Kankakee Valley’s Cole Solomey was going to leave the decision to the scale.
Back in eighth grade, he was torn between football and wrestling and decided that a weigh-in could solve the dilemma.
“I told my dad that if I was over 135 pounds, I was going to play football,” he said.
Cole Solomey recalls that he weighed in at 137. But he didn’t pick football.
“It wasn’t for me,” he said. “That’s when I decided I only wanted to wrestle.”
Cole Solomey appears to have made the right decision. The Purdue recruit is ranked No. 1 at 138 pounds by IndianaMat and has won the first 22 matches of his senior season after taking first place at the Lake County Championships at Hanover Central on Saturday.
His decision to focus solely on wrestling shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
His father, Mike, and his uncle Shane both wrestled at Kankakee Valley in the 1990s, and Mike Solomey made a state meet appearance before graduating in 1992. Cole Solomey’s older brother Luke also wrestled for the Kougars, and his cousin Caleb is a Kankakee Valley senior who is 22-0, too, after a first-place finish on Saturday and is ranked No. 13 at 145 by IndianaMat.
So wrestling was never far away for Cole Solomey, especially with a cousin in the same grade.
“Caleb and I always messed around,” he said. “When we were younger, we’d team up on my brother quite a bit just for fun.”
That bond between Cole and Caleb Solomey remains strong to this day. They are frequent practice partners.
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“Nobody else likes wrestling with him,” Caleb Solomey said. “I’m his partner every day, so I’m getting banged up, but we’re still pushing each other at the max pace, always supporting each other.”
For Cole Solomey, having someone like his cousin in the room means he always has another option if that day’s practice doesn’t suffice.
“There are some days when I’ll drag my cousin back up to the room with me just so we can wrestle for another half-hour,” Cole Solomey said. “I have to push myself as hard as possible at practice.”
Cole Solomey’s motivation is clear. He has qualified for the state meet three times, placing seventh at 120 as a freshman, sixth at 132 as a sophomore and second at 138 last season.
In the state championship match in February 2022, he ran into Crown Point’s Jesse Mendez, who won his fourth title and has continued his career at Ohio State. While plenty of other wrestlers moved up or down a weight class to avoid Mendez, Cole Solomey refused to do so, opting to compete against one of the top recruits in the country — and someone he had known for more than a decade.
“I feel like I get a lot more respect,” he said. “But seeing him accomplish his dream, he earned it. I trained with him since we were 6 or 7, and he’s always been the hardest-working kid in the room.”
Winning a state title has become the primary pursuit for Cole Solomey, who has already advanced further than any wrestler in Kankakee Valley history. But he said he has a different mindset on the mat as a result of his extensive success at prestigious state and national tournaments.
“It doesn’t get to me anymore because I’ve been in that scenery,” he said. “I’ve wrestled in so many big national tournaments all over.”
Kankakee Valley coach Eric Kidwell also has seen a different version of Cole Solomey this season, one that believes a state title is attainable.
“He seems more confident that he’s the No. 1 guy and that he’s going to finish through,” Kidwell said. “Over the offseason, he hit another level, and he’s ready to go.”
Just ask Cole Solomey’s most frequent practice partner.
“He’s been training with me all summer, and I think he can do it,” Caleb Solomey said. “I really think he’s going to win state this year.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.