The WAHS varsity wrestling team began their tournaments this season on December 3rd. This year, six returning seniors from last year’s team that finished 9th in the region. They have two wrestlers ranked in the top ten of the state in each of their weight classes, so they are poised to have a successful season this year. Jake Jackson, a junior, is ranked 6th in the state as a heavy weight and Nate Riley, a senior, at 182 is ranked 3rd but Andreas McCullogh says that, “He should be ranked 2nd, he’s underrated.”

This team, along with having six seniors is fairly experienced overall, having a strong contingent of returning wrestlers, so they should be able to put together several successful wins and go far this year in regionals and conferences.

Nate Riley said this on the season, “I think we will do pretty well this season, we have a lot of returners and we should be able to win.”

The team has also been working hard in the offseason. “We really focused on weight training this offseason and tried to get stronger for this year,” Riley said. The team will also have several home games this year including hosting conferences. Nate Riley commented on this saying, “We really want a lot of people to come out to the tournaments this year especially because it will be conferences, which is a big tournament for us.”

Then Western team came in 4th in their December their tournament. The overall team record was 3-2. There were several great individual performances including Riley, who went 5-0 in his personal matches.   Andreas McCollough went 4-1, Will Davis went 4-1, and Bailey Austin went 5-0.

The team got off to a rocky start, Riley said.  “The first competition of the season always makes people nervous, but after the start we got into it better.” The team was able to do well in the tournament but were not able to win the whole thing this time.