No offseason for Svingala
With area schools being off for the summer, most teenagers are planning trips and sitting pool side. Trent Svingala is busy preparing for a fight.
The soon-to-be Maple Hill senior and two-time New York state champion wrestler is scheduled to compete in his first amateur MMA fight on July 14 at the Holiday Inn in Rutland, Vermont.
“I’m always training, whether it be for wrestling or this fight,” Svingala said. “I think of this fight as motivation to work even harder than before. Summer vacation, overall, just gives me more time to prepare and focus even more on the task at hand.”
That spells bad news for his opponent.
Svingala went undefeated on the wrestling mat during his sophomore and junior seasons at Maple Hill en route to claiming two state championships. He has 204 varsity wins and is riding an 84-match winning streak.
One might expect to see him take his opponent to the ground and grind out a win in mid-July, but that might not be the case at all.
Long before he even got into wrestling, Svingala was training in various martial arts.
“A lot of people know me for my wrestling, but before I even started that I was doing Jiu Jitsu and boxing,” he said. “I’ve always been around the sport of MMA since a young age.
“With that, my opponent can try whatever he wants to attempt to really gameplan,” he added. “When it comes to trying to stop me, nobody has been able to do that recently, so I think I have a good shot on wherever I want to keep the fight, whether it be on the feet or on the ground.”
Svingala has been training with some of the best fighters in the country, spending time with Matt Secor, a UFC and Bellator veteran who was on The Ultimate Fighter television series. He’s also trained with former UFC champion Frankie Edgar and Mark Henry, who was named the 2017 MMA Coach of the Year by Ariel Helwani on the MMAHour.
“Training has been going great,” Svingala said. “I’m up at a couple gyms, whether it be Matt Secor BJJ, EFJJA or Hittaz Boxing, these gyms are the best around and do a great job of getting me ready and sharpening me up. I have a plan for the weeks coming just to stay disciplined with my training. I’m working every day now to get better than before and you’ll definitely see that come the fight on July 14.”
While wrestling will undoubtedly help Svingala in his upcoming MMA fight, he also believes that training for this offseason competition will help him when he returns to the mats for his senior campaign at Maple Hill, and eventually when he heads to Cornell University.
“I definitely think [training for MMA] has had a factor in my wrestling to this point. I mean, when you’re used to getting choked and punched in the face, it makes wrestling seem light,” he said. “It definitely helps me with my shape. You learn to go through those rounds that are sometimes longer than a match and teaches you truly how to pace yourself and just keeps that competitive nature that I love because there’s nothing better than going out there and trying to be the top guy.”
In a few weeks, Svingala will see how he fares in a cage instead of on the mats. While he is a long way off from considering what to do after college, fighting professionally is a possibility.
“You never know,” he said. “It’s definitely a ways off, but it’s definitely an option at the same time. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
