YORKTOWN – Josh Stephenson is honest about this. He and his brother, Jacob, broke a lot of things wrestling at home.
In an official capacity, the Yorktown Tigers don’t often face off on the mat, as Jacob sits a good six classes higher. Unofficially, it’s game on.
“We’ve gone to little sister’s tournaments, softball tournaments and get caught wrestling in the gravel and the grass,” Josh Stephenson said. “Always wrestling.”
His brother could only corroborate.
“At home, we have some little battles going on,” Jacob Stephenson said.
Their journey into wrestling didn’t follow a standard narrative, but now they find themselves holding captain roles for a Tigers program that’s far and away the best in the area and among the elite in the state.
Chris Stephenson, the brothers’ father, wrestled in high school in Georgia, but he hardly emphasized it. Where most older brothers lead the way into a sport, Josh Stephenson (now wrestling 113) was the first to take the mat despite being two years younger.
Jacob Stephenson’s first sport was basketball, but after getting cut from the middle school team, he followed some friends to join the program.
Jacob Stephenson (152) said there’s something special about having a teammate with whom he shares a family bond, and his brother admitted, there’s something different about watching his flesh and blood compete.
“Honestly, it’s kind of nerve-wracking,” said Josh Stephenson, who went 32-10 and made semistate at 106 pounds last season. “You think, ‘Oh, I don’t want him to get hurt.’ But you know he probably won’t get hurt because you know he’s been doing this for a while.”
Yorktown has a lot of good wrestlers who might be candidates for captaincy, and longtime Tigers coach Trent McCormick said the brothers bring different personas alongside fellow captains Cael McCormick and Dax Hiestand. Josh Stephenson is a sophomore (only the second in the last few years to be captain along with Cael McCormick), so he leads with actions. With his greater level of experience, Jacob Stephenson, a senior who went 26-19 last season en route to semistate, can speak up more.
And this season, they and several other teammates had a later start to the wrestling season after the football team reached regionals. Jacob Stephenson started at running back and his brother was a reserve, but the transition was quick. The older Stephenson said he was in the wrestling room the next week, but the football players had the chance to ease in and heal.
“Proud of them that they’re two-sport athletes as well,” Yorktown coach Trent McCormick said. “There are other athletes that dedicate their sole being towards one sport. But they’ve been able to be successful at two sports.”
Jacob Stephenson added one preparation key for the season was six weeks of wrestling work early in the summer leading up to the AAU Disney Duals, a national competition.
As the brothers and their teammates prepare for another season, they aim to become another part of Yorktown’s storied history. The Tigers have been the area’s preeminent program since the early 2000s, a last remnant of what had been a dominant tradition of wrestling in the county.
Perennially bringing an army of qualifiers to state, this year’s team opened ranked No. 4 in the state. Nine wrestlers are currently ranked by IndianaMat.com, with three — Cael McCormick, Dillon Jackson, Myron Howard — ranked in the top four of their class. This weekend, the team will head to a tournament at Fox High School (Arnold, Missouri) against some of the top teams in Illinois and Missouri.
So while the Stephenson brothers have each other, they have the backing of so much more.
“It’s a great feeling honestly, knowing that there’s been a lot of people before you that have done a lot of great things,” Jacob Stephenson said. “Just being able to walk in their footsteps and trying to be like them, there’s a lot of role models that have come from years past. People that you just look up to and inspire you.”