For senior night of the 2023-2024 wrestling season, McDaniel was matched up against Roosevelt and Ida B. Wells. The team won against both of their opponents. While the team got the better of Wells in a comfortable 57-15 win, the matchup against Roosevelt was a little closer with the score being 51-27.
The meet started with women’s wrestling exhibition matches versus Ida B. Wells. They didn’t keep score but the girls won the majority of their matches. Then the boys league matchups started, first against Roosevelt. The meet started with a first match loss, but the team was quick to bounce back, tying the score 6-6.
In the next match, the team won due to a forfeit by Roosevelt, pushing the score up to 12-6.
The following match featured junior Junior Hoang, who started aggressively with a single-leg takedown. Thirty seconds later, Hoang took down his opponent and got the pin to put his team up 18-6.
After that, a McDaniel wrestler had a very long match and close match, but persevered and was declared the winner, making the score 21-6.
Next up was senior Jake Brewer. Brewer was assertive at the beginning of the duel, going straight for his opponent. For his winning move in the duel, Brewer slammed his opponent forcefully on the mat and pinned him to score the six points that put his team in a commanding 27-6 lead.
“I wanted to take the first shot and be the first guy to make the first move,” said Brewer.
After, Roosevelt got a pin to make the score 27-12.
Up next was sophomore Lupine Reeves. During the first period, it was evenly matched with both wrestlers getting takedowns. In the second period, Reeves ended up pinning his opponent to bring momentum back to his team, setting the score at 33-12.
“I just gotta execute what I’ve done in practice, try some things that I like to do and that’s what happened out there,” said Reeves.
Following Reeves was junior Elio Parque. The duel was close until Parque took down Roosevelt’s wrestler to get the pin for another six points, further increasing the lead.
The team continued to dominate Roosevelt, only allowing them to get 15 more points, resulting in a 51-27 win.
“Last night’s meet went really well, still lots to improve on but we came out and won both matches pretty comfortably,” coach Cale Holt said.
Holt believes that the team has a great shot at districts this season.
“I think we are still on track to win districts, next week is going to be a big tell, we got Franklin and Jefferson those are the two top teams along with us, if those go well it’s looking pretty good,” Holt said.
