‘Bad’ Kaleb Ivie sticks around to find out he’s a state champion

BY BRANT PARSONS — Back in his freshman year, Merritt Island’s Kaleb Ivie had to wrestle against Mustangs star Khalil Mitchell every day in practice.

It was not an easy time for Ivie.

“My first high school season, I hated it,” Ivie said. “I had to wrestle with Khalil and he just put a whooping on me in every practice.”

Fast forward a few years and the Merritt Island senior is the latest state champion for the Mustangs, having won the Class 2A, 215-pound weight class earlier this month at the FHSAA State Wrestling Tournament at Silver Spurs.

A far cry from those first early days in the Merritt Island room.

“That was awful, he actually got mad at me all the time because I was so bad and he was so good,” Ivie said. “But I think what got me through it was my friends and the camaraderie on the team was so strong, I couldn’t stop.”

Instead of quitting, Ivie bought into the program.

Learning under head coach Graham Smith and coach Tim Boda, Ivie developed a skillset over the years and then felt his breakthrough in the state tournament a year ago.

As a junior, Ivie impressed with a fifth-place finish at the state tournament and soon after he went to work for the big prize.

He spent time further developing his upper body and his body lock, because it had worked so well the season before.

But he also spent time working on his top and bottom game so he could be prepared for any situation.

After spending most of the season at No. 1 in the Kabra Wrestling rankings, Ivie suffered a handful of late season losses.

Undeterred, he went to work on a gameplan for Kissimmee that would work.

“My strategy was just win matches,” Ivie said. “I didn’t have to do anything crazy, I didn’t have to throw anybody to their back, I just had to get takedowns and win my matches. It just worked out that I ended up pinning my way to the final.”

In the final, the goal remained the same and Ivie perfected it with a workmanlike performance. Ivie earned four takedowns in the first two periods in his 10-4 win over Charlotte’s Viliam Piekh.

“I just wrestled to get my hand raised and nothing crazy,” Ivie said. “It’s not like I haven’t wrestled matches like that - hard matches are what I eat for breakfast.”

And now the state champion looks forward to the tradition of success continuing at Merritt Island.

“Hopefully I’m not the last name to go up,” Ivie said. “It was Elijah Lusk before me, and now it’s me and there’s going to be more after me. And hopefully everybody forgets about Kaleb Ivie because we got a bunch more after me.”

But before he’s ever forgotten, Ivie has had the chance to enjoy the moment of victory, even if he feels like nothing has changed around him.

“It’s great,” Ivie said of winning. “But it’s not like anything’s different. Everything’s still the same. I’m still Kaleb, my teammates are still my teammates. Nothing really changed. I was a state champion before I wrestled, I just didn’t know it until the tournament was over.”