Merrillville’s Adrian Pellot was so mad about finishing as a state runner-up last year that he nearly threw his medal in the trash.
But a conversation with Pirates coach David Maldonado later that evening helped Pellot chart a path forward.
“I was furious,” Pellot recalled. “I didn’t even want to talk to my family. But I remember my coaches telling me that even though this wasn’t what I’d wanted, there were a lot of people who sacrificed a lot of things and still didn’t get to wrestle in that final match. So I had to be grateful for that.”
But Pellot made sure he got what he wanted in his senior season. The Purdue recruit tore through every 165-pound bracket he faced to go 45-0.
Pellot, the 2024-25 Post-Tribune Boys Wrestler of the Year, saved his best for the final month of the season. His 9-6 victory against Carmel’s Michael Major in the state final in Indianapolis on Feb. 22 was his only postseason match not decided by fall.
“I was saying to my teammates all year long that I didn’t just want to win a state title this year, I wanted to be dominant,” Pellot said. “I wanted to show people that I’d really worked for this, and I just had a mindset during the whole state series that I was going to be unstoppable.”
Pellot’s mindset was much different after he dropped a 5-3 decision to Western’s Mitchell Betz in the state final at 157 last year, just two months after Pellot defeated Betz 2-1 at the Al Smith Invitational in Mishawaka.
“It was one of those moments in his career when he realized that he had to make some changes,” Maldonado said. “Coming back after that loss, we told him that we’re just going to focus on getting better.”
With that goal in mind, Maldonado said he encouraged Pellot to enter as many tournaments as possible during the summer, even if the quality of competition meant he may end up taking some losses.
“For a long time, he was so caught up in the wins and losses, and that’s easy to do as a young athlete,” Maldonado said. “He started changing his mentality that it wasn’t about winning or losing, it was about getting better that day. That was the major difference from Adrian as a junior to Adrian as a senior.”
There were moments this season when Pellot’s attention still focused on the results, even during daily practice sessions with Merrillville assistant Craig Furth, a 2008 Clark graduate who placed seventh at 160 pounds at the state meet when he was a senior.
“He still had a perfectionist mindset where he wanted to be in his prime at all times, even early in the season,” Furth said. “He’d get real down on himself. But we just had to remind him to get back to work and trust the process. There are phases of a season, and we just had to get through each phase while progressively getting better.”
Pellot embraced those lessons eventually, and perhaps the best indicator was his ability to stay calm during his state championship match against Major. Pellot fell behind 4-0 in the first period but rallied to win.
“I learned to have that patience and just wrestle through my positions,” he said. “If I just stay relaxed, my time will come. And on that day, it did.”
Pellot said his experiences at Merrillville will help him tackle whatever challenges await him in college.
“In college, you’ll need even more patience because there are going to be more lessons,” he said. “It’s a good thing that I’ve learned this now because I’ve been working on it and I’ve seen what happens when I do apply it.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter.
