Xavier Pratt is healthy.
That’s not something the three-sport sophomore has been able to say a lot during his time at Homewood-Flossmoor. He missed almost all of the last wrestling season with an injury. The Vikings tight end was ready to go for football season, only to injure his shoulder in the final game against Lockport.
He missed the first portion of the wrestling season but says he’s finally 100%, even if he wasn’t when he first started wrestling again.
“I just got to a point where I could push through it,” Pratt said. “That’s the best part of being an athlete. You can push through injury, fight through adversity. That’s the key.”
Pratt says playing multiple sports gives him an advantage in today’s athletic world, where most kids pick a sport at a young age and play it 12 months a year.
“I can translate skills I learn from football into wrestling, maybe take skills I learn in wrestling to track or back to football,” he said. “Being around all the sports, being around great coaches and teammates, it really helps.”
That started early. Pratt was very young when he first dreamt of wrestling in a Vikings singlet. He remembers wrestling on the turf in the H-F fieldhouse when he was elementary-school aged. That’s when he first met wrestling coach Jim Sokoloski.
“Coach Soko is great. I’ve known him for a while and I trust his coaching. Me and him just have a connection,” Pratt said. “He knows how to get to me. He knows how to come and talk to me before a match, maybe calm my nerves. Coach Soko is the guy for me.”
Sokoloski admits he coaches Pratt a little harder than some of his other wrestlers.
During Pratt’s match with Downers Grove South’s Daniel Mensah during H-F’s Mega Duals Jan. 17, Sokoloski was out of his seat, coaching Pratt hard enough and loud enough for everyone in the fieldhouse to clearly understand.
“In practice, that’s my guy. That’s who I work with a lot, and he’s still giving away a lot of points,” Sokoloski said. “In a month, when we’re wrestling sectionals, he’s going to be a different kid.”
He expects that to pay off as Pratt continues to develop.
“His athletic IQ is massively high, so when we show him something like that (he gets it),” Sokoloski said. “He was in position but (Mensah) had his arm pinned. We’ll fix that in practice and he won’t ever do it, again. In fact, he fixed it by the third time today.”
Talent was never an issue for Pratt. The only problem was getting enough mat time. Teammates saw his potential early.
“Once he got cleared (to wrestle), I was like ‘We got one here, for sure. We got to make sure he gets down state,’” junior Chazz Robinson said. “He’s got that dog mentality in him.”
Pratt doesn’t hide that football is his main sport. It’s what he hopes to do at the next level. He insists, though, that doing other things will only make him better on the gridiron.
“It separates me. When I talk to (football) coaches and I mention that I wrestle, (they like that),” he said. “It just makes me different and it gives me an edge.”
