Sherfey's GPA is not quite as high as Rodriguez's. But that's about it.
"I got a 3.5 last quarter," said Sherfey, who shares just one class with Rodriguez - American History.
A subject the duo should be pretty good at.
They spend the summers traveling from camp to camp and tournament to tournament. And when they are out on the road, they like to take in the sights.
"When me and Tyler are together, we go out and go on little adventures," Rodriguez said. "When we are at tournament, we like to go sight seeing. When you go out on a run, you want to take it all in. We are adventurous."
Especially in Enid, Oklahoma, when they go to the junior duals.
"We always go out and try to find something interesting to do," said Sherfey, who claims the two have never gotten lost. "This summer, we caught some crawdads in a puddle on the side of the road. The year before, we caught a horned toad. We accidentally left that in our hotel room."
Yeah, right.
Sherfey has adventures at home, too.
"He and a couple of other guys were running (Sunday) in the Badger Mountain Hills and they caught a chicken," Sarver said. "Then they brought it to my house."
The chicken was let loose on the school grounds on Monday, but before long, someone took it home.
"They become our mascots," Sherfey said of their short-term pets.
"Both of us like to have fun," Rodriguez said. "When it comes to wrestling we are disciplined, but outside of the wrestling room, it's hard to keep track of us. We can get out of hand."
The summer tournaments and camps prepare the two for the upcoming season, but it also helps the duo gauge themselves against the best in the United States.
"At nationals, you meet guys with higher standards," said Rodriguez, who finished third in Greco and fourth in freestyle. "I wrestled a guy from Pennsylvania (and lost). He was good. I had beaten him two weeks earlier at junior duals. It just shows that wrestling in Washington is good, but not excellent. When you look at the whole nation, you see the different styles and you get good exposure to colleges."
Right now, the two are concentrating on the Big Nine Conference season, which opens tonight, with the Braves playing host to Davis.
Rodriguez has had some problems with both shoulders, but X-rays have been negative. He's still waiting for the results of a blood test that is checking for arthritis. But he said he will wrestle tonight, provided the Pirates have a 119-pounder.
"A lot of massage and heat help," Rodriguez said. "It's just a nagging soreness. They've given me pain medication."
The traveling duo won't go any further than the Mat Classic in Tacoma until next summer, but then the two will be let loose once again.
"We get to go to Las Vegas and Reno this summer," Sherfey said.
Lord knows what kind of critters they'll catch there.
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