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Chucks reload following loss of nine seniors |
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Written by Dan Walk
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Saturday, 05 December 2009 |
Punxsy coach Buddy Young (top) performs a technique on sophomore Seth Spack for the rest of the team to learn during wrestling practice Friday. (Photo by Dan Walk/The Punxsutawney Spirit)
PUNXSUTAWNEY — Nine seniors have moved on from the 2008-2009 Punxsy wrestling team that finished 16-9 and beat DuBois for the first time in more than 30 years.
But due to a good number of freshmen and sophomores coming up from a junior-high squad that has continually reached achievements with small numbers, the Chucks are right where they want to be two weeks into the preseason.
Punxsy, which starts the 2009-2010 campaign Friday by participating in the Hickory tournament for the second-straight year, returns four regional qualifiers — senior Jimmy Shirley, junior Kody Young and sophomores Neko Cappella and Seth Spack.
But while those four are expected to provide consistency, some new wrestlers such as sophomores Carl Langley, Nathan McGregor, Josh Neal and Tyler Titus, and freshmen Devan Snyder and Caesar Maruca will be looked upon to win in their first varsity seasons.
Helping matters is the fact that Eric Eddy and Buddy Young have been coaching at the high school for eight years now, which means the current first-year varsity wrestlers have known the Eddy and Young since they were elementary wrestlers.
"It's a huge difference in dynamics," Eddy said of the change in the practice room now that nine seniors have graduated. "The thing that makes the transition easier is Buddy and I have been together here long enough now that all the kids coming up know us and only us. They know who they're going to be coming to in the high school. That transition's easy."
Adding to the ease in transition is the leadership that the aforementioned regional qualifiers provide. Young, for example, reached states last year, and can help the underclassmen know exactly what it's like to reach that level.
"The other thing that makes it easy is the kids we have in the room. We suffered a big loss last year, and we always say that our kids are more like brothers than teammates," Eddy said. "That just makes it real nice to assimilate in. We don't have those issues of the younger kids (having trouble) fitting in.
"They're all here for a single purpose, and that's to wrestle," he said. "They recognize that and accept everybody that wants to do that same thing."
Though the first-year Chucks could become complacent due to the huge jump from junior-high to varsity, junior-high coaches Bill Burke and Tim Spack soften the leap. Eddy has said for years that those coaches not only run the junior-high program as if it was a varsity squad, but are more strict and disciplined.
"When you have two guys coaching at the junior-high level that prepare the kids for high school like they do, that just makes our job a lot easier," Eddy said. "Whenever these kids come in, the only thing that we have to worry about is improving on the technique they already learned, and we don't have to deal with any discipline issues or anything because that's all been weeded out in the junior-high."
The Chucks have been through just two weeks of practice and one scrimmage, and Eddy said that the team is right where it wants to be. Now, it's all about finding out what kind of strides the competition has made.
"That's the thing we're waiting to see now," Eddy said. "I know that this group of kids works real hard, and if they keep doing that, I would expect big things by the end of the season."
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Last Updated ( Monday, 07 December 2009 )
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