Adrian Pellot considered giving up wrestling two years ago.
His Merrillville career had barely started, but he was unhappy about the direction it was going.
“Coming into my freshman year, I thought I was the man,” Pellot said. “Then I came into high school, and all of these seniors were beating me. It brought my pride down and my confidence down. I stopped wanting to compete.
“I told my coach I didn’t want to wrestle anymore.”
But Merrillville coach David Maldonado convinced him to stick with it, laying the foundation upon which stands one of the state’s top wrestlers. Pellot (27-1), a 5-foot-9 junior, is ranked No. 2 at 157 pounds by IndianaMat.
Few can beat Pellot now.
“He’s so tough,” Merrillville senior Cameron Crisp said. “It can be frustrating wrestling against him because he never stops moving. It forces you to always stay on your toes and do some awkward things just to stay up with him.”
It has been a quick ascension for Pellot, who first immersed himself in wrestling in eighth grade.
“I wasn’t very good, but I had to start somewhere,” he said.
Pellot’s freshman year was more of a challenge than he expected, however, and he struggled to adapt.
“There were days when I wouldn’t bring clothes for practice and I’d tell my mom to come pick me up after school,” he said.
But those strategies were not new to Maldonado.
“What we try to do for every kid is eliminate the excuses,” Maldonado said. “If you don’t have shoes, we have a bin full of shoes for you. If you don’t have clothes, we have stacks of old clothes for you. If you need a ride, we’ll find someone who lives near you who can give you a ride.”
Pellot said Maldonado’s persistence kept him going. As Maldonado explained, Pellot just had to refocus and answer one important question.
“We want to eliminate all of those outs, so you get to the point, ‘Do you want to do this?'” Maldonado said. “And sometimes, once those guys start showing up on a daily basis, they start getting pretty good at this.”
Indeed, by the end of Pellot’s freshman season, he was 18-7 at 145 and had won a match at semistate. A year later, he qualified for the state meet and placed seventh at 152, although even that result didn’t send him home with a smile.
“I was still in shock after my Friday match,” Pellot said. “After my last match on Saturday, I was disappointed in myself a bit. I settled. I went home after Saturday night and cried because I was like, ‘What was I doing?’ I don’t know if I had the confidence to win state, but I could’ve done better for sure.”
Pellot responded the only way he knew how, heading right back to work to prepare for his junior season.
“I got a lot of running in, a lot of conditioning, and I just stayed in the room a lot, working on my technique,” he said.
Now Pellot is a legitimate contender for a state title. He recently faced the top-ranked wrestler in his weight class, Mishawaka senior Beau Brabender. Although Brabender won a 6-4 decision during that championship-round match at the Al Smith Classic in late December, Pellot’s spirits remain high.
“That match opened my eyes, that I can’t stop wrestling,” he said. “I have to keep working hard in the room because the other guys aren’t going to slow down. If I want to catch up to them, I have to keep outworking them every day.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
