EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's wrestling team got its 2016-17 season off to a great start Thanksgiving weekend, going unbeaten in three meets at the season-opening Edwardsville Duals.
Last season's Tigers went 24-3 in dual meets and won the Southwestern Conference championship, sending 11 wrestlers to the IHSA Class 3A individual sectional tournament in suburban Chicago while winning the team championship and a berth in the Team Sectional; one of those wrestlers, Chris Prosser (who graduated in the spring) went to the individual state tournament in Champaign-Urbana; in the Class 3A Team Sectional in Mattoon, the Tigers fell to New Lenox Providence 31-30.
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“We got off to a good start,” said Tiger coach Jon Wagner of EHS' opening wins. “I thought the kids wrestled real aggressively, with a lot of confidence and grit and toughness.”
The Tigers graduated Chris Prosser, Mason Taylor, James Watters and Bobby Burnside from last year's team. “Those were four mainstays of our lineup; they were healthy last year and they all did a great job,” Wagner said.
This year's edition fo the Tigers may well be strongest at the middleweight classes, Wagner feels. “We have quite a few seniors right there in the middle and then we're quite young at the bottom and at the top,” Wagner said, “so we hope we can get on a bit of a roll with the seniors in the middle and hope for some good seasons from them.”
Among those seniors in the middle include Ben Schuleter at 138, Rafael Roman at 145, Baylor Montgomery at 152 and Guy Brown at 160. At the lighter weights, freshmen Ben Lunn at 106 and Luke Odom at 113, sophomore Noah Sutin at 120 and junior Dylan Wright at 126 could play key roles. At the heavier weights, junior Markell DuBerry at 170, sophomore Sam Martin at 182, sophomore Bo Melkamp at 195 and sophomore Josh Anderson at 220 could also play roles for Edwardsville, along with senior Connor Mikulaut at 182 and senior Andrew Holderer at 220.
The Tiger schedule remains the same as last year, with Southwestern Conference dual meets dotting the schedule and tournaments all throughout the year; Edwardsville's first big tournament comes up this weekend with the Ron Sauer Tournment at Fox High School in Arnold, Mo., with the Dvorak Tournament at Machesney Park Harlem in suburban Chicago coming right before the holiday break. The Cheesehead Tournament in Kaukauna, Wis., comes up the first weekend of January, followed by the IHSA Class 3A regional tournament Feb. 4, with the individual sectional the following weekend and the individual state tournament set for State Farm Center in Champaign-Urbana the weekend of Feb. 16-18, followed by the team sectionals and team state tournament Feb. 25 at U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington.
“We're in the first phase of our schedule,” Wagner said. “We want to get our guys ready for the Dvorak Tournament, get ready and compete at the tournament. We've got a good Fox tournament, we've got some conference duals to get ready for the Dvorak Tournament.”
Wagner thinks the SWC competition will be tough this season. “I think the conference is up,” Wagner said. “There's going to be some consistency in the conference; we're going to have to be on our game (to keep the Tigers' streak of SWC titles going). It's hard to win our conference in any sport; you've got to be healthy, you have to continue to get better. You can't rest on your laurels; it's a challenge.”
