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Bessette leans into the job at hand on Antioch's defensive line

Lifting weights isn't really George Bessette's thing, which is kind of funny for a football player to admit. Especially a lineman.

"The coaches hate it, I think," laughed Bessette, a junior defensive lineman at Antioch. "I know they want me in (the weight room) doing more. But I've never done much lifting because I haven't wanted to gain the weight.

"Wrestlers don't want to gain a lot of weight. We do a lot of running, not so much lifting weights."

The 6-foot, 195-pound Bessette starts for the Sequoits and had a sack in last week's 52-20 win over Kenosha Tremper. He's one of the most dynamic players on the defense, known for his stinging hits and "reckless abandon" mentality.

But his main sport is wrestling, and he's been downstate twice already, as a freshman and sophomore. He was a phenom as a youth wrestler. A three-time state champion before he even got to high school, Bessette says that he won the eighth grade state title by wrestling for a total of 1:17 over four matches, all wins via pins.

Bessette says that he plays football just like he wrestles, which he thinks could compensate for his lack of total devotion to the weight room.

"It's just going out there and not caring, going 100 percent all the time," Bessette said. "It's about being the toughest. We've got guys on our team who are 150 pounds and hit just as hard as anyone else. They're just tough and they put it all out there. That's what I do.

"Going out there and hitting someone is fun for me. You get that adrenaline rush. It's the same thing with pinning someone in wrestling. You've just got to put yourself out there and go all out."

Unfortunately, Bessette couldn't even give a partial effort last season, and it just about drove him nuts.

After a promising freshman year in which he helped the sophomore football team to a 9-0 record, got pulled up to varsity for the playoffs and got significant playing time, and then placed fourth in state wrestling after setting a regular-season pin record at Antioch, Bessette was suddenly stopped in his tracks.

At nationals for wrestling that following summer, he got thrown on his shoulder and tore his labrum. He was forced to have surgery in September and was out until February. He missed his entire sophomore football season and the entire regular season for wrestling.

"It was too bad that he got injured because George had a lot of high expectations, even as a young player," Antioch coach Brian Glashagel said. "He came in as a freshman and everyone was like, 'Who's that?' He impressed a lot of people right away and everyone couldn't wait to see what he was going to do."

Bessette, who had gotten dozens of letters from Division I college wrestling recruiters after his successful freshman campaign, could only cheer from the sidelines, a perspective he wasn't used to at all. He's played football since he was in kindergarten and began wrestling when he was about 6, anxious to follow in the footsteps of dad George, a star wrestler himself at Antioch and then at Indiana State. George Sr. met his wife Debby at Indiana State. Debby, a native of Holland, was a gymnast there. She had competed for the Dutch Olympic team in the 1980s.

"At football games last year, I would go crazy standing on the sidelines," Bessette said. "I knew I should be out there helping the team. It made me so mad that I couldn't contribute.

"It was horrible during wrestling, too. It was the first time I had sat out in wrestling my entire life."

Bessette, dedicated to his shoulder rehab, willed himself to return in time for the state wrestling tournament in February. And somehow, he advanced downstate, successfully overcoming food poisoning at the sectional meet.

"I was dead downstate," Bessette said. "I don't like to make excuses but I was out for a long time. I tried to stay in shape, but I wasn't in wrestling shape. I choked in my first match at state."

Bessette says there will be none of that this year. He has high expectations, the same kind of expectations everyone had for him when he walked on campus as a freshman.

"I try to ignore most of that stuff. I'm not very good at taking compliments," Bessette said. "But I am a people pleaser. I do want to live up to expectations.

"I want to go as far as we can in football," Bessette said. "In wrestling, I definitely want to win state, like people think I should. I want to be the first state champ in Antioch history."

Lifting his arms high above his head as a champion would probably be one lift that Bessette wouldn't mind doing.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com

Follow Patricia on Twitter: @babcockmcgraw

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