2023-24 OnFocus Season Preview: Edgar Wildcats Wrestling

Coaching staff:

This will be my 11th year coaching wrestling in Edgar, 7th as head coach. Our program assistant coaches are Connor Handrick 7th year, Aaron Niemann 7th year, and Tyson Zettler 2nd year.

Key returners:

We return 9 wrestlers from last season’s roster and look forward to their leadership with our younger wrestlers in the program and will rely heavily on their experience to help us compete on a weekly basis!

Key newcomers:

New to the roster this year are a variety of incoming freshmen, guys who are coming back to the sport after injury, and a few brand new wrestlers learning the sport for the first time! Excitedly, we will get to rely on all of these individuals to contribute to our lineup this year!

Conference outlook:

We are competing in a conference loaded with talent across the board. Every year, our goal is to compete for both individual and team conference championships. Stratford, Marathon, and Auburndale are the top teams coming back from last season and they’ll be the teams to beat if we want to claim the conference championship.

Keys to your success this season:

It may be cliche, but the keys to success in wrestling are found in the fundamentals! We work hard each day to help our wrestlers grow confident in their fundamentals. Being disciplined enough to stick to our game plan yet being able to take advantage of situations when they present themselves is also an important element as we think about being a successful wrestler. Lastly, we preach individual daily improvement in all phases of being student athletes.

Behind the scenes: Who are some of the people that help your program succeed?

We owe a great deal of gratitude to many behind the scenes people helping our program to continue to grow! School administrations, office personnel, and custodians in our school who work on a weekly basis to make sure our team has the best opportunities to compete in a positive environment. Mitch Mueller is our youth coach and he has done a tremendous job helping our youth wrestlers learn the sport while cultivating a great team atmosphere which helps to build their confidence and understanding of the fundamentals. The parents of our wrestlers cannot be thanked enough for the continued support they give at all levels of the program. Our booster club EPAW is so supportive of our program needs, they do a great job in helping us run great tournaments at all levels from HS down to the youth and raising money for us to have the amazing facilities and equipment we get to work with each day! So many thanks go out to many people that help our program succeed.

Coach’s comments: anything else you’d like to share?

We are excited for the new 2023 season to be underway and look forward to being able to learn and grow in the sport, compete each week, and become better people as we strive to improve each day. We focus on controlling the things we can control like our individual daily effort and attitude, and understand that those two things will determine whether our goals will become our reality. We are all looking forward to working hard and growing through the process of what it takes to be the best we can be each day!

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Author: David Keech

David Keech is a retired teacher and works as a sportswriter, sports official and as an educational consultant. He has reported on amateur sports since 2011, known as 'KeechDaVoice.' David can be reached at [email protected]