Last week, on 12/6, the boys wrestling team faced off against Palmer. They young team managed to pull off a decisive victory, limiting their opponent to only 18 points. Despite losing some great wrestlers like Jimmy Weaver, who in his last year of high school won the 5A state championship, the team is still strong. Freshman Ben Nagel is one of the young wrestlers helping to uphold Coronado wrestling’s tradition of success. “We have a really young team with great leadership and everyone learns from everyone” said Nagel of the team’s atmosphere.

“You’re never going to replace anyone because everyone is their own individual and those guys were just phenomenal to have here” said wrestling coach, Mr. Burak of last year’s seniors, adding of this year’s wrestlers, “we have a young team and so there’s a lot of youth mistakes that we’ve seen so far in the year but the good news is that they’re giving 100 percent. It’s the effort and the attitude that is sometimes hard to coach and they have great attitudes, [they’re] giving us great effort and so now it’s just sharpening up the small things.” Nagel shared a similar sentiment, saying “every wrestler contributes just by being in the room pushing each other.”

Burak recognizes the team’s inexperience, but they have undeniable potential, as they proved at the match against Palmer. Andrew Gordon and Ben Tossen are both new wrestlers who won their matches, and according to Coach Burak, “we had guys who even though they lost matches they did some great stuff” citing Stephan Montoya and Ben Nagel as examples. Burak said of Nagel’s performance, “he battled hard” and was able to score in the last 6 seconds of the match to push it into overtime.

Even this early in the season, the team is already looking ahead to state. “We’ll have a good number” said Burak when asked about prospective state qualifiers. “There’s going to be a lot of guys that have already made improvements through the year and they’re going to make a lot more as we get further on. Part of it is about peaking at the right time, being healthy at the right time and so we just have to get to the end of the season staying healthy.” Nagel is among the state hopefuls, saying of his goals, ““I’m hoping to qualify for state and it would be great if I could place.”

The boys are off to a strong start and are looking to keep up their momentum all the way to the state championship. Their next meet is this Friday in Loveland, so kick off your winter break by coming up to watch!