Warrior wrestling team is winless in opening week
Nick Deitchler won all but one match in the five duals Central wrestled in last week. (Photos by Bev Hamann)
Brandon Whittle wrestled hard in a home dual meet on Dec. 3, in which the Warriors hosted Ed-Co, Postville and West Delaware.
By Willis Patenaude, Times-Register
The Central wrestling season got off to a rough start last week, with the Warriors dropping all five of their duals.
“We are a young team trying to find ourselves. Our struggles are just fixing the simple things right now…[we] just need to do one thing at a time and don’t worry about getting the cart ahead of the horse,” said coach Joe Koehn.
The week began with a meet at Hudson on Dec. 1, where Central faced the Hudson Pirates and Wapsie Valley Warriors. Against the Pirates, the Warriors lost 72-9, with Nick Deitchler securing the only victory via fall, while teammate Spencer Heer won an 8-7 decision.
Part of the Pirates’ lopsided victory included Central forfeiting six matches, accounting for 36 total points for Hudson. The rest of the Warriors wrestlers lost their matches via fall.
Taking on Wapsie Valley, Central fared much better, winning four matches—two by pin and two by way of forfeit. However, they eventually lost 60-24. The two falls were earned by Deitchler and Brandon Whittle, while Nate Shirbroun and Heer won due to forfeit. Central only lost four matches, and the majority of Wapsie Valley’s score came from forfeits.
During the meet, neither of the team’s three girls, Brandy Beatty, Maria Medberry or Rebecca Suhr wrestled.
The next event was a home meet on Dec. 3, where the Warriors faced Edgewood-Colesburg, Postville and West Delaware.
The Warriors had their best showing of the young season against the Vikings, only losing by 14 points, 42-28. Twenty-four of those 28 points were secured due to Viking forfeits, and were won by Sean Wilwert, Shirbroun, Heer and Whittle. The other four points came from a major decision victory by Deitchler.
Against Postville, the Warriors scored 13 points off match victories, but were out-dueled by the Pirates, who won with a score of 49. Deitchler continued to be the star of the program, winning a 7-3 decision and three points, while Sam Fettkether got a fall for six points and Whittle added another four with a major decision.
The dual also featured an exhibition match in which Medberry, one of the team’s three female wrestlers, secured a pin in 58 seconds, to earn a win.
Finally, against the Hawks, Central lost 77-0. The dual saw Deitchler lose his first match of the season. Of the rest of the team that wrestled, four lost via fall and one lost due to technical fall. Forty-two of the Hawks’ points came from forfeits.
When asked about the results, Koehn responded, “We just need to get more mat time and we will improve. We’ve had some good efforts. We just need to start putting moves together and put together some combination wrestling and we’ll be successful. We’re getting better as individuals and working on what [each] individual needs to work on. We’ve got a tough week ahead of us. We need to really turn things up. Find that next switch and turn it on.”
Coming up, the team has a boys/girls meet at Center Point-Urbana on Dec. 8, then separate meets on Dec. 12, with the boys at Nashua-Plainfield for a tournament and the girls at AP-GC.
