Wrestling season has just begun. On October 30th, wrestling started to practice every day.

The returning coaching staff for this year’s wrestling are Coach Manak, Coach Mager, Coach Paul Sabko, and Coach Juan Tovar, along with the wonderful additions of Coach Alex Contreas and Coach Jeremy Schwiesow this year.

There is a JV/freshman team and a Varsity team. The team will go into wrestle-offs to decide the representatives of each of the 14 weight classes. When going to a meet, the varsity team will wrestle in a dual meet against another team to earn points as a whole. While the JV/freshman team can get matches at meets, it is more likely for them to get matches during the tournaments the team goes to.

Last year the team did pretty decent overall. Two girls and four boys qualified to state. One of them was AJ Sanchez, who got 6th place and committed to ACU in his graduating year of 2023.

Interested Vipers should be aware that wrestling isn’t the easiest sport.

The hardest part according to Coach Manak is “the mental toughness of the sport. Wrestling is the sport that builds mental toughness more than any other sport”.

There are a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to wrestling. Coach Manak states, “One of the funny ones is that it is like the WWE”. The WWE and regular wrestling are two completely different things. The main difference is that the WWE is a stage live performance for entertainment purposes and wrestling here at Verrado is the real deal with many rules to follow.

Some advice Manak would give is: “Give it more than 1 or 2 days, it takes time to get into things”.

To get updates on practices or this year’s team, follow them at @verrado_wrestling_24.