Head wrestling coach Joey Lazor has years of experience in wrestling and has competed in some of the toughest competitions.

Prior to the pandemic, he traveled all over the world and even competed in the Olympic qualifier before COVID halted his progress.

Lazor started wrestling at a young age and immediately fell in love with the sport, enjoying the physical aspects and how easily he could enter tournaments and compete against other people.

“I started wrestling when I was four years old, my dad introduced it to me,” Lazor said. “Me and a bunch of my buddies played every sport we possibly could. We played football, baseball, and then wrestling just happened to be a sport between those two.”

Middle school is when Lazor really decided he wanted to pursue wrestling. He stopped playing football and baseball and switched to new sports.

“Then I started focusing more on just wrestling and other sports that helped me in wrestling.” Lazor said “that’s what I started doing. [Sports] like track and cross country to help shape me even though it’s a different kind of shape.”

In and high school, Lazor had a very successful career in wrestling.

“We traveled to big world competitions to try and wrestle the best competitors,” Lazor said. “So I was very blessed with where I was at. I had a great coaching staff that believed in me. I was ranked top five in the country when I was in high school”

Knowing the Olympics were coming up and that he wanted to start teaching. Lazor decided to go for the Olympic tryouts.

“You have to win certain tournaments to qualify for the Olympic trials,” Lazor said. “I was making a good run and then COVID happened a month later, so everything just got shut down. When that happened, my wife and I decided to move back to Kansas.”

Ultimately Lazor decided to move back to Kansas to coach and to teach.

“I already planned on moving back to Kansas.” Lazor said “I bumped into Eric Aiken, who was the head wrestling coach at Aquinas, he gave me the opportunity to be an assistant coach there. And then Travis Keal, who was the old head coach here saw how I prepared the guys and how I lead them in the right direction while we’re at regionals at DeSoto and while we’re on a lunch break and he just called me over and we chatted and kind of hit a spark”

“[Being coached by Lazor] is great because we know what he’s been through so it’s easy to trust him and believe what he’s saying,” McAlister said. “It’s nice to know that you can put your full trust in him because he’s been through it and he has the skill he does.”

McAlister is appreciative of how lazors coaching style is different than other coaches has had.

“One of the best coaches I’ve ever had in the sport. He’s very motivational, his main goal isn’t even to get you better at wrestling is to make you a better person and make you better in life.”