EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's wrestling team got their 2016-17 season off to a good start at Jon Davis Wrestling Center/Babe Stalhut Arena Saturday afternoon with a series of wins.
The Tiger wrestlers defeated Mattoon 67-9, Springfield 68-9 and DeSmet 75-5 at the Tiger Duals.
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“We're proud of the kids,” said Tiger coach Jon Wagner. “We had four goals today and I think we met three of them really well; I thought we came out and were aggressive in all of our matches and we fought to the end, win, lose or draw, we didn't give up. We tried to show some toughness there and I thought we worked really well in the top positions.
“Those are some of the things we're looking at as we go to the Fox tournament and Collinsville next week, getting ready for the Dvorak Tournament in December (in the Chicago area); we're real pleased.”
Edwardsville had several wrestlers win all their bouts on the day, which pleased Wagner. “We had a lot of 3-0s,” Wagner said. “We were happy with Rafael Roman (at 145); we thought his hands were pretty heavy, which we ask him to do. He was aggressive and did very well on top, so we were pleased with his effort.
“Up and down the lineup, we had a lot of 3-0s; I thought Andrew Holderer looked real good. He was injured last year and he came back and had a really good football season especially towards the end; two weeks later, we're in here doing this. We tried to take it a little bit slow with him, but he's a hard kid to sit down, so I thought he performed really well today.”
Among the Tiger highlights on the day was Roman winning all three of his bouts by pin, the fastest coming in 1:07 against DeSmet's JJ Meyer; Guy Brown had the day's fastest pin, a 13-second pin against DeSmet, with Holderer having a 27-second pin against the Spartans in the 220-pound bout. Baylor Montgomery had three pins on the day as well, the fastest coming 52 seconds into his 152-pound bout against the Spartans' Michael Cross.
The Tigers begin their Southwestern Conference schedule at Collinsville at 6 p.m. Tuesday, then travel to Jefferson County, Mo., for the Ron Sauer Tournament at Fox High School in Arnold, Mo., Dec. 2-3 before traveling to Belleville West for a SWC meet Dec. 8.
