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Chesterton senior Hayden DeMarco’s summer sleepovers didn’t end at 5:30 a.m.
That’s just when he’d get up.
“We’d wake up, get a good practice in and then go have fun for the rest of the day,” he said.
DeMarco said that casually, as if it’s the typical order of activities for teenagers in the summer. But he viewed that atypical schedule as a necessary step toward fulfilling his lofty dream of winning a state championship in his final high school season.
DeMarco, a two-time state qualifier, seems to be on the right track. He is 26-0 and is ranked No. 4 at 132 pounds by IndianaMat after winning the title at the Al Smith Invitational in Mishawaka last weekend.
That first-place finish at the tournament, a two-day event that remains one of the state’s biggest regular-season meets, was the second of DeMarco’s career. But it’s no longer the triumph for him that it once was.
“When I won it last year, I felt good about it,” he said. “I was OK with just being an Al Smith champ. It was a big thing for me because I’d lost it in the previous year. But this year is different. It’s a great achievement, but it’s not what I’m looking for.”
A state title is his new standard, and Chesterton coach Andrew Trevino said DeMarco’s continued development should keep him moving in that direction.
“He’s been getting better every year with all of the training he does,” Trevino said. “He was kind of fast and wild when he was younger, but now he’s controlling the matches a little bit more. He knows how to flow from one move to another and does that very well.”
That ability to find control amid the chaos of a fast-paced match stems from DeMarco’s summer practices with Ashton Jackson, a 2023 LaPorte graduate and two-time state champion who wrestles at Purdue. Jackson and DeMarco have spent summers wrestling together since middle school.
Sometimes DeMarco would spend the night at Jackson’s house — where there’s a wrestling mat in the basement — and they’d get up before sunrise to get started.
“We’d ultimately decide to wake up early because we felt like that gave us an advantage over the kids who might still be sleeping,” Jackson said. “You know that you’re working when other kids were not.”
DeMarco said he and Jackson focused this past summer on the issue Trevino mentioned.
“We worked on how to slow down in certain positions and how to make sure to capture something in those positions and work off of it, not hurrying to a scramble, so that you’re working off of the other guy’s moves,” DeMarco said.
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Jackson also noticed a change in DeMarco’s mindset.
“In the past, he’d get super worried about who he was wrestling against instead of scoring points, and that’s when he wouldn’t do as good because he’d just get super tense,” Jackson said. “This year, he seems a lot more dialed in on the small things and on scoring points.”
DeMarco said he’s healthier this season, too, after dealing with a pair of bulging discs in his back last season that were a carry-over from football. Two months off helped his body recover ahead of another two-sport school year.
“It was nice to relax for a little bit,” DeMarco said. “But after the first few weeks, it got kind of boring. I didn’t have anything to do. I was just hoping to get healthy quicker so that I could get back on the mat and start training again so I wouldn’t have the result that I had last year.”
That result was a loss in the semistate round that secures a ticket to state. DeMarco placed sixth at 113 as a freshman and seventh at 120 as a sophomore, but neither of those finishes will suffice for him this season.
“I just need to keep grinding in the room every day and putting in the extra work to make sure I’m on top of everything,” he said.
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.