South Summit High School won its first team state championship since 2016 in February, and it was hard fought.
Defending champion Millard High School was expected to take home another state win throughout the season. But during the championship, South Summit pulled ahead by 21 points.
As the team returned to Kamas around 11 p.m. the night of the win, coach Brach Pulver said friends, family and other Kamas community members lined up their cars the last three miles into town, celebrating.
“There were cars lined up, blowing their horns, greeting the boys,” he said. “When we came around with the bus and got to the center of town, I don't know, there were 100 people standing here, so it's a big deal for these kids.”
Senior Zane Winter said seeing the support made the team even prouder.
“It was insane to be, like, welcomed home after the title,” he said. “The community showed up for us, and it was a great feeling just to see everyone celebrating us after the win.”
Becoming state champions was even more special for Winter and seniors Rylon Teples, Trayvn Boger and Bryce Pulver — the coach’s son. The four have been wrestling together for almost 10 years. All had their parents get them started in the sport, some as early as three years old.
Winter and Boger also took home individual state titles at the championship. It was Boger’s third individual state title and Winter’s first. Winter said he came in second the two years previously.
“I've been working towards it like my whole career. So that was kind of the end goal. It was good to get that my senior year,” he said. “But more than anything, I really enjoyed the team title.”
Boger agreed the team win was the best part.
“It was just cool to do it as a team, especially as a senior, and, like a lot of us had brothers on the team, so it's cool to do it with our younger brothers.”
The four veteran wrestlers said there were a few changes this year that helped them win. For example, Winter said the team trained six days a week.
Bryce Pulver said the difference for him was the training felt less like work and more like having fun. Boger said having coaches who care helped as well.
Coach Brach Pulver said it’s something he’s put a lot of thought into. He said he doesn’t coach the same as when he started 25 years ago and as a coach, it’s important to evolve.
“If you're not evolving, you're falling behind, and I think that's something I was pitching to our coaches all the time, is we have to know our athletes, and we can't coach them all the same. We have to coach them individually,” he said.
When Pulver began coaching at South Summit in 2017, there were only around eight wrestlers in the program. Now it’s grown to around 35 students.
With the latest win, he said he’s even more inspired to pour more into the program.
