Rocco Cassioppi: new season, new weight

Rocco Cassioppi is starting this wrestling season with big changes in store. He has moved up three weight classes, now in 126, which brings him new opponents and challenges to face. Rocco kicked off the 2024-2025 season with a first place medal at the Barrington High School Moore-Prettyman Memorial Invite. The team as a whole racked up 600 total match points thanks to Brody Sendele, TJ Silva, and Conner Diemel who “teched and pinned” their way through the competition. Although Rocco admitted that he and some of his other teammates could have done better, he explained that the team “still won the tournament by 50 points.”

This season, as Rocco commented, the Hononegah wrestling program is seeing “a way bigger team” both in the boys and girls divisions. Unlike last year when his sister Angelina Cassioppi was a one woman team, the girls program now has eight girls as it grows in popularity and the aspiring Kids Club wrestlers make their way into high school. The boys team is also seeing lots of new wrestlers including the Harry D Jacobs High School transfer, Kristian DeClercq, or KB as his teammates call him. Kristian is taking the 106 weight class. Rocco, in fact, had to wrestle him in the finals of a few tournaments last season. It was funny for the two since they “were friends even though they had to wrestle [each other]” already, and now they get to be on the same team. 

In terms of personal goals this year, Rocco’s main focus is to redeem himself by taking first place next February, since he “came up just short” in the state championship last spring. He also wants to be on the state leaderboards for most pin and technical fall victories. When asked about his long-term hopes for his wrestling career, Rocco replied that he wants to get a full scholarship and not have to think about paying for college. Despite the popular assumption that Rocco is set to follow in his brother and sister’s footsteps and attend the University of Iowa, he has been looking more at Wisconsin, especially now that his brother Tony is an assistant coach there. 

Rocco is putting in additional work to improve his technique and style as he dives into a whole new competition. At the lighter weights, Rocco says he could “get away with not having to hand fight,” but now that he is at higher levels he will be making an effort to do more punching and hitting. [Editor's note: hand fighting is a specific class of wrestling techniques - literal boxing is not what's meant here.] As he did last year, Rocco is sticking to his strategy of starting off the match going low and fast, “pushing the pace” as he calls it, to make it clear that he is going to be the victor. Although it is true that his name alone carries a certain weight in the wrestling world, his own specific intimidation tactics in the ring are what really throw his opponents off their game and pave the way for him to pin them swiftly.