Dealing with summer injury, Pitman senior named Bee’s Boys Wrestler of the Year
Last year, Kendall La Rosa thought his high school wrestling career was over.
At a summer wrestling camp, the Pitman High senior suffered a shoulder dislocation and torn labrum.
Doctors recommended surgery.
With a goal of reaching the podium at this year’s CIF State Meet, there was no chance.
“This was going to be my senior year and I was not going to get surgery,” La Rosa said. “I did physical therapy and wore a shoulder brace every match.”
It wasn’t easy for La Rosa to compete, but he still won the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Masters 160-pound title and finished fourth at the state championships, good enough for a place on the podium.
La Rosa, a three-time State Meet participant, is the Bee’s Boys Wrestler of the Year.
“My shoulder wasn’t a problem (at the state championships),” La Rosa said. “Wrestling means so much to me and the injury didn’t affect what I could do on the mat.”
La Rosa met with his coaches before the season to discuss how to compete and practice with the injury.
“There were a couple of one-day tournaments that I sat out and instead wrestled in two-day events,” La Rosa said. “After those meets (two-day), I took a week off.”
La Rosa said he practiced so hard early on that his should dislocated a lot. So he worked with his coaches to figure out how to control his intensity while maintaining his conditioning.
In what he would say was his signature meet of his year, La Rosa was the No. 2 seed at the Chukchansi Invitational in early December and was down 1-0 in the second round when his shoulder popped out.
“I put it back in place and wanted to finish and rallied in the last couple of seconds to win,” he said.
Kendall, who comes from a wrestling family, was named after 1996 Olympic Gold Medalist, Kendall Cross.
His dad, Joe, coached at Hughson, and his two brothers (Joe and Conner) have wrestled for Pitman. Joe is a sophomore at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Conner is a sophomore at Pitman.
Kendall became the first member of the family to place at the state meet.
“I was 4-years-old when I started wrestling and (placing at state meet) has always been the dream,” La Rosa said. “The next week after the state championships was my birthday, so it was an early birthday present.”
La Rosa is supposed to have surgery sometime next week but due to the coronavirus outbreak, he doesn’t know if it will be pushed back.
In his spare time, he enjoys fishing. He said last week he recently went six times in six days.
The two eldest La Rosa brothers will be reunited next year as Kendall has signed with Cal Poly SLO.
“I already feel like a part of the family,” La Rosa said. “The program is on the rise.”
