Augustana’s men’s wrestling team had its season and home opener last Saturday against the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). The team had a successful season opener, resulting in a 30-22 win. Senior Kameron Hanel took the first dual meet of the season due to a forfeit from MSOE. This got Augustana on the board to eventually take the overall win.
The wrestling team had a successful previous season with 14 wins, their most since the coach’s tenure, despite losses to ranked teams and injuries. This year, they expect to perform well with being placed third in coaches polls and hopefully place higher than they previously had before.
“I think we’re just going to keep getting better,” junior Colin Roque said. “Keep climbing the ladder towards the next spot up and, hopefully, the top.”
After a decent season and being highly ranked, the team is looking into carrying over their strengths from last season to build upon them and make them even stronger. They aim to compete fiercely and improve their overall standing.
The team’s main goals are to challenge the top teams in their conference and send more wrestlers to the national tournament. They want to keep getting better and achieve more success this season.
“We want to get as many national qualifiers and even placers as possible,” Hanel said. “The past three years that I’ve been here we have had only one qualifier, but we’ve had three or four guys each year that are just like right there.”
With being ranked highly among the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW), they put in the work outside of dual meets to rank so high. By having intense practices with lots of drilling and conditioning, they are able to go into the season prepared.
“It is just a matter of after a practice and you’ve gotten tired and whatnot, taking it to the next step,” Hanel said. “I have noticed that in a match, compared to practice, you are always going to be more tired just because you are constantly going.”
While the season is now underway, the team took time out of practice to compete in “wrestle-offs.” Wrestle-offs is the system that the team uses to determine what rank wrestlers in the same weight class will be. The wrestle-offs can be one-on-one matches in the practice room or tournaments where the higher-placing wrestler secures their spot on the team.
These competitions are chances for the men to show where they are at in order to develop throughout the season.
“I think we saw where some guys were in the season,” senior Josh Woodrey said. “I really just think we are looking to just develop as a whole. But right now, we just got to wrestle the people who are producing.”