Teshuah Williams won the 220-pound title at the Eastern Connecticut Conference wrestling tournament on Feb. 15, 2020, what to that point was his greatest feat as a representative of New London High School, earning a pin to upset the top-seeded wrestler in the weight class.
Ledyard High School's Davin McIver followed with a pin for a victory in the 285-pound division, also an ECC champion and, like Williams, a junior.
The two of them then set out to work for what both expected to be their finest moment as high school athletes. Their senior years.
They planned to play football in the fall, both two-way linemen, then back to wrestling again over the winter, fostering state championship dreams, hoping to showcase their skills enough to earn a spot where they might compete at the collegiate level. They never worked so hard, never hit the weight room so fervently.
"For a lot of these kids, they play sports they love," New London football coach Johnny Burns said this week. "They're growing, they're maturing and senior year really represents a culmination of all those years and all that work they put in."
With the COVID-19 pandemic, however, all that began to unravel. With the fall came the announcement from the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference that while lower- to-moderate-risk sports might compete, there would be no traditional 11-on-11 football at the high school level, considered a high-risk situation.
A potential shorter 11-on-11 football season was posed for a "fourth season," between winter and spring. For Williams and McIver, they found out the same day they learned there would be no wrestling season this winter that the spring football offering was also canceled, a one-two gut punch which came on Jan. 14.
They are now left to reconcile themselves with the disappointment, to figure out a way to get college coaches film of themselves competing, to wonder what might have been, to handle themselves like gentlemen.
As it turns out, the last part is by far the easiest.
"I get negative sometimes," McIver said in a recent telephone interview. "But I had some pretty bad negative things happen in one year before and I learned it's out of your hands. You got to go with what you have.
"(The shutdown due to COVID, which came last March) was definitely a shock. I didn't expect it to spiral out of control like this. Me and my friends were like, 'Oh, it's only two weeks.' It ends up being the rest of the year. I didn't even get to say goodbye to some of the seniors.
"I took from this year to literally enjoy the moments you have. We've seen how the world, it can change overnight."
Ledyard wrestling coach Allyn Quibble calls McIver a "well-liked, well-rounded kid in athletics and school."
"It's a pleasure for me to coach him because he listens," Quibble said. "You tell him to do something and he does it. He takes it over the edge and keeps going. I'm very happy to say I coached him. It's heartbreaking. To know Davin, he's probably upset, but I know this isn't going to stop him."
McIver, who is around 5-foot-11, 275 pounds, is hoping to wrestle and play football at a college in the New England region, although he hasn't settled on a destination. He plans to major in mechanical engineering. Williams, 5-11, 220, has begun speaking to coaches about the opportunity to play college football. He hopes to follow his mother and grandmother into the field of nursing.
Burns, New London's football coach, speaks of Williams in the same glowing terms Quibble uses for McIver, calling him "the best of the best."
"He's just that kid," Burns said. "We helped out a family so many months ago; they had a refrigerator that needed to be moved. I mentioned it to Teshuah. He's just excited to lend a hand. He's the guy that you mention it to. He's super-coachable, 'yes coach, no coach.' He gives you everything that he has."
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These guys, Williams and McIver, know each other, too. Both were bigger kids growing up that had to play up a level because of the weight limit in youth football — "I was a lot more chubby, not muscular or conditioned as I am now," McIver said — and so they turned to wrestling.
Williams and McIver met through wrestling and more recently they played on the same line for the Southern New London County Independent High School Football Club.
"I talk to Davin all the time," Williams said. "On the weekends here and there I'll go over to his house and hang out. We have a lot in common. We're cool. He's a great wrestler, football player. I wish the best for him. How we met was his dad walks up to me after a match and says, 'I'm Davin's dad. I wanted to congratulate you.' We've just been friends ever since."
Quibble said that McIver has developed his own style of wrestling. By McIver's account, he's fairly conservative, possibly bordering on boring to watch.
"It's not like 106 (pounds), where they're moving around like crazy," McIver said. "When I wrestled heavyweight as a sophomore, people would have 30-40 pounds on me. The way I had to beat them was letting them waste their energy. I lost some pretty easy matches because of that, I would push the pin but mess myself up. Me, I have to wait and have a keen eye. I don't really take shots because I'm so big. I don't feel comfortable with that."
Quibble said that McIver, who pinned New London's Keeano Gonzalez in 4 minutes, 25 seconds to win the 285-pound ECC title, then finished third in the Class S state tournament with a 1-0 victory over Gilbert's Dylan Keith in the consolation final, commands the wrestling room with his work ethic.
"Everyone comes into that wrestling room and you get out of practice what you put in," Quibble said. "He's a phenomenal athlete. He's a motivator. He motivates the room. His strategy that he uses and the way he has improved over the course of four years ... a lot of kids either get it or they don't. Davin got it. Davin worked on getting it because he wanted to get it."
Likewise in terms of determination, a recent phone call to Williams found him with New London wrestling coach Mike Gorton, watching videos of collegiate wrestlers in order to pick up some new moves.
Williams pinned top-seeded Roark Ryan of East Lyme/Norwich Tech in the ECC 220-pound final last year in 2:41 and was fifth in the Class M state tournament.
"I was so proud of myself," Williams said of the ECC championship, "so thankful all my training paid off. ... I was always bigger than kids my size. Once I reached middle school, I thought, 'Hey, maybe I can find another sport I can do. Cool, I could give (wrestling) a try.' First, I was a little hesitant but I stuck with it."
"He's a kid that when we started conditioning last summer, he looked perfectly fine for us," Burns said of Williams the football player."For him, he felt like he was 15 pounds overweight. The next thing you know, we look up, it's 10 days later and he's super-shredded. He works hard. If he thinks he can get faster or better in a certain way, he's going to work to get there."
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Williams spends two or three days a week volunteering at the Food Bank at Montville Union Baptist Church, giving back to the community he said gave to him and his family when he was growing up in Montville.
It's something he has additional time for in recent weeks without football or wrestling.
"I feel so happy when I see people who I know they don't have money financially and we hand out clothes, mittens for the winter, stuff we know people might need," Williams said. "It takes my mind off having to think about what I'm going to do. It makes me look forward to the next day."
McIver has been looking for a job and lifting weights; his favorite aspect of the weight room is the squat bar — "the squat, I make sure that is the highest (amount of weight) I can get it, even though it does sometime hurt," he said with a laugh.
Both seniors are especially grateful for their high school experiences.
"I'm proud," McIver said. "I think Ledyard is a great school. The teachers are nice. The coaching staff is nice, as well. Without (coach Steve) Bilheimer or (coach) Quibble, I never would have made it this far."
Williams thanked former football coach Juan Roman, as well his current head coaches in Burns and Gorton. He lists some of his favorite moments at New London as simply the voluntary football workouts during the offseason and getting to spend time with his teammates.
"We would get together if we could make it," Williams said. "That showed us who really wants to be here, who wants to go to college and do a sport. Whether I make it to the next level, these are memories I'll always have with me."
v.fulkerson@theday.com
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