The Oswego wrestling season has been well underway with players and coaches full of confidence for the future of wrestling.
The wrestling season is at its mid-point as of right now and already our Panther wrestlers are eating up the competition.
“We’ve had a good season with our all-girls team and then we’ve had success with our varsity program,” Coach Andrew Cook said.“ur lower levels -Jv1 Jv2 groups – have been doing awesome jobs at different tournaments.”
The varsity boys wrestling team currently has a 12-11 record. According to boy’s varsity captain Joey Griffin, it is not where they want to be. “… [it is] more losses than we’d like,” Griffin said.
However, Griffin reassures that they have a younger team, which gives hope for the future of the program.
“They have a lot of time to improve,” Griffin said. “The most important thing about our season is that the guys are peaking at the end of the season, so that they are at their best when they go for their state series run.”
The boy’s team is making a turnaround and gaining momentum for the last push into the state series run. Griffin currently has a record of 25-4.
Moving forward, the 2023-24 OH girls’ team has gained more girls with a result of 16 of them but it is not a stand-alone girls’ team as of right now.
“It feels amazing, the fact that I went from being the only girl last year to there being 16 girls…I cried on picture day. Not being the only one anymore feels amazing,” OH girls wrestling team captain Kaitlynn Valencia said.
OH Athletic Director Darren Howard said, “As of right now the girls are wrestling with the boys’ wrestling team because they are not a stand-alone program.” Both boys and girls will advance to state but girls will be wrestling in the girls’ tournament while the boys will wrestle against the boys.
As of right now, the girls’ wrestling team has an overall record of 8-2, which for not having any girls last year, is a major improvement. Their season began with a not-so-hot start, but soon the girls found their groove and ran with it.
“The season started pretty rough but I have seen much improvement from myself and my teammates,” junior Rikka Ludvigson said.
Both teams started in a way that wasn’t what either wanted, but have improved for the better. With the state series just around the corner, this is the spot that the wrestlers want to be in. This is a chance to show the growth that has happened within the program.
The Panther wrestlers are always getting better at after-school practices, and are devoting much time to the sport.
“Our focus is that when we were training we were working to enhance our cardio and fitness and everything like that because everything [is] developed around being able to wrestle multiple matches in a day…practices are tough to simulate real tournaments,” Cook said.
The training wrestlers go through is done to ensure that they will always be ready and at their 100% every time they go into a match. By conditioning every day, wrestlers can wrestle more without getting tired. Through intensive training, both boys and girls wrestlers can make a big impact on their seasons and get back on track for the final run to state.
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