Senior Tre’Vion Williams was in seventh grade when his father signed him up for his first wrestling practice. It started as a way to learn to tackle better for football, but as he improved and learned more about the sport, it became something more. Today, Williams is a record holding high school wrestler committed to wrestling for Minnesota West.

            To Williams, the sport’s appeal comes from its individual nature. In football or basketball, the responsibility for each game is distributed amongst the team, so no one player is fully responsible for any win or loss, but each wrestler is wholly responsible for the outcome of their match.

            “I like how the sport is,” Williams said. “If you lose, it’s on you.”

            Despite the individuality of the matches, off the mat, Williams is helped by his coaches, Foster, Storm and Vito, and the alumni who help with the program.

            “In practice they say ‘little things matter,’ and they win big matches,” Williams said.

            Williams takes his coaches’ advice to heart, focusing on getting the little things right in practice. The most important thing for a wrestler to do, Williams said, is to stay focused, and learn the basics.

            “Doing the big things, like doing a big move or something, that doesn’t really matter to me,” Williams said.

            His freshman year, Williams won eight matches. After a year of hard work and improvement, he was able to win fifteen his Sophomore year. Junior year he won twenty-eight, and by his Senior year, he was able to win thirty-eight.

            “I almost doubled my wins each and every year just by doing the little things that matter,” Williams said, “working out over the summer, working out during the off-season, going to Sunday practices, little things like that, that’s what helped me improve the most.”

            Williams is proud of many of his accomplishments, including his title in the metro championship, but what he’s most proud of is his admission to the career falls list. A fall in wrestling is a victory condition in which a wrestler pins both their opponent’s shoulders to the ground until the referee declares them the winner of the bout.

            “To know I’m top five for career falls, it’s pretty great for me, so that’s probably my biggest accomplishment,” Williams said.

            Williams decided that he didn’t want to stop after his high school career.

            “This summer, I said, ‘alright, I’m going to try to go to college for wrestling.’”

            Coaches from Northwest helped him to find Minnesota West, and after deciding that the college would be a good fit for him, he decided to attend. He plans to continue wrestling throughout college.