By Joe Geren
WMS Sports
Southeastern Community College freshman Carter Ball plans to become a wrestling coach in the future, and he’s already got one admirer calling him “Coach.”
Ball is a 2025 graduate of Wapello High School who posted a 34-8 record in wrestling his senior year. He is currently a member of the first-ever wrestling team at SCC.
His goal with the SCC program is to “get better and learn a lot,” he said. “I want to go back to coaching someday, so I want to learn more every day so I can give back to the kids when I’m coaching them.”
He started his first collegiate season at 1-6, so “it’s not been great,” SCC head coach Gary Woods II said. “But we’ve been wrestling a lot better every match. He’s going to put it together. I’m excited he’s going to help us get some southeastern Iowa (wrestlers) to come in and build this thing. I call him Coach Ball all the time because he knows what he’s doing. It’s just that he hasn’t put it together on the mat yet.
“He’s not been the success he should have been, in my opinion,” Woods said, “but he’s wrestled some hammers. He’s not had the greatest draws at these open (tournaments), but that’s okay as long as he keeps his head on straight. He’s going to be where we need him to be towards the end. He’s a lot of fun to watch.
“He means the world to this team,” Woods said. “I’ve already offered him a scholarship for next year. The wins and losses, I don’t care about so much. It’s about progress and improvement. Since he decided to join Southeastern Community College, he’s really put in the hard work. He’s been going to some of the clubs around here. He puts in some extra practice at other places. He’s putting in the practice time here.”
In any sport, there are major adjustments to go from high school competition to collegiate competition.
For Ball, the biggest adjustment is “definitely the hand-fighting,” he said. “Between high school and college, the hand-fighting gets a lot tougher. Setting up your shots is a whole different deal between the two. (College wrestlers) are much quicker. You don’t find many people you can go out and hook anymore.”
He’s wrestling at a heavier weight than he did at Wapello, but there’s an advantage to that.
“I went up from 165 in high school,” he said. He’s at 184 at SCC. “So I don’t have to cut as much weight as I did then. So I feel better. I can focus on getting better every day instead of cutting weight. That’s on the plus side.”
Ball wasn’t always a wrestler.
“I played basketball when I was really little for a couple of years,” he said.
“Then I switched over and never looked back.”
He started wrestling at age 14. “There’s a good youth program in Wapello, called the Tomahawk Wrestling Club,” he said. “It’s a great program for young kids, junior high kids. It’s growing. I’m happy to see it.”
An auto mechanics major, Ball is undecided if he’ll pursue wrestling later on at a four-year school.
“We’ll see how these couple of years go and go from there,” he said.