Trojans’ LaRocca fueled by postseason disappointment

The ride home from the state’s southernmost reaches last February won’t be confused with Charlie LaRocca’s finest hours in the sport of wrestling.

In time, however, they might be the most important.

LaRocca’s sophomore season in a Center Grove singlet concluded with a 5-1 loss to Isaiah Schaefer of Evansville Mater Dei in the ticket round of the Evansville Semistate — a result that tipped the first of many emotional dominoes.

“I was in a dark place with the sport,” said LaRocca, who at that point in his career was a two-time semistate qualifier with a 58-11 record at 106 pounds. “I just felt empty, like everything I had worked for was for nothing.”

LaRocca even contemplated not coming back to the Trojans this winter, but those thoughts were short-lived. He was determined not to let his high school wrestling career be defined, much less halted, by what he thought to be a premature end to his postseason.

Now competing at 113 pounds, LaRocca is 11-0 this season and ranked eighth in the state heading into Wednesday’s home dual match against Carmel.

The junior won all four of his matches during the eight-team Eagle Invitational at Zionsville over the weekend, one of nine Trojans to win his weight class as the team, ranked third in the state, coasted to the championship with 419 points.

The jump in weight this season offers challenges, LaRocca says, but it’s nothing he can’t handle.

“I would say it’s more of the same thus far,” he said. “Kids are definitely stronger, but I feel that I’m stronger. I worked on my technique a lot over the summer, and lifted weight to get bigger.

“A lot of wrestling is shoulders and back to be tough on shots. You also need to be explosive in all areas of your body.”

Like a lot of wrestlers around his age, that wasn’t the type of action LaRocca was expecting when he was first introduced to the sport as a kindergartener.

“I actually started because I thought it was like WWE, which I think a lot of people did,” LaRocca said, laughing. “I thought I would be the next John Cena. Then, in the first practice when we started shooting double legs instead of throwing punches …”

Center Grove is a prohibitive favorite to dominate the action at Saturday’s county meet at Greenwood.

It looked for a time that the 113 division might be the most interesting with LaRocca and Indian Creek senior Jackson Heaston, seventh in the state last winter, possibly wrestling in the final.

Heaston, however, is remaining at 120 pounds through Saturday, then dropping down to 113 after that. LaRocca lost to Heaston in the 106-pound county final as a ninth-grader but won that class last season.

Motivated by his consecutive ticket-round setbacks at semistate, LaRocca insists the 2023 postseason can’t get here soon enough. All the same, he’ll prepare the way he always has in order to be wrestling his absolute best when the time comes.

He’s consistently done the same in the classroom, too — LaRocca’s 4.703 grade-point average ranks fifth in his class among 690 students.

“The big thing with Charlie is he’s extremely consistent with everything he does from his grades to being a good teammate to his practice habits,” Center Grove coach Maurice Swain said. “He was really motivated last year, and he’s really motivated this year.

“Charlie understands you don’t get to be a high school athlete forever.”

IF YOU GO

Johnson County tournament

Where: Greenwood HS

When: Saturday, 9 a.m.