WEST LEBANON, Ind. — Five years ago, Jordan Hicks was a junior high school wrestler watching Eli Cook prepare for a run which led him to a fifth-place finish in the IHSAA state wrestling meet.

“It helped me because I looked up to him quite a bit,” Hicks said. “I remember watching him. It helped me a lot and it made me want to go for a further goal.”

Hicks has taken that preparation to heart and started this past season with an undefeated mark throughout the season until the semistates, and like Cook, he qualified for the state meet in Indianapolis.

And just like Cook that season, Hicks has been named the Commercial-News Wrestler of the Year.

Hicks roared through the competition in the regular season at 125 pounds and collected a 43-0 record through sectionals and regionals, before suffering his first two losses at a semistate at Merrillville.

The junior would still qualify for the state meet, but lost to Indian Creek’s Ethan Raley, who ended up second in the class.

“Going to state was very nerve-wracking because you know everyone there is the best in your weight class and everyone deserves to be there and then there are people that you have wrestled all of your life if you did AAU,” Hicks said. “It was a really great experience and it made me want to work hard enough to come back next year and get on the podium.”

For Hicks, it was all about preparation and learning from any mistakes from his sophomore season.

“I saw little simple mistakes and some things with my mental attitude and I became a lot smarter as a wrestler,” Hicks said. “I had a lot of offseason wrestling and I was working with a lot of guys who graduated from here in the room and Eli wrestled with me and my brother (Jeramey Hicks) as well.”

He did a really good job about being prepared. He was going to camp and wrestled open mat during football season to get himself ready and it paid off for him,” Seeger coach Tom Cook said. “He started looking for a weight and he settled for 125 which was a good weight for him.

“I just thought he came in ready to have a good year. He had his head on straight and he knew what things he had to work on. He got so much better on his feet than last season.”

The two big opponents for Hicks in practice was Eli Cook and his brother, Jeramey Hicks, and it was key to his development.

“(Jeramey) was my drill partner and I wrestled him along with some of the older guys there,” Jordan Hicks said. “It is always been a goal to beat his records and I strive pretty hard to do that.

“You try to wrestle different kids rather than the same one every day and you get a little different feel for different things. Then you go to camp to learn a few things and you need mat time, which is the main thing.”

“I thought he did a good job in stepping things up when things got tougher and his brother, who is an assistant coach, did a good job in being a partner for him,” Tom Cook said. “Eli spent some time with him as well, so he had some good people to wrestle against and it pushed well.”

Also, Jordan Hicks was preparing for wrestling while playing football.

“He loves football, but I think (Wrestling) is his sport,” Tom Cook said. “He ran track his freshman year, but he stopped last year to focus on freestyle wrestling and we have a club that wrestles one night a week and also went to Lafayette one night a week. He did all the right things in the weight room to keep his strength up. He has not slacked off at all.

“He did a good job of transitioning from one sport to another. It is going to be interesting next season because he will be in a more valuable role for the football team, so he may be a little more beat up.”

But Jordan Hicks is already thinking about next season and work to another trip to Indianapolis.

“I took a week off and I hit the weights and went back to the mat,” Hicks said.