Waynesburg disposes of C-M without Homet
CANONSBURG — Cole Homet is at a crossroads in his wrestling career.
The senior from Waynesburg Central High School, who was a PIAA runner-up at 138 pounds in Class 3A, was not in the lineup on Jan. 19 when the Raiders defeated Canon-McMillan 55-10 to wrap up the subsection title in Section 4.
And Homet might not wrestle again this season.
His return to the sport after a car crash last summer was one of the feel-good stories of the season. But as the saying goes, “The spirit was willing but the body was not.”
The previous week, he won a 4-3 decision over South Fayette’s Talon Mizenko at 145 pounds. But the bout revealed some problems in his wrestling.
“He has a month to make a decision,” said Waynesburg head coach Kyle Szewczyk. “What he’s going to do and what his intentions are, we’ll sit him down and it will be a team-coaching staff-Homet family decision.”
Szewczyk said Homet “looked good” in his match against Mizenko and he was especially impressed with his conditioning.
“It wasn’t a cardio thing or a mental thing,” Szewczyk said. “When you are without the use of one hand, it’s just not the same. With the use of the arm, he’s top 10 in the country.”
Homet was a key piece to Waynesburg’s PIAA Class 3A team championship but the accident robbed him of half the season. He is slowly regaining use of the left hand but time is running out. He is healing, regaining about a millimeter a week of feeling in the arm.
Homet was driving out to St. Louis to take part in Sammie Henson’s wrestling camp and to attend a celebration party thrown by Wyatt Henson. Homet lost control of the car and the crash severely mangled the left arm.
He was in a coma for two days after the crash and some feared he might not recover.
Homet became a workout fiend, going to rehab every day and calling it, “The toughest thing I have ever done.”
Without Homet, the Raiders’ chances of repeating as Class 3A team champion go down. Nate Jones, who has battled his own injuries, weighed in at 145 pounds, where Homet would have been.
“If you take him out of our lineup, it’s a huge hit,” Szewczyk said. “It’s a pride thing for him.
“It’s up to him, how he feels going forward and where he feels he needs to be at to make a postseason run.”
Jones won a 4-2 decision over Tyler Soule at 145 pounds.
Joseph Simon (120), Colton Stoneking (138), Jake Stephenson (152), and Eli Makel had pins for the Raiders, who are 4-0 in subsection 4A. Canon-McMillan fell to 3-1 in the subsection.
“They’re a tough team. I guess they are No. 1 for a reason,” said C-M head coach Brian Krenzelak. “For a decade, we saw this coming. They are a great group of wrestlers, a great group of families and they earned every bit of this.”