Benedict had a strong finish to his freshman season in 2016–17 and started the 2017–18 season with victories in seven of his first eight matches.
It’d be hard to find a wrestler who has improved as much as Haddonfield Memorial High School sophomore Luke Benedict has over the past year.
Last season, Benedict earned a spot in Haddonfield’s starting lineup as a freshman and showed vast improvement in the season’s second half, qualifying for regionals in his first year.
Now, Benedict has established himself as one of the Bulldawgs’ best wrestlers after starting the 2017–18 season with a 7–1 record and recording a first-place finish at the Arthur O. Marinelli Wrestling Tournament over winter break.
Benedict’s №1 sport has always been wrestling. Numerous members of his family have been involved in wrestling in Haddonfield for many years.
“Both of my uncles coached in youth, so I’ve been wrestling since 4 or 5,” Benedict said. “I’ve also been wrestling with my older cousins and my brother wrestled. It’s sort of just in my family.”
Benedict was a strong wrestler with Haddonfield’s youth program, but he feels he made the biggest improvement on the mat in his first year of high school. As a freshman, Benedict earned the starting spot in the Bulldawgs lineup at 132 pounds last year, no small feat considering Haddonfield was a deep team and advanced to the South Jersey Group II finals.
“Coming into high school, you wrestle a lot more, you go to a lot of tournaments and you have a lot of matches,” Benedict said. “That helped a lot, because I got a lot of experience.”
Head coach Mike Miller said Benedict also wrestled at a higher weight class, 132, than he would have normally been placed in as Haddonfield had a number of upperclassmen who earned starting spots at 120 and 126 pounds last year.
“Anytime a freshman is thrown into the varsity lineup in the middle-to-upper weights, it’s tough because you’re going to run up against upperclassmen who have been there and done that for two to three years,” Miller said.
Though Benedict was challenged with wrestling at a higher weight class than in the past, he showed tenacity and a strong work ethic.
“He’s very coachable,” Miller said. “He’s mentally tough, one of the toughest kids on the team. He comes from a wrestling family, so he knows what to expect.”
Benedict had his ups and downs early in the 2016–17 season. At his first high school tournament, the Ronald Bond Wrestling Tournament, Benedict lost three of his four matches. Benedict’s record for the season was hovering around .500 on Jan. 15. However, the second half of the year, Benedict showed a ton of improvement. He won eight of his last 11 dual meet matches and finished in third place at the NJSIAA District 27 Tournament, earning himself a spot at regionals.
Benedict credited the early season experience and one of his teammates for helping him turn a corner.
“Later in the year, I started wrestling with Evan Finnegan, who was a senior. We would wrestle every day and we got into a routine of how we practiced,” Benedict said.
In the offseason, Benedict worked on bulking up for his sophomore year.
“I lifted a lot in the spring,” he said. “In the summer, I found out I herniated a disk in my lower spine. So that set me off a little bit. So I didn’t play soccer this year and I rested it for a couple months and did physical therapy.”
Benedict was cleared to wrestle again in mid-fall and felt he was in great shape when the season started. This year, Benedict moved up one weight class to 138 pounds, but he didn’t feel there would be much of an adjustment.
“It’s a very similar weight class, the kids wrestle similar,” Benedict said. “I’m used to it from last year.”
Benedict had a strong start to the 2017–18 season. He kicked off the season with a 2–1 record at the Ronald Bond Memorial Tournament. Benedict didn’t lose for the rest of the 2017 calendar year, winning five consecutive matches to finish off December. This included a first-place finish at 138 pounds at the Marinelli Tournament.
“I think I wrestled very smart and safe,” Benedict said about the tournament. “I tried not to give up very many opportunities where I’d be scored against.”
“He’s done a good job of finishing his shots out of the neutral position,” Miller added about Benedict’s improvement this season. “He’s been really, really tough on top. If you can ride and hit some pinning combinations and get some back points, you’re going to be tough to beat.”
Benedict’s goal is to get back to regionals and qualify for the state championships for the first time. Miller believes Benedict has the ability to achieve that goal.
“He comes in and puts in his work every single day,” Miller said. “Wrestling can be a tough sport physically and mentally, and it takes tough kids to stick with it through the entire season. Luke’s shown he can do that, qualifying for regions as a freshman, and hopefully he can take that next step.”
