Daniel Boone, Governor Mifflin ready for new season
Both the Daniel Boone and Governor Mifflin wrestling teams will have a lot of new faces on the 2015-16 teams. The Mustangs graduated a large crop of talented senior wrestlers last year, so will be going with a lot of younger talent this season. Boone will have a better mix of youth and experience, but there will be a learning curve for a lot of wrestlers on both teams.
Daniel Boone
The Blazers are looking to improve on last year’s 3- 4 Berks League record. Danniel Boone wrestling coach Kevin Oswalt knows there will be some mistakes made by the younger wres- tlers, but he’s hoping the more experienced teammates will help them out with that. The Blazers will have to count on some of the younger wrestlers to develop quickly and pick up some wins.
“Our team will look to continue to improve on a daily basis,” said Oswalt. We’ll look to learn from the mistakes we make in the practice room as well as our matches. We’ll look for some of our older experienced wrestlers to take the younger guys under their wings and prepare them for the season. We had a good off season and picked up some new wrestlers that will help the team out.”
Among some of the key returners is Connor Spalding, who is coming back after qualifying for the district tournament last year.
“We look for Connor to improve himself as he put in a lot of work over the summer,” said Oswalt.
Two-year starter Jack Zummo is also back and will be counted on to contribute heavily this year.
Tyler Ring is a junior this season and a growth spurt pushed him up four weight classes. It will be interesting to see how he handles it.
Joey Yohn is back for his senior season after qualifying for districts last year.
“Joey had a good off season and has positive goals for himself this season,” said Oswalt. “We look for Joey to be a team leader this year.”
Branden Valverde is another senior back after qualifying for districts last year. Much will be expected from him this year, both as a wrestler and a team leader.
A sixth place finisher at district last year, junior Jesse Enck is back this season and has set high goals for himself.
“Jesse will likely be the anchor of our team and will take our younger upperweights under his wing,” said Oswalt.
“The main strength of our team is we are a family and support each other as a family does. It’s going to take the whole team for Daniel Boone wrestling to be successful. We ’ill need to improve on the getting better each day. We will need to get our younger wrestlers battle tested.”
The goals are simple for the Blazers this season - just keep getting better each day.
Governor Mifflin
The Mustangs were 6-1 in the Berks League last year and won 21 matches overall. In addition, they won the county championship. It might be difficult for the team to repeat that effort this year. That was a senior-laden team and that means a lot of their starters will not be back this year. This will be primarily and younger and more inexperienced team.
But that does not mean that there isn’t some experienced and talented wrestlers returning. There will be six district qualifiers coming back, includ- ing Alex Centeno, who was also a county and sectional champion. Eli Horst, Zach Scheetz, Allen Arentz, Ben Maack and Dylan Harr are the other five district qualifiers coming back for the 2015-16 season. Other key returners are Cam Dotterer-and Lorenzo Santos.
Despite the relative youth of this team, the goal is still to repeat as county champions. It is a young team but the head coach Ralph Voit likes the leadership he has on this team.
“We have a couple good leaders and our youngsters should know from last year the work ethic that is going to be needed for them to improve,” said Voit. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work.”