In early February after school, junior Allie Liddle and the rest of the wrestling team sprinted from the weight room to the track, sweat dripping from their faces. To prepare for CCS, which began on Feb. 13, the team increased their speed and endurance, along with their usual weight workouts.

“Even though our team is a lot smaller than last year’s, we are still training really hard by working on our technique,” sophomore Carolyn Ma said. “I think we are definitely ‘out-conditioning’ other teams.”

The three also competed at the state level tournament in Gilroy on Jan. 27-28, where Murabito won one match out of the three he competed in while Liddle won two out of his four matches. The tournament is known to be one of the hardest competitions that high school athletes take part in during the year.

In wrestling, all team members are in a certain weight class, each determined by his or her weight at 7 a.m. the day of the competition. If athletes are even 0.01 pounds over or under their desired weight class, the league prevents them from competing. As a result, the team members go through intense workouts to ensure that they will be able to hit  their target weight on competition day.

“Because the rules are so strict, we are doing so many running drills and lifting workouts just to make sure that we will be able to wrestle at tournaments,” junior Kedar Abhyanker said.

Alongside conditioning, the wrestling team is also focusing more on its techniques.

“Together as a team, we are training really hard and I believe that our hard work will pay off,” Liddle said.

Due to printing deadlines, the Falcon was unable to cover the CCS in the Feb. 17 print edition.