The high school Pioneer wrestling team went to Cookeville on Tuesday for a preseason match against Cookeville, Stone Memorial and Upperman.
WCHS head coach Matt Turner was pleased with the team’s performance. Turner said, “Coach Robert Piche has been working with the wrestling team and he has been doing a great job getting the team ready. I was busy with football through the playoff game, and coach Piche is an excellent wrestling coach. We are lucky to have him.”
Turner continued, “We got in some great work at Cookeville. Several of our wrestlers have not wrestled at the varsity level before and the experience did a world of good for them. I am excited to have Alec Smith back as a senior. We are still waiting for some guys to get started, and we will have some trouble replacing heavyweight Dayton Jernigan this season.”
Dayton Jernigan is rehabbing from his ACL surgery he had to repair his ACL that he injured in the football game against Cookeville. Wrestling is a tough sport, and coach Turner hopes to get a few more football players in the wrestling program.
The Southern Standard will feature the upcoming wrestling season soon.
Middle School Wrestling Update
WCMS head wrestling coach Ben Matheney gave an update on the middle school program recently. Matheney said, “We are very young this year. We may have some open weight divisions. Pound for pound, this is one of the grittiest teams I have had. We have some real athletes wrestling this year. It is a good group to build our program with. We went to Prescott South Middle School in Cookeville a few weeks ago, and we finished third out of 11 teams. We finished behind Blackman and Oakland. Blackman will probably be top dog, and that was a good test to tell us where we are.”
Thursday night the middle school wrestled Prescott South and Oakland at home. The middle school Pioneers lost to Oakland 65-9, but they beat Prescott 58-30. Coach Matheney commented on the match, “Oakland just had more experience than us. I feel like when our wrestlers gain more experience it will be much more competitive. Against Prescott it was another story. Our wrestlers went out and showed how talented this group can be. Of the 12 matches we wrestled, we won 10 of them.”
